Major League Soccer
professional soccer league in the USA and Canada
Major League Soccer (MLS) is a professional soccer league in North America and the highest level of the United States soccer league system. It comprises 30 teams, with 27 in the United States and 3 in Canada, and is sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation. MLS is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. The league is headquartered in New York City.
The predecessor of MLS was the North American Soccer League (NASL), which existed from 1968 until 1984. MLS was founded in 1993 as part of the United States' successful bid to host the 1994 FIFA World Cup. The inaugural season took place in 1996 with ten teams. MLS experienced financial and operational struggles in its first few years, losing millions of dollars and folding two teams in 2002. Since then, developments such as the proliferation of soccer-specific stadiums around the league, the implementation of the Designated Player Rule allowing teams to sign star players such as David Beckham and Lionel Messi, and national TV contracts have made MLS profitable.
In 2024, with an average attendance of over 23,200 per match, MLS had the third-highest average attendance of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada, behind the National Football League (NFL) with over 69,000 fans per game and Major League Baseball (MLB) with over 26,000 fans per game.
“Major League Soccer” enters the record as professional soccer league in the USA and Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Major, League and Soccer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Major League Soccer” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Major, League and Soccer provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18543. VIAF identifies the subject as 122384155. The Library of Congress control number is no2009036863. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 5 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1984, 1993 and 1994.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Major League Soccer”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Major League Soccer primary sources, Major League Soccer archive and Major research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Major League Soccer”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Major League Soccer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.