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Research dossier · General Reference

Expansion of Major League Soccer

Highest tier Soccer League in United States of America plans to increase the number of teams competing in the League

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ4855051 ↗
Source-derived summary

Major League Soccer is the top level of professional soccer in the United States. It began play in 1996 with 10 teams and has expanded several times since 1998. From 2005 to 2025, the league expanded rapidly and has added an average of one new team per season. The league has 30 teams as of the 2025 season with the debut of San Diego FC.

Expanding and establishing a larger national reach is seen as essential to securing television rights fees needed to reach MLS's initially stated goal of becoming one of the top leagues in the world. As of December 2024, there are no pending expansion teams but the league may expand to 32 teams at a later date.

In 2007, Toronto FC became the first of three Canadian teams to join the league. In 2013, New York City FC agreed to pay a record $100 million expansion fee for the right to join MLS in 2015. This record was surpassed by the ownership groups of FC Cincinnati and Nashville SC, which each paid $150 million to join MLS (FC Cincinnati in 2019 and Nashville in 2020). The same amount was paid as an effective entrance fee by a group that bought Columbus Crew SC in 2018, which led to that team's previous operator receiving a new team in Austin, Texas, that joined MLS in April 2021. Before Sacramento's group withdrew its franchise acquisition, MLS also announced that the ownership groups of the 28th and 29th teams would each pay a $200 million entrance fee and that of the 30th had to pay $325 million.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Expansion of Major League Soccer” as highest tier Soccer League in United States of America plans to increase the number of teams competing in the League. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 1998, 2005, 2025—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Expansion, Major and League can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as highest tier Soccer League in United States of America plans to increase the number of teams competing in the League. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4855051. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1998, 2005 and 2025.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Expansion of Major League Soccer”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Expansion of Major League Soccer primary sources, Expansion of Major League Soccer archive and Expansion research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Expansion of Major League Soccer”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Expansion of 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.