Major League Soccer has made its choice. Larry Berg was voted in as the league’s next commissioner after a closed-door meeting in Midtown Manhattan, and that alone tells you this is no routine administrative shuffle. MLS is handing the biggest seat in the room to a man who has spent years on the ownership side of the table, helped build LAFC into a heavyweight, and has already been thinking out loud about how far the league can go.
That matters because MLS is not choosing from a vacuum. The vote came after presentations from Larry Berg and David Nathanson, and it arrived with the obvious reality that Don Garber’s departure timing is still unsettled. His contract runs until the end of 2027, which means the league now has a commissioner-designate without a clean handover date. That is classic MLS: decisive on the headline, slightly murky on the detail.
A new face, but not a novice
Berg is not arriving as a fresh outsider with a neat reform package and a shiny PowerPoint. His background is in private equity and team ownership, and his MLS story runs through Los Angeles. He initially invested in the league’s second attempt at launching a second club in Los Angeles in 2014, became one of the club’s managing owners after an internal buyout in 2016, and then watched Los Angeles FC take the field in 2018 with Bob Bradley as coach and Carlos Vela as the headliner.
That matters because MLS has clearly decided it wants its next leader to understand the business from the inside. Berg is not just a league executive in waiting; he is someone who has lived the club side of the sport, the ownership side of the sport, and the uncomfortable reality that growth is always a financial argument as much as a football one. In February 2020, Berg said MLS could pass baseball and hockey to become the number three sport in the U.S. by the end of the decade. That was a big statement at the time. It is even bigger now that he is the one expected to help chase it.
The league wants ambition, not caution
MLS has had only two commissioners before this vote, and that gives the decision some historical weight. Don Garber began serving in 1999 and became the defining figure of the modern league. Any successor was always going to inherit a demanding brief, but Berg’s appointment suggests the owners are looking for someone who can keep pushing the commercial rise rather than simply protecting what already exists.
That is where the background matters again. David Nathanson comes from sports media. Berg comes from private equity and ownership. Those are not minor differences; they point to different instincts about how the league should grow, who it should serve, and how aggressively it should chase talent. Berg’s own language has already been clear enough: the league can be a top-five or top-three league, but it will come down to money and the ability to compete for players. In other words, no one is pretending this is a sentimental project.
And the market context is not subtle either. LAFC was named MLS operations club of the year in 2023, John Thorington was named MLS sporting executive of the year in 2024, and Forbes estimated LAFC’s valuation at $1.32bn in May 2026. That is the kind of club Berg has helped shape, and it helps explain why the owners may trust him to understand where ambition turns into actual leverage.
The cleanest reading of this vote is simple: MLS wants a commissioner who knows the business, knows the pressure, and knows that the next phase is not about surviving anymore. It is about climbing. Berg now carries that brief, even if the timing of the transition still has to be worked out. The league has chosen its next leader. The harder part is proving that the choice matches the size of the moment.
