MLS Taps Private Equity Veteran As Next Commissioner

The 30 owners of Major League Soccer teams have chosen their successor for commissioner Don Garber.

LAFC co-owner and private equity executive Larry Berg will take over MLS next year, the league announced Monday.

MLS owners met in New York City earlier Monday, when they heard presentations from the top two candidates, Berg and former Fox executive David Nathanson.

Berg was LAFC’s managing owner for four years and has been a part of the club’s ownership since it launched in 2018. He will sell his ownership stake before he becomes commissioner.

“Thanks to the vision and commitment of so many people, Major League Soccer has achieved tremendous success, but I believe our greatest opportunities are still ahead,” Berg said in a statement. “We have an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen the quality of our competition, develop more world-class players, deepen our connection with supporters, and continue elevating Major League Soccer’s place in the global game.”

Berg will start his new job on Jan. 1, after the 2026 MLS season ends, and before its spring “sprint” season begins. Garber will start a new role as “Chairman,” MLS said.

Berg has spent most of his career with private equity giant Apollo Global Management. He was a senior partner there, and in 2023 also became a senior partner at 26North.

Josh Harris, who co-owns the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia 76ers, and New Jersey Devils, founded both Apollo—which has about a trillion dollars under management—and 26North.

MLS first voted to allow private equity firms to buy stakes in its clubs in 2020. According to Pitchbook, 16 of the 30 MLS clubs have at least one private equity investor, though MLS operates under a single-entity structure where the league owns all its teams. In April, MLS announced that investment firm KKR will back the developmental league MLS Next Pro.

Garber, 68, became MLS’s second commissioner in 1999. During his tenure, the league dipped as low as 10 teams, and now has 30. Stars including David Beckham, Lionel Messi, and Landon Donovan played in the league with Garber at the helm. According to Forbes’s most recent list of team valuations, five MLS clubs, including LAFC, are worth $1 billion or more.

“Having worked closely with Larry over the past decade, I’ve seen firsthand the qualities that make him an exceptional leader, and I have complete confidence he is the right person to serve as Major League Soccer’s next Commissioner,” Garber said in a statement. “I look forward to working alongside Larry during this transition and supporting him as he leads MLS into its next chapter.”

Garber oversaw a build-out of soccer’s youth development pipeline. “Eight years ago, for example, we had no academies,” Garber told Front Office Sports last month. “Now we have 30 academies.”

But MLS has also struggled in key areas. It rarely releases viewership numbers from its $2.5 billion media deal with Apple, and when it does, they haven’t been particularly impressive. The end of the deal was moved up from 2032 to 2029, and got rid of the second MLS Season Pass paywall this season. Recent matches on Fox have averaged more than 500,000 viewers, including MLS’s best regular-season viewership in six years.

Another pain point has been the calendar. MLS will flip to a fall-to-spring calendar in 2027, aligning with the European soccer schedule, and making it easier for players to transfer in both directions. MLS will finish out the 2026 season this fall, hold a “sprint season” from February to May, then begin a fresh full season next July. Critics have cited the slow transition as a missed opportunity to make the change directly after the World Cup when soccer’s momentum in the U.S. is high.

“In a perfect world, we all would have wanted that,” San Diego FC CEO Tom Penn recently told FOS. “This would’ve been the perfect time to do it.”

—Ben Horney contributed to this report.