MLS club valuation met again after SKC $700 million deal
MLS club Sporting Kansas City has been sold for around $700 million, the second recent sale which matches the eye-popping valuations of clubs in the North American leagues and a record fee for an MLS club.
New Sporting KC owner Peter Mallouk is president and CEO of Creative Planning, a wealth advisory firm. He has owned a minority stake in the team since 2022. Previous owners, the Illig family will continue to manage the club’s day-to-day operations and represent the team on the MLS board of governors. Essentially minority and majority owners have swapped investment positions.
“The option presented itself,” Mallouk told the Kansas City Star newspaper. “I’m born and raised in Kansas City, and I’ve forever loved Kansas City sports. So when the option presented itself, I was in. I didn’t hesitate.”
“I really would say 99.5% of the metric I’m going to care about is winning,” Mallouk said. “And 0.5% will be everything else. What you’re going to see next season is a big, big financial commitment,” he said, “to do whatever it takes to build upon what we’re building upon this season.”
Mallouk now has around an 80% stake in the club and for context, the $700 million price tage is roughly double what Saudi Arabia’s PIF paid to buy Premier League club Newcastle United.
The Illigs had been in control of the club since 2006 when Clifford Illig and four other local investors bought the club from Lamar Hunt.
Forbes had valued SKC at $650 million. Many shook their heads at those valuations of MLS clubs when they were published – the evidence so far though is suggesting those estimates were pretty accurate.
In April, Miller Sports and Entertainment acquired RSL Football Holdings, including MLS's Real Salt Lake and the NWSL's Utah Royals for around $600 million. Forbes had valued the MLS club alone at $500 million. In October, the Borgen family, invested in Austin FC at an enterprise value of $912 million - again close to the valuations from Sportico and Forbes. Haslam Sports Group sold a ten perfecnt stake in the Columbus Crew to the Edwards family last year at a valuation of $900 million (Forbes had placed a $735 million value on the club).
Sporting KC's revenue was reported to be $75 million last year, making the current deal almost 10x revenue - again that is roughly in line with the calculation used for the most recent valuations of league clubs.
The highest valuations in the Forbes listings were $1.25 billion for LAFC and $1.2 billion for Inter Miami. At the other end of the scale, Colorado Rapids (owned by the Kroenke family) were listed at $415 million and CF Montreal (owned by the Saputo family) were worth $435 million.
To the casual observer, these valuations seem high, especially when you consider you could purchase a top flight European team for less. So what is behind these numbers?
1. Growth - no matter whether you believe that soccer is about to 'explode' in the U.S market or just continue to grow strongly, there is consensus that the game and MLS are going to grow over the coming years. The value of sports franchises in the U.S. has risen significantly in recent years and with MLS offering real growth opportunities.
2. Stability - compared to investing in a European club, there is a higher degree of certainty in buying an MLS club. You aren't going to find yourself in a loss-making 'arms race' over salaries and transfer spend nor does your club risk being relegated to a lower division.
There isn't the instant 'glamour' element associated with buying a Premier League or Serie A club and the investment relies on consistent good performance from the league and the club. Mallouk clearly has confidence that both the club and the league can continue to do the right things to grow and grow value.
'Rodman Rule' delivers new deal for NWSL
Such was the value of USWNT forward Trinity Rodman to the NWSL and so deep was the fear of her being tempted to Europe by a higher salary, that the women's league went as far as changing it's salary cap rules to keep her at home.
And all the effort paid off in the end.
Rodman signed a new three-year contract with the Washington Spirit on Thursday. The deal is worth over $2 million annually, including bonuses, according to multiple reports, making her the highest-paid player in league history, and - according to her agent Mike Senkowski of Upper 90 Sports Group - the best paid female player in the world.
The first attempt to keep Rodman in place was a 'back loaded' deal for the player which was creatively designed to allow the Spirit to get around the current $3.5 million salary cap. The league blocked that contract which resulted in a grievance being filed from the NWSLPA who argued Rodman's free agency rights had been violated.
In December, the NWSL's board approved a new 'High Impact Player' rule, similar in intention to MLS's Designated Player rule, to allow teams to spend up to $1 million over the salary cap on big name players who meet certain criteria. That move also met with an objection from the players union who argue it's introduction is a breach of the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the league and subsequently the NWSLPA filed another grievance.
While that dispute has yet to be resolved, the deal has gone ahead regardless. Haley Carter, the Spirit's President of Soccer Operations said: "The reality is a contract is a contract," Carter added. "Regardless of the outcome of that grievance, we've entered into a legally binding contract with Trinity, and we anticipate fulfilling our obligations under that contract."
While the NWSLPA is unlikely to be impressed by that argument and there may yet be some twists and turns in this story, keeping Rodman was vital to a league which had seen several top players move to Europe, most recently USWNT midfielder Sam Coffey, who joined Manchester City last week.
MLS opens up internal transfer market
Major League Soccer has introduced several roster rule tweaks this week but by far the most significant is the removal of restrictions on 'cash for player' deals.
Until last season, trades between MLS clubs were conducted through a complex process involving General Allocation Money (GAM). This method of compensation, not used elsewhere in the world of soccer, did little to incentivize deals and was close to useless when it came to top players and their costs. But the switch to a limited number of cash deals last year allowed trades such as Brazilian Evander's switch from Portland Timbers to Cincinnati which cost the Ohio club $12 million. Without such a deal the star midfielder would likely have left the league.
Clubs were still limited two incoming and two outgoing deals per season - a restriction which has now been lifted allowing MLS to now have something much closer to a 'normal' domestic transfer market. The league has also liberalized the rules on domestic loan deals, with the age restriction removed to allow for great flexibility and options for players who find themselves down the depth chart at a club.
The league has also extended the transfer window to align with European leagues - the summer window will close on September 2 having previously been in mid-August. The winter transfer window remains out of sync with Europe however - opening on January 26 and closing on March 26. Europe's window runs for the month of January.
The switch of the MLS calendar in 2027, to the European fall to spring season, will allow for a total alignment and should ease problems North American clubs have had in buying and selling talent on the international market.
KC to be base for top World Cup teams
World champions Argentina along with England, the Netherlands, and Algeria plan to use the Kansas City metro area as their training base for the 2026 World Cup according to local media reports. While official FIFA confirmation is still pending, the concentration of such high-caliber teams—including the defending champions—positions the region as a central hub for the tournament well beyond its six scheduled match days.
The region’s infrastructure will be on full display, with England slated for Swope Soccer Village, the Netherlands training at the Kansas City Current’s Riverside facilities, and Algeria heading to Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence. To further capitalize on the influx of visitors, Missouri has even enacted a new law allowing local bars to extend their hours during the tournament.
Sakiewicz to Lead $280M Sports Performance Hub Project
Soccer industry veteran Nick Sakiewicz has been appointed CEO and Co-Founder of Sports Performance Hub (SPH), a massive $280 million development in Homestead, Florida. The privately funded project, which sits on 100 acres through an 80-year land-use agreement, is designed to serve as the long-term home for the USL Championship’s Miami FC.
Sakiewicz, a founding executive of MLS with extensive stadium development experience at Red Bull Arena and then Philadelphia Union's Subaru Park, will oversee the transition from planning to execution as the project enters its second phase. SPH is expected to break ground in March 2026 and aims to create a "true sense of place" by integrating elite training, education, and health facilities with residential and hospitality spaces.
San Jose bring MLSNP team back 'in house'
San Jose Earthquakes' MLS Next Pro team had operated for the past two years as The Town FC, in a joint venture with the The Town Group LLC, who ran the reserve teams' commercial operations and moved the team to Moraga, California.
The arrangement was seen as part of a trend for MLS teams to rebrand their reserve teams in Next Pro and play in MLSNP under a fresh identity in a different location and generate additional revenue from a new fan base. With the 'parent club' still maintaining control over the playing side of the operation, deals such as San Jose's were seen as potential win-wins.
But after two years as Town FC, San Jose are bringing the Next Pro team back 'in house' as Quakes II.
San Antonio launch USL 2 club
USL Championship club San Antonio FC are launching a second team which will play in USL League 2 providing a bridge between the club's Pro Academy and the professional team. The team will play under the name San Antonio FC 2 and will begin this year in the Southern Conference in May.
(Athletic) Friends Reunited at Guardian
Interesting news from the American soccer media world where British owned website The Guardian have invested in creating a team of American soccer writers to cover the sport in the run up to the World Cup.
Alexander Abnos, who was released by The Athletic last year, was appointed as American soccer editor and received scores of applications for the two writer roles. Abnos chose to appoint two of his former colleagues from The Athletic in Jeff Rueter and Pablo Iglesias Maurer, who were also released by the New York Times owned website last year and had been freelancing. Also joining the team as an assistant sports editor is Ella Brockway, who was previously with the Washington Post.
“Jeff and Pablo have been two of the most dominant forces in American soccer journalism for some time, and Ella has already proven to be one of the sharpest editorial minds out there covering soccer and the sports world at large. I’m thrilled to welcome all of them to the Guardian, and am proud to work at a place that respects the American soccer audience enough to invest in this ongoing expansion," said Abnos.
The Athletic have been on a recruiting spree of their own over the past few months, recently adding Henry Bushnell from Yahoo Sports and MLS transfer 'guru' Tom Bogert.
Rocco Commisso (1949-2026)
The soccer business community is mourning the loss of Rocco Commisso, the Mediacom chairman and owner of ACF Fiorentina, who has passed away at the age of 76. Commisso, a Calabria native who immigrated to the U.S. at age 12, became a prominent and often provocative figure in North American soccer after purchasing the NASL’s New York Cosmos in 2017. He famously funded a long-running antitrust lawsuit against U.S. Soccer and MLS after the NASL lost its Division II designation, a case that was eventually decided in favor of the federation in 2025. In 2019, he expanded his footprint to Europe by purchasing Fiorentina, where he invested heavily in infrastructure, including a landmark sports training center opened in 2023. Commisso is survived by his wife, Catherine, and two children, Giuseppe and Marisa.