Last week, The Athletic broke the news that the USL is hoping to launch a new men’s league in 2027 capable of garnering first-division sanctioning.

The ensuing days have begged a lot of questions about the USL’s intentions for the new circuit, both in relationship to the nation’s current men’s top flight, Major League Soccer, as well as its own long-standing ambition to implement promotion and relegation within the USL ecosystem.

Here’s everything you need to know about the plan, which is still in the developing stage.

Could USL Division One actually compete with MLS?

First, the intention here isn’t to directly compete with MLS.

The reality is MLS is well ahead of USL in terms of the ownership’s collective net wealth. There isn’t a single owner in the USL who can compete with the likes of Arthur Blank, David Tepper, Phil Anschutz or many of the other billionaires in MLS. Rather, USL sees a space that isn’t occupied by MLS: markets that have the potential to support a Division One (D1) team and to have some level of success in growing the game and filling stadiums.

The belief is that creating a D1 league will push the USL to a new level because the demands of investment are higher and the expectation around the sanctioning requires a better product.

MLS actually spelled out a successful path toward growth: a focus on infrastructure that creates connections with the community and a level of permanence never seen before in American soccer. The USL would do well to follow that model and the requirements of D1 sanctioning, which includes a minimum 15,000-seat stadium, help to push those efforts forward.

“Stadiums change the whole dynamic of the business model, so having the proper stadium and training facilities is really, really important for us,” USL president Paul McDonough told The Athletic last week when announcing the news of the push for Division One. “And we need more owners with that ambition to drive the game forward.”

Will USL implement promotion and relegation?

This should be the goal for USL.

Moving to Division One on its own doesn’t move the needle enough. The product itself would have to improve dramatically in order to make the sanctioning matter more than in name alone. How much do we think USL fans care right now that they’re supporting a USL Championship team versus a USL League One team?

Getting to promotion and relegation will not be an easy fight, however. The USL already learned that after an earlier push for pro-rel never got as far as an actual vote.

“I was under the impression that things were a lot further along,” McDonough told The Athletic last summer. “You walk in and you think, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re far along with it. Great, let’s just push it (to a vote),’ and then as you start to listen, you realize that it’s not as far along.”

USL owners were understandably nervous about what relegation would mean for their product. In reality, going down a division wouldn’t have the same impact here as it does overseas. There just isn’t enough difference in revenue (or loss thereof) between the levels to cause major issues, as there is in other leagues around the world. That being said, there is real upside for the USL if it can implement pro-rel in its leagues.

Right now, USL is more of a local, community-driven product. To open itself up to larger national relevance — and the commercial benefits that come from that — it needs a compelling story. There is ample evidence that pro-rel provides the romanticism and jeopardy that drives fan interest. One only needs to look at “Welcome to Wrexham” or the popularity of the Premier League to see U.S. fans latch on to pro-rel.

If USL can get there, it feels like an easy win — and one that might come with the reward of a bigger TV deal and bigger TV audiences.

What would pro-rel look like in USL?

This is a much tougher question to answer. Part of it will depend on what exactly the USL wants it to look like. But there are some real challenges in pairing the popular American side of sports — featuring playoffs on the path to deciding a champion — with the compelling part of pro-rel, which is battles at the bottom of the higher divisions and the top of the lower ones.

The USL will have to figure out how to marry those competing stories and games.

On top of that, implementing pro-rel won’t be as simple as saying the bottom two or three teams go down and the top two or three come up. In the early stages, USL will have to determine whether, for example, one season or the record based on cumulative form over previous seasons will be used to determine who rises or falls.

There are other debates to be had, too. Will there be promotion playoffs that mimic those in many leagues around the world, with just the top teams in a division vying for a few spots to move up? Would USL try something more novel, like a playoff between the top clubs in the lower leagues against the bottom teams in the higher division to determine if sides move up or down?

The USL has workshopped several scenarios.

“We’ve been through plenty of models,” McDonough said last summer. “Right now, we’ve got 36 owners (between the USL’s Championship and League One). Everybody looks at it a little bit differently and you have to try to listen to all 36. For us to get it passed, each league has to approve it and they’ve got to approve it in a supermajority. When you go through that process, you’re going to answer a lot of questions; trying to get it where everyone feels like they win, that’s a pretty tough thing to get to.

“That’s why it just may take time. You can’t rush it.”

Is this the right decision by USL?

In short, it depends on whether or not they can get a promotion and relegation model authorized.

As Paul alluded to, the USL’s moves since McDonough stepped into the role in the spring of 2023 seem to coherently recognize the difficulties that come with being a lower-division soccer operation in the United States. Often, its teams’ closest domestic comparison is minor league baseball, and while USL clubs bridle against carrying a “minor league” moniker, it does impact how they’re perceived in their markets and among general sports fans who may otherwise be intrigued by the lower leagues’ nature.

Before McDonough joined, the idea of promotion and relegation was more of an idea than something that was meticulously conceptualized. Despite the lack of details, it was clear the league’s owners had an appetite to shake up the USL’s competitive structure.

“If you somehow think continuing on our current trajectory will make us competitive and where we all want to be, you’re fooling yourself,” one USL owner told The Athletic in 2023. “The reality is MLS will destroy USL long-term (on our current path). But if USL successfully adopts pro/rel and can get D1 sanctioning (for the top level), it’ll be transformed.”

One model considered ahead of that scuppered vote in 2023 would have seen the USL launch a new league in between the second-division Championship and third-tier League One, which would have required some combination of clubs from each of those levels as well as newly launched members to fill out the competition. However, that process begged questions about how clubs would be dropped from the second tier or chosen to rise from the third, as well as what level of sanctioning would be reasonable for a relative tweener competition.

In that sense, going for a first division-sanctioned league is a far cleaner resolution that keeps immediate balance for League One and helps Championship clubs stay in their original competition.

If the league doesn’t ultimately get its promotion and relegation format online in time for a D1-sanctioned league’s launch, it would complicate that new competition’s perceived mission. If there isn’t a differentiating factor about the new circuit, it will beg the question of its caliber directly compared to MLS — and on the surface, that question would be a non-starter.

Keep in mind, again, that being granted Division 1 sanctioning by U.S. Soccer is more accurately a recognition of a league’s baseline operating standards than an assessment of its competitive mettle. The factors at play to make or break a case for that level of sanctioning have little to do with expenditure on players, which is the single biggest factor that impacts a league’s quality of play in the modern landscape.

Even if their leagues don’t incorporate promotion and relegation, having a competition that’s up to the most rigorous standards as spelled out by U.S. Soccer would help to increase club owners’ investments in facilities, which also improves the quality of play.

In that sense, this push is similar to the USL’s decision to launch the women’s USL Super League at a division one level, rather than division two, which begged similar questions about that circuit’s ambition vis-a-vis the NWSL.

Which teams are most likely to move into USL Division One?

Right now, the first two of those three points could immediately be met. The USL Championship will play its 2025 season with 24 teams split between two conferences. Of those 24, 18 are based in markets that exceed that minimum population benchmark, making it feasible for the entire circuit to qualify for first-division sanctioning.

The third benchmark will be far more difficult (and expensive) to meet. Only three clubs — Louisville City, Birmingham Legion and Miami FC — play in stadiums that meet the federation’s listed minimum capacity; both Birmingham and Miami share their venues, which both have college football teams as joint or primary tenants.

Louisville’s home is the league’s current crown jewel, as Lynn Family Stadium was built with the USL club and its sibling club (the NWSL’s Racing Louisville) in mind. Although they currently cap attendance at 11,700, the ground is expandable to hold 15,304 spectators.

Beyond those three, other teams either based in established American sports markets or very well-supported in perceived “mid-sized” markets include: the Colorado Springs Switchbacks, Detroit City FC, El Paso Locomotive, Indy Eleven, the Las Vegas Lights, the Oakland Roots, Phoenix Rising, Rhode Island FC, Sacramento Republic and the Tampa Bay Rowdies.

In the past, MLS looked to the lower divisions to identify potential expansion markets. Current MLS franchises who were in the U.S. lower leagues since the first division’s launch include: the Seattle Sounders, the Portland Timbers, CF Montréal, Orlando City, Minnesota United FC, FC Cincinnati and Nashville SC. MLS has also tried to bring Sacramento into the foldin the past, while USL clubs in Austin and San Diego closed shop after MLS announced intentions to launch in their market.

What does USL have to do to get ready for Division One sanctioning?

The biggest difficulty will be beyond the league headquarters’ control, as nearly a dozen clubs will need to build or broker deals to play in larger venues. Several Championship clubsare already in the process of building a self-operated, soccer-specific stadium, and U.S. Soccer has granted waivers in the past to buy a league time to meet all benchmarks.

Regarding promotion and relegation, the USL will need to refine a model that can be presented to its boards of governors, and then need those stakeholders to endorse the plan in a series of votes.

The USL will also need to talk to the USL Players Association — which has already brokered collective bargaining agreements (CBA) with the Championship and League One — to figure out how to work with the union on a potential new competition. The current Championship CBA expires after the 2025 season, while the League One version runs to the end of 2027; the Championship is bound to see several clubs incorporated into any potential D1-sanctioned circuit, which would seem to necessitate some level of interaction with the players’ union and its membership.