Explaining USL’s Unique Ownership Model: How America’s Second Soccer Pyramid is Built on Private Investment, Not Single-Entity OR Club Owner Control

It needs to be explained - and contains good and bad

As we enter a critical period for USL with the launch of a proposed D1 league, potential promotion and relegation and negotiations around a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in the USL Championship and League One, it’s time to explain why everything about USL is different - which makes its ecosystem particularly challenging to navigate and analyze.

Since the NASL collapsed, USL is often framed as the “other” American soccer organization, operating just outside Major League Soccer’s well-defined single-entity system.In many ways, USL represents the aspirations of those who dislike MLS’s structure, but it has become fundamentally misunderstood by many who attribute any perceived virtue in the sport that opposes MLS, to USL.

The way the USL is built, financed, and governed represents not just an alternative model, but a philosophical departure from the way professional sports in the U.S. are usually run. However, this isn’t necessarily always a good thing, because unlike other league structures which have clear revenue-sharing and common goals, USL’s disparate structure creates a lack of alignment between the league and its clubs.

Unlike MLS, which is structured as a single-entity corporation where the league technically owns all teams and player contracts, or the defunct NASL 2.0 which I worked for where the club owners had equal shares in the league LLC, the USL operates as a privately held league made up of independently owned clubs — each with its own investors, management, and local control. The league itself, owned and operated by the United Soccer League, LLC, functions as an organizing and licensing body rather than a central controller.

The USL manages its brand, competition regulations, and national collaborations; however, individual clubs shoulder the financial and operational responsibilities, potentially benefiting from their accomplishments. Unfortunately, they often encounter the challenges inherent in the high-risk, low-reward environment of US Soccer. While this isn’t necessarily the USL’s fault, the combination of its structure, US Soccer’s lack of involvement, and MLS’s control of a closed system creates a challenging situation for club owners. The “system” in the US doesn’t encourage excellence - it promotes scarcity as a means to raise club valuations often leaving supporters and importantly players on the back foot.

Stadium projects, player recruitment, academy systems, and community engagement all fall on the clubs themselves in USL unlike in MLS. But with no upward mobility currently, this constricts what the actual value of this sort of soccer development actually is.

From Centralized to Decentralized: A Different Type of Risk

In MLS, investors purchase shares of the league, rather than owning individual teams. The league collectively negotiates player contracts and redistributes commercial revenue. While this structure aided MLS’ survival and club parity in its early years, critics argue it has also stifled entrepreneurial risk and local control.

The USL, on the other hand, allows investors to own their clubs outright, often as part of larger real estate or community development projects. The model encourages locally tailored investment — new stadium districts in Albuquerque, Tampa, and Louisville have all emerged from this structure — and in many ways resembles the English Football League (EFL) or lower-division systems abroad.

“The USL gives owners a chance to be creative,” said one longtime USL club executive. “You can’t just rely on the league office to solve your problems. You’re accountable to your market. But that also means you get to define what success looks like — not just on the field, but in your city.”

A Private League With Expanding Power

The USL’s structure is made possible because the league itself — the LLC at the top — is privately owned by a small group of investors led by CEO Alec Papadakis and Chairman Rob Hoskins with “strategic growth investment” from Bell Tower Partners led by Kewsong Lee the former Chairman of the all-powerful Caryle Group. These owners do not control individual clubs, but rather oversee the league’s long-term direction, media rights, sponsorship deals, and sanctioning relationships with the U.S. Soccer Federation.

That private ownership has given the USL room to experiment. The league has announced plans to launch a men’s Division One competition by 2028, potentially with promotion and relegation — a move that would mark a historic first in U.S. professional sports. The USL also oversees the Gainbridge Women’s Super League, which began play in 2024, alongside the USL Championship, League One, and the pre-professional League Two.

But at the same time this means the league does not have any real stake in whether clubs succeed or fail. It’s become a running punchline what location will have “XXX Pro Soccer” announced next (for the record as of this writing it’s the Space Coast of Florida that was just announced this morning) without any real ownership or launch timelines in place.

Each tier within USL is governed under the same private umbrella, but the clubs themselves are distinct legal entities — a patchwork of community-owned teams, private investors, and multi-club ownership groups. Additionally despite lots of fluffy rhetoric the leagues function independently and not as a league system, even if they are all governed from under the same roof in Tampa.

The Implications for the American Soccer Landscape

This structure means the USL is, in many ways, the polar opposite of MLS. And that isn’t always good quite honestly. The league can test competitive mechanisms — like open competition and club-driven growth — that MLS’s single-entity model resists. It also allows for greater variation in club culture, from grassroots supporter-led projects like Detroit City FC to corporate-backed expansions like the newly proposed Tampa Bay stadium district which will also play host to USL’s new HQ.

Still, the decentralized model comes with volatility. Without central revenue sharing or guaranteed protection, some USL clubs have folded or relocated. Market success varies widely. But the league’s leadership argues that this dynamism — and the willingness to let clubs fail or thrive — is what gives the USL its authenticity. But it also leads to wild inconsistency in standards from club to club and quite honestly a league that can chide clubs for failing to meet certain expectations but with very little actually tangibly invested in the success of failures of individual teams. This is unlike ANY OTHER LEAGUE IN THE WORLD.

“The USL believes in the power of local ownership and identity,” Alec Papadakis said earlier this year. “That’s how the rest of the world’s football ecosystem works — and that’s how we think the U.S. game can grow stronger.” But USL DOES NOT ACTUALLY WORK like the rest of the world’s leagues which are linked into single national ecosystems, where club owners have a stake in the operation, profits and management of leagues.

As American soccer approaches a defining decade — with the 2026 World Cup on home soil and MLS continuing to expand — the USL’s model stands as a kind of counterpoint: a private league with highly-public ambition, betting that independence, rather than uniformity, can finally make the American soccer pyramid real. But how real can this be if the private league ownership has no actual skin in the game when it comes to individual clubs?

The next few years will tell us if somehow the actual structure of USL can be made more dynamic and proper to allow the game to flourish here as it has around the world.