The League America Already Watches — It Just Does Not Know It Yet

In 2019, the most-watched club football match on American television was not a Champions League final. It was not a Premier League game. It was not an El Clásico. It was the second leg of the Liga MX Apertura final between Club América and Monterrey — a match that drew 3.3 million viewers in the United States. More than the UEFA Champions League final that same year. In the United States. More people watched two Mexican clubs play a league final than watched the biggest club match in European football.

This is the central paradox of Liga MX. It is simultaneously the most-watched football league in the richest country on earth and one of the most structurally underdeveloped major leagues in global football. The audience exists. The passion exists. The geographic and cultural advantage over every European league exists in a way that cannot be manufactured or bought. What has been missing is the infrastructure to convert that attention into revenue that can compete with the Premier League, La Liga, or the Bundesliga.

The numbers tell the story bluntly. Liga MX currently generates approximately $392 million per year in broadcast revenue across all markets. The Premier League generates $4.8 billion. Both leagues have significant American audiences. One of them has been selling its rights collectively, professionally, and globally for thirty years. The other has, until very recently, allowed individual clubs to sell their own broadcast rights in a fragmented system that has cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars in negotiating power.

That is changing. Beginning in 2028, Liga MX is transitioning to a centralised broadcast rights model — the same structural shift that transformed La Liga's value by over 100% within three years of its implementation in 2016. Projections suggest centralised rights could grow total broadcast value from $392 million to approximately $950 million. That is still a fraction of Premier League money. But it is a different conversation entirely from where the league currently sits.

The 2026 World Cup is the catalyst everyone is watching. Mexico co-hosts 13 matches across Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara — the first time the country has been on the world stage in 40 years. Historical data from previous tournaments suggests a 15% or more increase in domestic football engagement following a home World Cup. For Liga MX, this represents a once-in-a-generation window to convert casual World Cup interest into long-term club support, and casual club support into international broadcast subscribers.

European clubs have recognised this. Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona and dozens of other clubs now schedule pre-season tours through Mexico and the American Southwest not out of charity but out of commercial calculation — the Hispanic American market is the fastest-growing consumer segment in the United States, and Mexican football is its primary sporting identity. The irony is that these European tours are essentially advertising campaigns for Liga MX's own product. They are building the appetite. Liga MX needs to be the one that feeds it.

What makes Liga MX genuinely different from Brazil or Argentina is that its best players largely stay. Competitive domestic salaries, massive home attendances, and a cultural identity built around local clubs mean that Mexican footballers do not drain out of the league the way South American talent does. The players who do leave for Europe — Hirving Lozano, Edson Álvarez, Santiago Giménez — are exceptions, not the rule. This is actually remarkable. Liga MX has built a product that its own stars want to remain part of. The puzzle is why that loyalty and that audience has not yet translated into revenue that reflects it. A league that retains its talent and fills its stadiums but still generates a fraction of European broadcast money is not a talent problem. It is a commercial infrastructure problem — and that is a much more solvable one.

Two Cases, One Question: Does Anyone Actually Run This Sport?

The Negreira case began with a simple question. Why did FC Barcelona pay €8.4 million over seventeen years to companies linked to José María Enríquez Negreira — the former vice president of Spain's refereeing committee — for reports that their own coaching staff say they never received and never used? Barcelona's answer is that Negreira provided legitimate consultancy on referee tendencies and youth scouting. Critics — including Real Madrid, who have joined the case as a private prosecutor — argue that the only logical explanation for payments of that scale, over that duration, to a man in that position, is an attempt to influence the environment in which Spanish refereeing decisions were made.

Neither side has yet been proven right. What has been proven is that Barcelona paid a man in a position of authority over referees for nearly two decades, that the payments were structured through shell companies, that the reports supposedly produced as justification either no longer exist or were never delivered, and that across the period in question, Barcelona won four Champions Leagues, eight La Liga titles, and six Copa del Rey trophies.

The Manchester City situation operates in a different jurisdiction but raises the same fundamental question. In February 2023, the Premier League charged City with 130 violations of financial rules spanning the period from 2009 to 2018. The charges include alleged failures to provide accurate financial information, alleged breaches of player and manager remuneration rules, and alleged failures to comply with UEFA financial fair play regulations. The case was referred to an independent commission. That commission heard evidence through 2024. It is now February 2026. There is no verdict. There is no timeline for a verdict. There is no public explanation for why it is taking this long.

The Calciopoli comparison is instructive. In 2006, Italian football's refereeing scandal was uncovered, investigated, and resolved in a single season. Juventus were relegated. Several clubs had points deducted. The speed was brutal, but it was decisive. Football — and Juventus — recovered. The uncertainty lasted months, not years. In both the Negreira case and the City charges, the same decisiveness has been absent. Cases that began in 2023 are entering their fourth year without resolution. The damage to football's credibility compounds with every month that passes without an answer.

The reputational effect of unresolved corruption cases is different from — and in some ways worse than — the effect of proven guilt. When a verdict arrives, football can respond, punish, and move forward. When cases drag indefinitely, every match involving the clubs under investigation carries a shadow that no amount of VAR or goal-line technology can remove. Every City title won since 2009 is contested. Every Barcelona trophy from 2001 to 2018 is questioned. The uncertainty is the damage.

For the sport's global credibility — particularly in markets like the United States and Asia where football is still building its audience — this matters more than it might in established markets. New fans are not invested in the history. They are deciding whether to invest in the product. Two of the sport's most globally recognisable clubs operating under unresolved corruption allegations is not a neutral backdrop against which to make that case.

Why You Can Buy a Footballer But Not Trade One

In the NBA, if the Los Angeles Lakers want LeBron James and he plays for the Golden State Warriors, they propose a trade. The Warriors assess what they would receive in return — other players, draft picks, cash — and decide whether it is worth doing. If both sides agree, James moves. He has no choice in the matter unless his contract includes a no-trade clause. He is, in the language of American sports, an asset to be moved. In football, if Arsenal want Erling Haaland, they must first pay Manchester City a transfer fee — a sum that compensates City for releasing Haaland from his contract early. Then, and only then, can they approach Haaland himself to discuss personal terms. If Haaland says no, the deal is dead. The fee goes nowhere. The player stays.

These are not just different administrative systems. They represent fundamentally different philosophies about the relationship between a professional athlete and the institution that employs them. Understanding why football works the way it does requires going back not to modern contract law but to Victorian England, a team called Aston Villa, and a player called Kingaby who could not get a job.

The crucial difference between the football transfer system and the American trade system comes down to one word: consent. In the NFL, NBA, and MLB, a player under contract can be moved to any team at any time without their agreement, provided the trade satisfies salary cap requirements. In football, a player must personally agree to any transfer. A club can accept a fee, but if the player does not want to move, the deal collapses. This is why you regularly see situations where a club accepts £80 million for a player who then refuses to leave — something structurally impossible in American sports.

Why does football not simply adopt the American model? The short answer is that it tried — and was stopped by its own players. The Bosman ruling established that out-of-contract players have the right to move freely. Any attempt to implement a draft system or forced trades in European football would face immediate legal challenge under EU employment law, which treats professional athletes as workers with the same rights as any other employee. An NBA-style trade — moving a player without consent — would constitute a breach of employment contract in most European jurisdictions.

There is also a deeper cultural reason. European football clubs, unlike American franchises, do not operate within closed leagues with fixed memberships. Promotion and relegation means that any club can, theoretically, rise from the bottom of the pyramid to the top. The transfer fee system — in which clubs can sell players and reinvest that money in the squad — is the primary mechanism through which smaller clubs fund their own growth. Southampton selling Gareth Bale to Tottenham for £10 million in 2007 gave them the capital to develop the next generation. Tottenham selling Bale to Real Madrid for £85 million in 2013 funded their own rebuild. Remove transfer fees and you remove the financial lifeblood of every club outside the top twenty.

The system is not perfect. Transfer fees have become so inflated that only the wealthiest clubs can meaningfully participate in the market for elite players. Agent fees compound the cost at every transaction. The gap between clubs that can buy and those that can only sell grows wider every cycle. But the alternative — a closed league with trades and a draft — would require dismantling not just the transfer market but the entire architecture of European football: promotion, relegation, UEFA competitions, and the legal rights of players as workers. Nobody is about to do that for the sake of a tidier market structure.