MLS Invites Fans Across North America to Celebrate Following World Cup Summer

Market-by-market approach comes into focus

With the 2026 FIFA World Cup all wrapped up, Major League Soccer is moving to ensure that the sport and its clubs sustain the enthusiasm the event delivered across the U.S. The aim is to transform the World Cup excitement into sustainable momentum for all 30 MLS franchises.

With that in mind, the league recently launched its biggest brand campaign to date. A spot titled “Thanks World, We’ll Take it From Here,” showcases some powerhouse players, with Lionel Messi taking centerstage. It also featured some high-profile club owners, including David Beckham, Kevin Durant, Magic Johnson and Matthew McConaughey.

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Debuting on July 13—five days before the World Cup final—the push spanned national broadcast, streaming, digital, social, OOH platforms and media partnerships.

“This is the most ambitious ad buy and production in the league’s history,” MLS CMO Radhika Duggal tells Muse.

The broader initiative is far-reaching. Duggal says it marked a turning point in how the league operates, constituting a coordinated effort among all MLS clubs across ticketing, promotion, live events and broadcasting—and more. 

Many of the campaign’s elements were released to coincide with the World Cup, in anticipation of the seismic shift the tournament might bring to soccer in the U.S.

Storytelling and local market experiences were critical to the strategy and varied in nature. Roughly 50 pieces of premium content were released nationally and locally, powered by a digital marketing effort, an essential piece going forward. 

At the national level, the program includes four original docuseries designed to showcase players and clubs more intimately. Each was distributed on platforms such as Amazon, Apple TV, Fox and Tubi, as well as MLS’s owned-and-operated channels. 

The campaign enjoyed robust airtime through both a Fox affiliate partnership in each of the league’s U.S.-based markets, running before and after World Cup matches. Coaches, players and local soccer heroes took part, lending the activations a personal touch.

The league also partnered with FIFA to host local watch parties. For instance, Seattle, home to the Seattle Sounders FC, hosted them on a custom-built soccer barge in the central waterfront area. And Austin FC held free watch parties at Auditorium Shores, a green space in its downtown district. 

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Duggal notes how Austin FC’s efforts extended into the larger campaign elements. It was among the 15 clubs that had bespoke ads made “laddering up” to the national spot. It’s a point of pride for Duggal, who notes that every club participated, choosing which suited their local activities best from a menu of marketing options. 

“No league has done this before, in bringing everybody together,” says Duggal. “I really hope we think about how we transformed marketing and how we worked together—and continue working in a coordinated way going forward.”

The biggest challenge was bringing the MLS enterprise together as a whole to agree to all of the moving parts. 

“Creating the concept that we thought was big enough—and steeped in culture enough—to actually capture fans and consumers attention was not an easy feat,” says Duggal.

The challenge then became convincing star players to participate. The same was true for asking celebrity owners to star in and help distribute the ads. 

For maximum imapct, the league strove to “pull every cultural lever possible,” Duggal says. 

“Partnering with Amazon was integral to that, to launch the Amazon Original ‘Can I Kick It’ track. It’s one thing to re-record an iconic track, it’s another thing to get it out into the world through a service that has 80 million users.”

Now supercharged with 2026’s summer of global soccer, MLS is ready to ramp up its local franchises to continue with this forward momentum.

“We’re not trying to build MLS up here,” says Duggal. “We’re trying to build the brand of our clubs and our players, and we’re trying to use MLS as the marketing engine and scale a machine behind doing that.”

All 30 clubs are now carrying out promotional initiatives to capture new fans. Twenty-two clubs will offer a program called “First Match On Us,” which provides complimentary tickets to first-time attendees as MLS moves through this season. 

Duggal also says there are plans to digitally communicate with consumers over the next few months on a targeted personalized journey to get them to be a fan of the club, stemming from the interest they showed during the World Cup.

“We’re starting to see really good results and are beginning to think about what is replicable in the future.”

Some of those results, per MLS: ticket sales are up 62 percent across the league when comparing the 40-days before the World Cup to the 40 days during and after the global event.

“We are focused on how this can be the blueprint for how we work efficiently and effectively to manage marketing,” Duggal says.