{"id":31858,"date":"2026-04-30T10:21:58","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/?p=31858"},"modified":"2026-04-30T13:53:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T11:53:35","slug":"mls-2026-report-wfs-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/resources\/insights\/reports-world-football-summit\/mls-2026-report-wfs-market\/","title":{"rendered":"New report: how MLS stopped being a destination and became a market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A new report by <a href=\"https:\/\/footballbenchmark.com\/es\/home\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/footballbenchmark.com\/es\/home\" rel=\"noopener\">Football Benchmark<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/\">World Football Summit<\/a> reveals that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\">MLS<\/a> is no longer just a league that signs global stars at the end of their careers. The data tells a different story: a league recruiting developing talent from Latin America while exporting its most promising young players to Europe\u2019s top competitions \u2014 to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bundesliga.com\/es\/bundesliga\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.bundesliga.com\/es\/bundesliga\" rel=\"noopener\">Bundesliga<\/a> at an average age of 19, and to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.premierleague.com\/en\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.premierleague.com\/en\" rel=\"noopener\">Premier League<\/a> at 21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That picture is completed by a clear strategic split. This season, MLS clubs chose between two roster construction models: the Designated Player pathway or the U22 Initiative. Fifteen clubs chose each, while squad values range from \u20ac83.3m at Inter Miami to \u20ac14.8m at San Jose Earthquakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"block-bb2946b6-08e9-4d0e-b5a8-89b63a746fbb\"><strong>Download the full report below.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/webforms.pipedrive.com\/f\/73JnfKyyjcrDI9btEAri9DvWGag5OGX8BGJC9urEBh7FYJIZJOsgrju30PDqgxF6Dx\" width=\"830\" height=\"1550\" style=\"border:0;background-color: #00121e;\" allowfullscreen=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new report by Football Benchmark and World Football Summit reveals that MLS is no longer just a league that signs global stars at the end of their careers. The data tells a different story: a league recruiting developing talent from Latin America while exporting its most promising young players to Europe\u2019s top competitions \u2014 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[306,305,86,308,310,302,301,303,307,309,100,113,129,304],"class_list":["post-31858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports-world-football-summit","tag-football-analytics","tag-football-benchmark","tag-football-business","tag-football-economy","tag-global-football","tag-major-league-soccer","tag-mls","tag-mls-2026","tag-player-development","tag-soccer-analytics","tag-sports-business","tag-sports-industry","tag-talent-development","tag-transfer-market"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31858"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31931,"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31858\/revisions\/31931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldfootballsummit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}