American investment in Liga MX: The growing appeal of Mexico’s top flightplayGomez: The Mexican league does not give opportunities to domestic coaches (2:02)The “Futbol Americas” panel discuss the reasons behind why it has taken 13 years for both teams in the Liga MX Final to be managed by Mexicans. (2:02)Lizzy Becherano and Cesar HernandezMultiple AuthorsMay 23, 2026, 09:00 AM ET
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Why invest in soccer when you can invest in fútbol?
That’s the sentiment that many new stakeholders — primarily from the U.S. — have adopted as they’ve become involved in Liga MX, the top-flight league in Mexico. Recognized by one owner as the “the least explored, biggest opportunity in global sports,” money (and its substantial influence) has rapidly flowed in.
In 2024, there was Wrexham’s Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds, who teamed up with Eva Longoria and other celebrities to gain a 50% stake in Necaxa. Then followed the acquisition of Querétaro that was spearheaded by Innovatio Capital’s Marc Spiegel, becoming Liga MX’s first majority-U.S. ownership group. In late 2025, Apollo Sports Capital bought a majority stake in Spain’s Atlético Madrid, which meant also owning Mexico’s Atlético San Luis. Shortly afterward, equity firm General Atlantic made news by taking a 49% stake in historic Club América.
Coupled with FC Juarez — who have been co-owned by El Paso, Texas-based MountainStar Sports Group since 2015 — that’s more than a quarter of the league’s clubs now having American connections.
But why?
“Many investors right now are seeing Liga MX clubs in general as a very undervalued asset,” mentioned Walter Franco, a director at Victus Advisors that has consulted for Mexican and American teams. “You see these investments happening, it’s almost becoming a domino effect.”
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So why are teams in Mexico so undervalued? What does it mean for the league that is still searching for the next phase of its evolution? And what ramifications could these developments have on Liga MX’s neighbors to the north: MLS?
Chasing the American dream in Mexico
“The Mexican league, there was not a league around the world that had the type of growth potential that it has,” Spiegel told ESPN about a thorough search for his investment. “It’s a league with a huge fan base and infrastructure and following across borders.”
Liga MX isn’t just big in Mexico, it’s also massive in the U.S.
When the country’s two most famous clubs, Chivas and América, took part in a Los Angeles friendly in 2023, 86,134 fans packed the Rose Bowl. It’s an attendance figure that has yet to be surpassed by any MLS match.
TelevisaUnivision, which owns the lion’s share of U.S.-based broadcast rights for Liga MX clubs, boasts that the Mexican league is “the most-watched club soccer league in the country, regardless of language,” despite the fact that there is no league-wide broadcast partner. Clubs negotiate their own broadcast deals, making for a fragmented landscape for viewers.
According to an Interticket study last month, the average Liga MX TV audience for a game in the 2026 Clausura regular season was 687,000, although other estimates indicate a number within the 500,000s. For comparison, NBC unveiled average Premier League ratings of 510,000 last season. MLS isn’t as open when it comes to its streaming numbers on Apple TV, but commissioner Don Garber did say last year that games are “averaging 120,000 unique viewers per match.”
A significant portion of Liga MX’s supporters in the U.S. are Latinos, a group that consulting firm McKinsey & Company noted watched “98%” of the hours showcased by the league. This is also a relatively young demographic that the Pew Research Center claims has “accounted for more than half of all U.S. population growth” from 2000 to 2024, providing obvious excitement about the potential for growth and reach of the competition.
“Millions of fans are based [in the U.S.],” mentioned Sara Toussaint, a U.S.-based investor in Querétaro who also co-owns the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage. “Some of Liga MX’s ratings outperform a lot of U.S. sports ratings.”
Rob Mac and Eva Longoria co-own Necaxa, one of five Liga MX clubs now with American ownership. FXThe likes of Apollo Global Management (who launched Apollo Sports Capital) have taken notice.In 2024, Apollo offered Liga MX a unveiled $1.25 billion injection that, according to the Sports Business Journal, would provide a stake in “the league’s collective media rights beginning in 2028, league-level sponsorship revenue and a portion of teams’ local revenues.” Although a deal didn’t get over the line, and led to the resignation of a frustrated Juan Carlos Rodriguez as Mexico’s federation president, talks remain ongoing and sources suggest that an agreement could be reached in the near future.
These opportunities are unique in a developing binational business world.
Adrian Madero, a financial partner of Spiegel who was born and raised in Chihuahua, Mexico, watched Liga MX when he was growing up. Now in the U.S. as the senior vice president at sports marketing entity The Fonseca Group, he summed up an advantageous wrinkle that comes from running a team out of Mexico when you can bring in media rights, sponsors, merchandise sales and more from north of the border.
“The real American dream is making dollars and spending pesos,” he mentioned. “Our lease is in pesos … we have our expenses in pesos. The cost of operation is in pesos and it’s in Mexico, but our TV deal is in dollars. Most of our revenue is in dollars.”
Looking north for inspiration
For years, MLS offered potential owners a practically risk-free opportunity: investing in a team that could not be relegated, making it the safest investment opportunity in North American soccer. Like most leagues around the world, Liga MX has historically operated in a promotion/relegation system.
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But in 2020, Liga MX paused pro/rel for six seasons because of the financial uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision meant that 18 teams already competing in Liga MX would remain there permanently, without consequences for poor results. In the second-division Liga de Expansión, clubs would simply fight for silverware and bragging rights.
This arrangement presents fewer risks for investors, and for some new American owners, there is a wariness about the possibility of relegation’s return.
“I like that there isn’t a promotion. I like that we’re all just in a league and we have playoffs and we get in and we get out,” Longoria told ESPN last year. “That whole promotion and relegation thing is so stressful to me. I couldn’t even imagine that format.”
Theoretically, anyway, some version of that format could — and should — return.
In 2025, 10 Liga de Expansión clubs filed a case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to bring back pro/rel under the legal premise that it would only be paused for six seasons as originally stated, leading to a decision last fall that paved the way for it to be reinstated.
That could put this wave of foreign investment at risk.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Mac mentioned to ESPN about pro/rel. “As a fan, as a supporter and as a storyteller, it’s much more exciting and much more fun. But as anybody who’s paying attention realizes, the reason it doesn’t exist in the vast amount of professional sports, specifically in the United States, is because of the potential value and devaluation of the clubs. So what it does is it creates stakes, but it also creates terror.”
Technically, Liga MX is bound by the CAS ruling that the format will return, beginning with the 2026-27 season. Exactly what that looks like, however, remains unclear.
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Sources told ESPN that relegation is unlikely to come back to the league. Instead, Liga MX would look to expand the first division by promoting two teams from Liga de Expansión and then permanently eliminate relegation altogether.
Growing the league’s footprint and installing a barrier to keep its worst teams from falling into the financial wilderness of a second division is from a blueprint that will be familiar to fans in the U.S. and Canada: it’s the business practice of MLS.
Former Liga MX president and current FMF commissioner Mikel Arriola has been a fervent proponent of restructuring Mexico’s league and mimicking the format of MLS, regularly looking north for inspiration.
“We have built Liga MX from the clubs, where MLS builds it from the organization. What they do in centralizing assets is very interesting,” Arriola mentioned at the 2024 MLS All-Star Game. “The capacity and powers of the commissioner to generate decisions is very interesting. The corporate governance from MLS is a good example … we have now been inspired by the model of MLS’ corporate governance.”
For now, Liga MX can’t operate like MLS. Changes to the Mexican league’s business must be approved by a majority of stakeholders, and traditionally, owners have voted in the interests of their clubs rather than the league as a whole.
“I think the U.S. sets the standard for professionalism, and capitalism quite frankly, in sports business,” Toussaint mentioned to ESPN. “So when I’m looking at the two, what I’m seeing is Liga MX has a lot to catch up on with respect to how to look at the business as not just a sport, but how can we be more efficient? How can we optimize?”
Implications for MLS
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So, is the investment opportunity presented by Liga MX a problem for MLS?
Consider Club América. It is arguably the biggest club in North America, yet it has an enterprise value of $490 million. That might seem like a steal if you’re weighing up an investment in MLS, where the average franchise valuation is $767 million.
Four years before Apollo Sports took control of Atlético San Luis, former MLB executive Jeff Luhnow nearly purchased the club before the deal fell through at the last minute. He also considered investing in MLS — a league with a franchise just across town from the Houston Astros’ former general manager — but then had second thoughts.
“I did look at a couple of MLS opportunities, but the valuations and the amount of capital that you would have to raise to acquire majority control … it’s too much,” mentioned the now-owner of Mexican second-division side Cancún FC, in 2024. “Obviously the franchise values continue to appreciate, that’s great, but there’s a lot of MLS teams that lose money.”
According to Forbes, 16 of 29 MLS teams operated at a loss in 2024. Most clubs in Liga MX generate operating incomes.
Despite the disparate operations, the two leagues’ reputations have become increasingly intertwined. Whether it be the All-Star Game, the Campeones Cup or the Leagues Cup, both Liga MX and MLS have looked to one another for co-existent growth.
Naturally, that has fueled conversations about a combined “super league.” It’s an idea that has never taken root, but that hasn’t stopped the sport’s most powerful executives from dreaming about it — especially with so many of Mexico’s decision-makers now living up north.
“Do I think it’s going to happen tomorrow? No. Do I think it could happen within 10 years? Yeah, I do [but] a lot would need to happen,” Spiegel mentioned when asked about the possibility of the leagues joining forces, while also noting that he’s not aware of any formal talks. “[But] I think commercially … you’ll have the second-biggest league in the world, because you have the commercial engines that already are in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
“And they’re only going to get bigger if something like that happens.”
