Launching in 2028, USL Premier will sit at the top of the pyramid of an interconnected three-tiered professional system, alongside the USL Championship and USL League One. The model is built around a unified national structure at the top two levels, regionalized competition in Division Three, and – most significantly, the most feared term in American professional sports – the introduction of promotion and relegation, a first for American professional football.
“We’re trying to look forward over the next five to seven years to building a three-tier integrated system linked by promotion and relegation,” USL president Paul McDonough said. “We want to try to build towards this structure over the next five to seven years, and then we’ll have enough runway to see how the country evolves, what the ecosystem looks like, and we’ll evaluate as we go.”
Under the proposed framework, USL Premier will operate as a single-table national league, with a long-term target of 20 clubs. The USL Championship will reflect that structure with its own 20-team national table, while USL League One will continue to expand nationally but compete regionally to support sustainability and local rivalries.
“USL Premier is a defining part of our long-term vision for the men’s game,” said USL CEO Alec Papadakis. “We have built a professional, multi-tiered system that is both scalable and rooted in communities…unlocking meaningful opportunities for stakeholders and investors as we continue to grow the game and prepare for the introduction of promotion and relegation.”
The announcement inevitably invites comparisons with MLS. While MLS remains the premier league and commercial force in American soccer, its closed, single-entity structure stands in stark contrast to USL’s open, performance-oriented model. If USL Premier were to receive Division One sanctions in addition to MLS, the US would have two top leagues built on fundamentally different economic and sporting philosophies.
That raises a central question: can the two leagues compete? For MLS, USL Premier introduces potential competition for players, investors, sponsors and fans, especially in mid-market markets that value local identity and sporting danger over franchise stability. For USL, the challenge is to convert structural ambition into sustainable quality, visibility and commercial scale.
USL believes it is well positioned to meet the growing demand for football around the world, further boosted by the arrival of Premier League chief football officer Tony Scholes, who will join USL Premier as president later this year.
Whether USL Premier ultimately complements or competes directly with MLS could define the next era of American professional soccer.
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