ABSTRACT
Near the end of 1993, World Cup USA’s CEO Alan I. Rothenberg fulfilled a long-term promise from USA Soccer to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) by announcing the formation of Major League Soccer (MLS) and unveiling the league logo (Abnos, 2015). In 1994, shortly after the World Cup in the U.S., ESPN and ABC announced the first television rights deal for a new professional soccer league in the U.S. that had no players, coaches, or even a single team in place. This league was named Major League Soccer (MLS), and the first seven teams were placed in Boston, Columbus, Los Angeles, New Jersey, New York (Long Island), San Jose, and Washington D.C. The first regular season game was played in 1996 between D.C. United and the San Jose Clash with a crowd of almost 32,000 fans, and the league has been expanding rapidly ever since. A pivotal point in the history of the league occurred in 1999 when the Columbus Crew opened up the first soccer specific stadium for professional soccer in the U.S. Another major milestone occurred in 2006 when the Red Bull company purchased an existing MLS team and renamed the team the Red Bulls, thus creating the first corporate named team in major American professional sports (Sports Business Journal, 2015).
