Coronavirus Claims Pro Soccer USA As MLS Battle For ‘Major League’ Coverage Continues
by Ian Quillen
On Tuesday, Pro Soccer USA editor and co-founder Alicia Del Gallo revealed the somber news that the only nationwide outlet to have a beat person devoted to every MLS club would be cease operations for the remainder of 2020.
The rationale was clear and unsurprising: Declining revenues due to the coronavirus pandemic required cutbacks. There was also the hope the brand — under the controll of parent companies the Orlando Sentinel and Tribune Publishing — would return when the sports world gets closer to normal in 2021.
It’s hardly the first such bad news in sports media related to the pandemic and resulting downturn, and it won’t be the last. But in the American sports media landscape, the fallout is also emblematic of a frustrating pattern specific to soccer that is far older than SARS-CoV2.
While coverage of American soccer has grown exponentially in the last two decades, it still exists — like the sport — somewhere in the tricky middle ground between the mainstream of the”big four” major North American sports and niche sport territory. Many outlets cover the league well from a national focus, but few are embedded with every MLS or NWSL team, or regularly give the sport the in-depth features and analysis coverage fans of big four sports have come to take for granted.
At the same time, MLS clearly is well followed enough that some outlets find it enticing to try. And with the coming 2026 FIFA World Cup to be hosted in the United States, Canada and Mexico, there is every reason to believe the sport will eventually join the big four as a peer fifth.
Therefore, outlets like Pro Soccer USA have at intervals attempted to establish themselves as first to supply that level of coverage, in hopes that they will be the proverbial early birds whenever that “mainstream” threshold truly arrives. But their financial backers appear only willing to do so in a manner that allows them to pull out the carpet when the first adversity arises. For example, with the exception of its management staff, most of Pro Soccer USA’s contributors were employed on a freelance basis.
Just over two years ago, the respected British soccer magazine FourFourTwo pulled the plug on its American online operations, which had started only a couple years prior. The reason appeared to be the United States’ failure to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Before that, the official league website MLSsoccer.com shifted strategic direction, moving away from regular use of freelance team beat contributors to producing more nationally focused original content.
(Editor’s Note: The author of this post is a regular contributor to MLSsoccer.com and a former contributor to FourFourTwo US.)
Other outlets that have demonstrated more stability in covering the game have resisted investing as deeply, instead opting for a level of coverage that mirrors tennis, golf or auto racing.
The Athletic’s cadre of soccer reporters have been a welcome addition to the fold, but unlike their NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL coverage, not all clubs have full-time beat persons, and some writers cover local stories in multiple markets.
Well-known soccer reporters at legacy print establishments, like the Washington Post’s Steven Goff and LA Times’ Kevin Baxter, cover their local teams, the US men’s and women’s national teams, other developments in the game across the country. Other papers that don’t regularly staff World Cup qualifiers are likely to use the same reporter who covers the local MLS team during the season to follow women’s college basketball, olympic sports, or other supplemental beats.
Hopefully for the growing community of Americans who love the game, the funders of Pro Soccer USA will prove their belief in the need for more in-depth and market-specific coverage by bringing the brand back in 2021. If not, another outlet will surely be lured into doing the same when the pandemic subsides. While the present looks bleak, between the deep pockets of new MLS owners, ongoing stadium projects and the coming year 2026, the future of the game has never been on as stable footing before. Hopefully, the same will someday be said of the media that covers it.