"It's not interesting to me and it's not interesting to Gabe (Hoffman-Johnson, the club founder) to just sort of pay our way up. I think with the visibility of pro-rel (promotion and relegation) we love the charm of winning to move up."
- Portland Hearts of Pine president Kevin Schohl on whether his club will be looking to be promoted to the USL Championship without earning it through sporting merit.
The debate over promotion and relegation in Mexico has reached a point of no return. Liga MX, the country’s top men’s division, is currently operating without the mechanism, and the league’s decision-makers do not plan on bringing it back. Mexico first suspended pro/rel in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as an extreme cost-saving measure. Since then, proponents for its elimination, including Mexico Football Federation (FMF) officials and the Liga MX’s wealthy owners, have quietly grown, while the voices of those who want to bring it back have intensified.
There are still many questions about what the format will look like, including the standards the league will require from its teams. To help, former English Premier League chief football officer Tony Scholes has been hired as president of the newly-created top division of the USL, called USL Premier. The Championship and League One will play below that. [Portland Hearts of Pine founder and co-owner Gabe] Hoffman-Johnson said that promotion and relegation could be "fantastic" for this country because it creates captivating storylines. "I think it’s extremely positive and exciting for us as a club that has aspirations," Hoffman-Johnson said. "It allows you a chance to dream."
[Haralabos "Bob"] Voulgaris had begun playing professional poker to meet "beards"--wealthy individuals who could place bets on his behalf because no bookmaker would accept his own--but he was struck by the passion of the Brighton & Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom when the pair discussed the club's rise to the Premier League over dinner during a tournament in Monaco. In July 2022, Voulgaris bought CD Castellon for about €4.5million, taking on about €7million more in debt. Despite a rich history in a city with a population of 184,000--three times the size of neighbouring European regulars Villarreal--the club was in the third division. "I'd never heard of Castellon," Voulgaris admits, adding that Malaga had actually been his first choice.
Sport Uniao (SU) Sintrense have never played top-tier football in their 115-year history. They sit eighth in Group D, one of four divisions of 14 teams in the fourth-tier Campeonato de Portugal, climbing away from relegation while being just seven points from promotion in a remarkably congested league table.
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"When we came to Sintrense, it was quickly clear to us that we could do something here," [majority owner Felix] Kruger says. "We have our own stadium, our own training pitches, and the club is debt-free--which is very rare in the third and fourth divisions in Portugal."
The United Soccer League will announce Tuesday that its new first-division professional league will be named USL Premier, completing the top of its three-tier pyramid. The plan is for the USL to launch the single-table national league in 2028, with the plan to grow the league eventually to 20 teams. It is likely that USL Premier will launch with 12 or 14 teams. The launch of the new first-division league will coincide with the introduction of promotion and relegation.
More Americans than ever are watching English Premier League soccer on TV, and the Premier League sits atop the most famous promotion-relegation system in the world. So maybe there could be a bit of enthusiasm for the idea in the U.S. But in most important ways, the American sports business model is fundamentally different from the model in England, and in other foreign leagues. So how did they come to be so different?
So, what if the N.F.L., rather than operating like the monopoly that it is, were to open itself up to some competition? What if, instead of having one closed, professional league sitting at the top of a gigantic amateur pyramid--what if the best teams from that pyramid’s lower tiers could get promoted into the top tier, and the worst teams in the top league could be demoted, or relegated? That’s how it works in most soccer leagues around the world--and let’s not forget, soccer is the most popular sport in human history. So what do you think of this idea?
Liga MX is set to reinstate promotion and relegation with the conditions of the format and date of return to be announced soon by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, sources confirmed to ESPN. The Mexican league suspended promotion and relegation in 2019 for six seasons, seeing the first division maintain 18 teams for the period. Now, it's expected to return sometime in 2026 under different requirements that could see second division teams once again play in Liga MX.
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Lawyers representing 10 second-division clubs in Mexico filed a claim on Monday with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against Liga MX and the Mexican Football Federation (FMF). According to a court document that was reviewed by The Athletic, the 10 clubs from Mexico’s Liga Expansión have demanded the return of promotion and relegation for the 2025-2026 season.
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