The vote to install LAFC co-owner Larry Berg as MLS commissioner is not a changing of the guard; it is a full capitulation to the vulture capitalism that has been circling this league for years. Berg, the senior partner at private equity firm 26North, has spent his career extracting value from companies, and now he will do the same to a sport that finally feels like it is breathing. Make no mistake: this is not a decision about soccer. It is a decision about exit multiples.
Watch any LAFC match under Berg’s co-ownership and you see the contradiction clearly. The club splashed out for Carlos Vela and Gareth Bale, but the real product is the Roster Rule 2.0, the GAM/TAM shell game, and the constant pressure to keep the salary cap low enough to protect expansion fees. When Steve Cherundolo’s side ran out of legs in the 2024 Champions Cup final against Pachuca, the reason was a thin, cheaply assembled bench — the inevitable result of an ownership group that treats player development as an afterthought. Berg’s private equity playbook is now the league’s playbook: monetize the franchise appreciation, squeeze the operational costs, and never, ever invest in the academy infrastructure that produces a Yunus Musah or a Gio Reyna. The league’s own designated player rules were not designed to build title-winners; they were designed to sell 30 percent of a team at double the original purchase price.
We have seen this movie before. When Berg and his 26North partners look at a revenue stream, they see a pie to be sliced, not a field to be watered. Every new expansion team — San Diego, then a second Atlanta, then whoever pony up next — is a product to be launched and flipped. And the players, the actual soul of the league, will be treated like churn. Ask Wayne Rooney, who inherited a DC United squad assembled from would-be squad players, or watch how Toronto FC’s Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi were jettisoned the moment their commercial value failed to match their wages. The manager who survives this era will be the one who can do the most with the least, because Berg’s boardroom will always choose the balance sheet over the trophy cabinet. The