While watching the Leagues Cup final between LAFC and Columbus Crew on Sunday night, I received a text message that I thought summed up the entire tournament well.

The game was a duel between two of Major League Soccer’s elite teams. LAFC, the league’s glamour team, against the Crew, the league’s most tactically and stylistically adept team. The Angelinos, who now have French legend Olivier Giroud in their ranks, against Columbus, led by Colombian star Cucho Hernandez and coached by Wilfried Nancy, a rising star in the technical field.

Halfway through the first half of this rather entertaining affair, an old friend of mine called. He lives in Los Angeles, is a season ticket holder for LAFC, and is an Emmy award-winning writer and producer of a popular television show. He’s also a lifelong soccer fan, the kind of consumer MLS wants to reach. The message he sent me really made me laugh.

“Are you at that weird, stupid tournament in Columbus?” he asked. “And why aren’t the games in Mexico?”

In 2019, MLS and Liga MX joined forces to create the Leagues Cup. The competition’s format was completely overhauled last year to unite all teams from MLS and Liga MX, Mexico’s top division. The teams are ostensibly vying for supremacy on the continent. MLS teams pause their regular seasons for a month and Mexican teams set up shop in the US, inexplicably giving up home-field advantage in exchange for the right to market to American fans.

Not everyone is happy with that last detail. Atlético San Luis head coach Domenec Torrent, who spent a year in the MLS as head coach of NYCFC, recently ranted about the tournament in a press conference, expressing his anger at the lack of games in Mexico, which were done to reduce the travel burden on Mexican teams.

“The Leagues Cup is a preseason for me,” Torrent told reporters. “For the Mexican teams, this competition is a joke. We travel every three days, we play in Orlando (34 degrees) with enormous humidity, and in Montreal, for example, it’s completely different. I think this competition is a joke, I can tell you that.”

“If we come back here next year, I will use it as preparation for the players. This doesn’t make sense. Every year three or four American teams make it to the semifinals, and if the American teams come to Mexico, it will certainly be a fairer competition.”

The travel isn’t the only problem, though. The tournament feels deeply artificial and sterile, because that’s what it is. Last year, it was used primarily as a showcase for Lionel Messi and Inter Miami’s traveling circus, and the Argentine led Miami to a fairytale finish. But this time, Messi is recovering from an ankle injury and missed the entire tournament – a blow to the competition as it continues to try to gain relevance in a crowded summer sports landscape.

In his absence, the tournament barely got going. MLS made matters worse when it withdrew many of its teams from the U.S. Open Cup, a tournament that preceded the Leagues Cup by more than a century. In response, numerous fan groups in the U.S. boycotted or protested, expressing a strong belief that MLS teams should choose a tournament with a deep, meaningful history over one that came out of nowhere.

On paper, the Leagues Cup has had no trouble attracting fans, at least in person. Through 77 games, the tournament drew an average of 17,131 fans, the league said, a small increase from last year’s attendance. The numbers are a little more troubling, however, when compared to the league average – just under 24,000 fans per game at the All-Star break, an all-time high. And as always, it’s difficult to know how much weight to put on the league’s reported attendance numbers – in many cases, eyes simply don’t lie. There’s no getting away from the large amounts of empty seats many of us saw during the group and knockout stages of the tournament.

We also don’t know the exact ratings for the games on Apple TV, the league’s official media partner. However, we do have insight into the viewership numbers for FS1, which broadcasts the games on cable. The numbers are dismal at best: On average, around 30,000 viewers tuned in to the games on the channel, a shocking drop from last year’s already not-so-great viewership numbers – around 150,000 viewers.

None of this is helped by the current state of Mexican soccer, which is in dire shape. Liga MX is severely lacking in star power and the Mexican men’s national team, much like the USA, has had a string of mediocre performances in major competitions. Even the rivalry between Mexico and the USA – once one of the fiercest in global soccer – has lost a lot of steam recently. This development is not helped by the fact that neither team will face each other in World Cup qualifying any time soon, as both teams are co-hosting the 2026 tournament.

Torrent is right. The success of MLS teams in this tournament should never be seen as a fair and balanced referendum on the quality of MLS compared to Liga MX.

It is also worth mentioning that Columbus won the title (3-1) without facing a single Mexican team. LAFC, the tournament’s runner-up, reached the final after facing a team from Liga MX, Club Tijuana, in the first group match.

This isn’t MLS’s first attempt to appeal to Mexican consumers in the United States. None of its previous attempts ended particularly well – the SuperLiga, the league’s first attempt at an intraleague tournament, lasted four years. The Campeones Cup, which pits the MLS champion against the combined champion of Liga MX’s split seasons, has been around for a few years, but that too seems to be struggling for relevance. And then there was Chivas USA, without a doubt the most notorious failure in MLS’s 28-year history.

The Leagues Cup has its supporters, even among the coaches of both leagues, many of whom praise the tournament for giving them the opportunity to test themselves against new opponents in a meaningful way. The tournament also allows coaches to rotate their teams and look at players they might not otherwise see in league play, as is often the case in the Open Cup, and if a team is eliminated early, they have several weeks off to prepare for their return to league play.

The tournament was also significant for a team like the Colorado Rapids, who haven’t won anything in years. For Colorado, the tournament became a rallying cry for fans and ended with a place in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, one of the tournament’s truly important awards. There’s also a significant prize money, which is no small feat for many players in the league.

MLS itself bases its support for the Leagues Cup largely on market research. Its fans, they have publicly stated, form their opinion of the league’s quality by benchmarking MLS clubs against Mexican teams in the CONCACAF Champions Cup or, more recently, the Leagues Cup. The league has stated it wants to double its fan base by 2027, and in some ways league officials at the highest levels see the Leagues Cup as essential to achieving that goal.

Leagues Cup fans will also point out that the Open Cup does not attract fans, which is exacerbated by the absence of many MLS clubs. After Atlanta United faced USL club Indy Eleven in the quarterfinals of that tournament, MLS Commissioner Don Garber defended his decision to withdraw from the tournament.

“At the game in Atlanta the other day, there were 1,400 people in the stands,” he said. “It’s a big building. We have to open up this big building that we have to pay for. It doesn’t make sense for 1,400 people.”

Atlanta played this game at Fifth Third Stadium in nearby Kennesaw, not Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the NFL stadium that serves as their daily home. Fifth Third, a small college stadium, has a maximum capacity of about 10,000 fans. The game was barely promoted by the league and the club. Not exactly an ideal recipe for a sold-out stadium.

The Open Cup will likely go on, supported by the US Soccer Federation and the tournament’s supporters, who rightly call it America’s most authentic and storied competition. The Leagues Cup, on the other hand, appears to be at a turning point. Things won’t get any easier for the tournament in 2025, when the Club World Cup comes to the US, and again in 2026, when the entire MLS shuts down for the World Cup, which will be played in the US, Canada and Mexico.

On Tuesday, a source familiar with the league’s tournament plans told me the competition is “not going away.” The league is considering pausing the Club World Cup, perhaps for 7 to 10 days, as it expects many MLS venues to be used for that competition. The 2026 World Cup is more difficult, though the league has already discussed plans for how to handle it — possibly playing the Leagues Cup in the preseason or later in the season. MLS seems to remain committed to the competition and will likely continue to tweak its approach until it finds the right formula.

Maybe this commitment will pay off and the Leagues Cup will become more than just a marketing exercise. In the meantime, it remains difficult to sell anything to long-time MLS fans.

(Top photo: Katie Stratman/USA TODAY Sports)