The 2024 League Cup has reached the semifinals, with both games scheduled to be played on Wednesday, with Columbus Crew facing Philadelphia Union and LAFC facing Colorado Rapids. As with the inaugural edition in 2023, There will be an MLS champion after the two surviving Liga MX teams (Mazatlan and Club America) are eliminated in the quarterfinals.

However, the 2024 Leagues Cup saw a drop in viewership in the US market and many experts point to the absence of Inter Miami’s Leo Messi as a reason for this. Last season, the Leagues Cup Competition that saw the Argentine make his debut for the MLS side, making his debut in the pink jersey against Cruz Azul in Florida, scoring a sensational last-minute winner for the Herons in the group stage.

According to World Soccer Talk and despite the fact that AppleTV keeps its ratings secret, the ratings of the games that are broadcast on FS1 performs worse than the values ​​shown by the same channel a year ago.

The average audience for this league cup is 30,769 viewers, with the match between Philadelphia Union and Cruz Azul having the highest audience with 72,000 viewers according to FS1.

Last season: Messi’s debut at Inter Miami against Cruz Azul and the final against Nashvilleboth of which reached 1.7 and 1.4 million viewers respectively on American television, not counting Apple TV’s records.