MLS Announces Teams Will Not Compete in 2024 U.S. Open Cup

At 5:00 PM Eastern on Friday, December 15, MLS Communications announced that MLS teams would not be participating in the 2024 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, and would instead field MLS Next Pro teams in their place.

The decision ends over a quarter-century of MLS participation in the tournament, first contested in 1914 and renamed after Lamar Hunt, a prominent soccer promoter in the United States for most of the second half of the 20th century and one of the initial investors in Major League Soccer, in 1998. The announcement comes at a time of increased distance between the country’s only top-flight men’s league and the United States Soccer Federation, which manages the tournament: In 2021, U.S. Soccer announced that they would not be renewing their commercial rights partnership with MLS-owned Soccer United Marketing, which had connected the commercial fortunes of the league and federation for over two decades.

Major League Soccer’s decision to suspend participation in its country’s primary domestic cup is unique among the upper echelon of top-flight men's soccer around the world, though notably, Mexico abolished its domestic cup in 2020 after putting it on hiatus for several lengthy periods.

MLS commissioner Don Garber had criticized the broadcast and playing field quality seen in the competition this past May, and Jeff Rueter of The Athletic quoted MLS communications officer Dan Courtemanche as saying that discussions leading to this decision had been ongoing for “several months,” citing schedule congestion as the primary driver of the change. MLS executive and former Fire President and General Manager Nelson Rodríguez led these negotiations for the league.

That schedule congestion is due in part to the Leagues Cup, whose first edition as a full tournament occurred last year, featuring every team in MLS and Liga MX. Unlike most domestic and international club competitions, both leagues pause their competitions for roughly a month to hold that tournament. Another contributing factor is the expanded (and renamed) CONCACAF Champions Cup, which in 2024 will feature 10 MLS teams, though not the Fire.

Early-round Open Cup matches often gave starting opportunities to supporting players and allowed coaches to trial new formations and tactics and see how players performed outside of their normal starting positions: Maren Haile-Selassie, for example, started as a central attacking midfielder in an Open Cup game earlier this season.

Although the U.S. Open Cup faced challenges including limited attendance and difficulty finding broadcast partners and sponsors, the competition’s open nature, pitting professional teams at all levels of the pyramid against each other and several amateur sides, had long made it a fan-favorite, particularly amongst the most fervent supporters throughout the league.

In an era of rising ticket prices and at a time when many venues around the league are regularly sold out, U.S. Open Cup tickets were often more available – and affordable: FC Cincinnati, for example, sold out 14 of their 17 regular-season home games, but priced tickets to early-round Open Cup matches between as low as $10 and made parking available for $5 (the one exception being their game against Inter Miami after Messi’s arrival). The affordability and ease of access allowed many fans who could not otherwise afford to attend games the opportunity to see MLS teams in person, albeit in a separate competition.

No team in the MLS era has been more successful in the U.S. Open Cup than the Fire, who won the competition four times, all between 1998 and 2006, giving the team four of its six major trophies alongside the 1998 MLS Cup and the 2003 Supporters Shield. The team has advanced as far as the semifinals as recently as 2018.

The team's connections to the competition run deep and continue to this day: Fire Head Coach Frank Klopas scored the winner of the 1998 Open Cup final in sudden-death extra time, securing The Double for the team in their inaugural season after the team had won MLS Cup five days prior. The first match of Klopas’s current tenure as Head Coach was the team’s 2-1 victory over St. Louis City SC in the Open Cup, and the team advanced as far as the quarterfinals before losing to eventual Cup winners Houston Dynamo.  Assistant Coach C.J. Brown was also a part of all four Open Cup-winning runs, making him one of the only individual four-time winners in tournament history.

It is not clear how MLS believes its decision is compatible with the U.S. Soccer Federation’s Professional League Standards for a Division I Men’s Outdoor League, which state that “U.S.-based teams must participate in all representative U.S. Soccer and CONCACAF competitions for which they are eligible,” as MLS Next Pro is currently sanctioned as a separate, third division league. Allowing MLS Next Pro participation would also apparently require a rule change in the Cup competition’s rules, as the published rules prevent professional teams that are controlled by higher division teams from entering the competition.

Also unknown is how the decision will impact the format of the 2024 tournament: MLS teams were scheduled to enter the competition in the third and fourth round, depending on their 2023 MLS finishes, while independent MLS Next Pro teams were scheduled to enter in the second round, alongside USL Championship, League One and NISA teams.

Allowing MLS Next Pro teams to directly replace their parent clubs would have the perverse result of having third-division teams enter the competition in a later round than second-division teams, something that would almost certainly raise objections from participants from the second-division USL Championship. As D.C. United does not have an MLS Next Pro affiliate, it also means that there will be one fewer participant in the tournament than previously contemplated.

Regardless, the decision, if it stands, will deny Fire fans the opportunity to see their team compete in a tournament where the team has historically fared very well, and ensures that the Fire will remain one title short of leading record holders Bethlehem Steel and Maccabee Los Angeles, both of whom have four titles.