What Matt Doyle Leaving MLSSoccer.com Says about MLS and Soccer Media

Opinion – Last week, Matt Doyle announced he was leaving MLSSoccer.com. The senior soccer writer, nicknamed ‘The Armchair Analyst,’ has been the figure head for written content on the leagues website for over a decade. He is famous for long form content, recapping the MLS weekend with analysis on each game and team. If you want a paragraph on what Saturday’s match says about your team, and a thorough yet quick breakdown of the rest of the league, Doyle is your guy.

The move follows a concerning trend for the league and the media coverage of it. Several years ago, they stopped having local beat writers for each (or even some) MLS teams. They’ve downsized significantly over time since COVID.

Just last year, they ended Extra Time Radio (ETR), the in house podcast that Doyle was a pundit on. More recently, MLS and Apple TV have scaled back their non-match day content. They are reportedly reducing their Spanish Language coverage. They’ve gone back-and-forth about having broadcasters call games remotely, which leads to a worse product. It doesn’t look like the two parties will see out their 10-year contract, which is a red flag.

It feels like the league’s media and marketing strategy is being run by private equity. And to make this decision in the year in which we are hosting the World Cup, baffling.

What it means for Doyle:

Doyle’s going independent with his own website, TacticsFreeZone.com. We’ll be subscribing. If you like BW, you’ll probably like his work. He’s been doing content outside of MLS Soccer for about a year now. The response from the MLS community has been supportive. Doyle’s going to be fine content and income wise.

We’ll now get a fully unfiltered and unedited version of Doyle’s ‘Monday Morning Center Back’ content. That will be good for fan and discourse around the league. He has been one of the MLS employees to skirt towing the company line at times. He has been outspoken about the Save The Crew movement as well as the player and referee union lockouts. We look forward to Doyle spilling the tea.

What says about MLS:

MLS Soccer’s editorial content is functionally dead. The league website hasn’t had editorial freedom for several years. But if upper management don’t think Doyle is worth keeping on payroll, what do they value? This league is still fighting for relevance and attention. Doyle is intelligent, well spoken, and beloved by the sickos. He’s a good educator of the league and he helps craft narrative. Narrative creates stories, creates interest, converts casuals into sickos.

There have been times that MLSSoccer.com seemed to stand for Messi League Soccer or Marketing League Soccer, not Major League Soccer. There’s a shrinking number of writers at the site that do actual coverage, not marketing posts and press releases. In house interviews and short form pieces have value. But they don’t seem to make fans of a team more informed and interested in other players and teams.

That was Matt Doyle’s super power. And if his job at MLS isn’t safe, I don’t know who is. Other than Messi.

My Apple TV MLS Season Pass theory:

MLS and Apple have increasingly relied on their on-air talent to fill self-inflicted media content gaps. With that comes introductions of “and here’s so-and-so, who will be on the call, only on Apple TV.” MLS Season Pass has many talented people. But prioritizing them created a class system within the in-house content. The non-Apple TV team has shrunk. I will never understand why Doyle wasn’t on Apple TV every week. Maybe some producer liked how Andrew Wiebe dressed better.

This league has franchises reaching $1 billion valuations. Their broadcast rights deal with Apple is worth over $100 million annually. And yet there wasn’t enough trickle down economics to keep Doyle around. I’ve long felt there’s a good ole boys hierarchy to MLS media. The Colorado Rapids are a losing team in a small market with no star players. Therefore, local Rapids media is under appreciated and at times looked down upon by association. I wonder if Doyle’s still allowed to sit at the cool kid’s table. Is is the good ole boys network just Apple TV and league friendly outlets?

It feels like the Apple A Team was prioritized just to increase awareness of Apple TV to sell subscriptions and increase viewership to thus increase ad revenue. Understandable from an accounting or finance view. But it shows a lack of understanding of the fanbase. Again, is MLS secretly being run by private equity? I’m sure that partnership with Polymarket has a nice RIO that looks good in a spreadsheet. Was it worth getting roasted in the comments?

What it signals for MLS and American Soccer media:

This is just another signal that print media is not valued, if not dying. MLS has slowly retreated from digital written content. But that’s happened alongside SB Nation backing out MLS team sites that now sees BW independent. Before that, The Athletic pivoted away from their original model of ‘a beat writer for every team in every market.’ They couldn’t get enough subscribers to warrant a full-time salaries beat writer covering Portland Timbers. If that business model can’t work in Soccer City USA, where can it work?

Take out markets like Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, and the LAs. There’s a bunch of cities where MLS is barely covered by local TV stations. The local (dying) newspaper has a beat writer, but it’s free lance or not their primary assignment. And the rest of the people with press credentials are fan media working for free as a hobby. “Supporter reporters,” as Mark Fishkin would say.

Opportunities for young professionals are shrinking in quality and quantity. It is not profitable for legacy media cover MLS. Doyle will be fine going independent because he has national appeal. Outlets like The Athletic and Backheeled show the market is headed towards the subscription/paywall model.

But for local coverage, the traditional and new business models haven’t scaled. The audience isn’t big enough to do free content and rely on ad revenue. Fans aren’t interested enough to give money to indie outlets so creators can go full-time. There are maybe 10 examples of this working for single-team coverage.

As a former SB Nation staffer, I loved Jeremiah Oshan’s saying of “Look at how many people covering MLS who aren’t employed by the league or a team. That is a measure of interest in the league.”

Colorado Rapids averaged 15,890 in attendance last year. This article will do well to get 500 clicks. That’s poor market capture. BW netted a couple hundred bucks in 2025. When we were at SB Nation, the monthly stipend was $250/month. Written content is being left behind. Adapt or die. But we also have to confront the possibility that the MLS fanbase is smaller and less engaged than we want to believe.

Matt Doyle leaving MLSSoccer.com is a canary in the coal mine. If MLS isn’t willing to pay people to cover itself, why should anyone? What message does that send to media and fans?

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