CBS Sports Adds U.S. Open Cup Rights. Could MLS Be Next?

Forbes

27-03-2025

CBS Sports soccer announcers Maurice Edu, Thierry Henry, and Clint Dempsey, pose for a photo with US ... More Soccer VP of Sporting Oguchi Onyewu prior to the United States playing Panama in a CONCACAF Nations League semifinal match at SoFi Stadium.
On Wednesday, the United States Soccer Federation and CBS Sports announced a new rights deal for the U.S. Open Cup, with the final 47 games of the tournament to be streamed live on CBS' Paramount+ for both 2025 and 2026. Select games will also be shown on CBS Sports Network and the CBS Sports Golazo Network.
The deal represents a significant increase in exposure for the tournament, which is the oldest active soccer competition in the nation but struggles to gain exposure in comparison to MLS and USL Championship league matches.
Last year, for example, AppleTV+ reached a shorter agreement to show the final three rounds and seven games of the competition.
But what's also notable here is that CBS is already a partner of the USL Championship and League One, and has also been the home of Concacaf Nations League matches since the competition's inception. And the Open Cup package could provide an on-ramp for CBS to get more acquainted with MLS fans and clubs, and vice versa, before MLS may be looking for a new lineal TV deal in 2026.
Currently, Apple TV owns the league's worldwide streaming rights in a 10-year package that runs through 2032. But the league also has smaller deals with traditional broadcasters to simulcast a sample of those games. In the U.S., it's Fox Sports that owns a package that includes 34 regular season simulcasts as well as select Leagues Cup and MLS Cup Playoff games, including both finals.
But that pact only runs through 2026, the same expiration date as CBS' deal with the USSF, which governs the Open Cup. And there's reason to think maybe CBS would be open to replacing Fox – or perhaps joining Fox – as an MLS simulcaster.
One of the most compelling reasons that MLS and CBS could be future partners is because CBS is already devoting more overall programming to soccer than any other American broadcaster at the current moment. Between its offering of a wide range of competitions on Paramount+, led by the UEFA Champions League and Italian Serie A, and its strong studio programming on CBS Sports Golazo and the CBS Sports Network, there isn't anyone else who can match the sheer volume.
And it's often objectively compelling programming as well. Just look at how the Nations League transpired. In the United States' shock semifinal defeat to Panama, CBS analyst and former Arsenal and FC Barcelona legend Thierry Henry actually became a part of the story as Cecilio Waterman celebrated his stoppage-time match winner.
After the second lethargic performance in the Americans' loss to Canada in the third-place match, the response of former U.S. internationals on set like Clint Dempsey and Maurice Edu were as newsworthy as the results themselves.
The details of MLS' current lineal deal with Fox aren't widely known, and it's not clear whether the league simply accepted the best financial offer from a traditional broadcaster. But if MLS came to the negotiating table this time prioritizing a broadcaster's ability to promote the league on its platforms ahead of whatever the rights fee might be, CBS Sports would seem to have a clear leg up. And as far as CBS Sports' model, the more soccer properties it can bring under its umbrella, the better.
But what might stop CBS is the same thing that probably halted ESPN and Univision from continuing their relationships with MLS – the inability to host games on their own streaming platforms.
Presumably any live match coverage for CBS would either have to occur only on its network or cable offerings, and not on its Paramount+ streaming service. Much of the value of ESPN's previous deal with MLS for ESPN was the inventory of out-of-market local TV games it hosted on ESPN+. And while Univision had not been a streaming partner with MLS in the past, it was also in the process of building its own Vix streaming service when the most recent deal with Apple was negotiated.
Perhaps there's less rigidity against hosting some select matches on Paramount+ than when this 10-year pact first began. But it's unclear what AppleTV would get out of such a relationship. The streamer is reportedly losing money based on its relatively paltry viewership overall. Why would it want to surrender content it had paid for to a more widely distributed competitor.