Baseball has long been seen as "America's pastime."
But could the game's place in the American sports be disrupted?
With the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, which delicately holds relations between the league's owners and MLB's Players Association, set to expire in December, labour talks have been ramping up.
But it seems that the players and the league have significant ground to make up, with the issue of a salary cap being the big talking point this time around. That makes the risk of an extended baseball lockout incredibly real; such an opinion was seconded by Derrick Goold, who covers the St Louis Cardinals for the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
While the thought of Major League Baseball heading for a lockout is not one that people like to consider, it is one that could provide a significant win for American soccer, especially as it is set to enjoy a big 2027.
And even then, soccer has enjoyed a surge in popularity in the United States. While name-recognition puts domestic soccer firmly behind the four major sports leagues (the NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA), a poll conducted by The Economist at the end of 2024 named the sport as the third-most popular when it comes to fans' favourite sport.
It took home a 10% share of American sports fans, which was one per cent higher than baseball and six per cent higher than hockey, though it remains to be seen how the United States' recent international success in the latter event impacts this classification.
The USWNT could be the biggest winners to come from increased spotlight
Should the USWNT qualify for the Women's World Cup, something that is a near-certainty given their status in the continental and global picture associated with women's football, then 2027 will act as yet another World Cup year for the women's team.
And with the United States set to co-host the 2031 edition of the Women's World Cup, a strong performance in 2027 could set the team up well for a 2031 tournament with significant attention around the team.
While the optimism for the long-term future is extremely understandable, let's take it back four years for the time being.
The 2027 edition of the Women's World Cup is set to take place from June 24 to July 25, placing it right around where MLB's mid-season/All Star Game stretch would take place. Even with concerns over time difference and the USWNT's underwhelming run in 2023 in mind, their opener against Vietnam drew the attention of over six million people, with well over 80% of that measure coming from FOX. At the same time, almost 6.5 million people tuned in for the USWNT's 1-1 draw against the Netherlands in that same World Cup.
With the 2027 Women's World Cup taking place in a more favorable time zone, a greater number of people will find their way over to the USWNT's games in that tournament. And should MLB be mired in a lockout, it won't be unfair to suggest that such audiences could be even higher than the ones seen in 2023.
Domestic leagues win as well, especially in the pre-Women's World Cup window
Beginning in 2027, Major League Soccer is set to switch from a spring-to-fall schedule to a fall-to-spring schedule. The switch will be facilitated by what they call a "sprint season", which will see each MLS team play 14 games before an MLS Cup tournament and the eventual crowning of an MLS Cup champion as if it was a regular MLS campaign. The sprint season will kick off in Feburary and the MLS Cup will be presented in May. The sprint season will be followed by the first MLS campaign under the new scheduling format, which will kick off in July 2027 and run until May 2028.
Not only is the scheduling shift set to align Major League Soccer with some of Europe's top leagues, but such a shift will benefit the league in the case MLB enters a lockout. The sprint season will take up almost the entirety of what would have been MLB's spring training period and much of the season's first three months; whereas viewers would have been learning about what their favorite baseball team's look like for the new season, they would now have the opportunity to watch an accelerated MLS season at a point where they wouldn't have likely been able to do so.
Though MLS' sprint season will stll have to contend with late-season/playoff hockey and basketball, a baseball lockout will more than likely catapult the campaign into the top-five sporting leagues in terms of overall February-May viewership.
The same argument can be made for the start of what will be the 2027-28 MLS season. If a lockout forces the cancellation of the entire 2027 MLB season, MLS will essentially have two months worth of runway before the NFL season ramps up and the NHL and NBA enter their respective training camps. That's plenty of time for the league to continue cultivating a fanbase from the sprint season and to push viewership to highs previously unthinkable in what is essentially a four-league American sports market.
The above argument also applies for the National Women's Soccer League, the top level of women's soccer in the United States. The NWSL generally runs from March to November, which essentially takes up the entire duration of an MLB season. With MLB off the table, the NWSL would almost certainly join MLS and take up a large portion of the early-spring and the summertime viewership that big league baseball would have held.
USMNT also wins, though to a lesser extent than the USWNT and the United States' professional leagues
Though the bulk of the USMNT's action during the next World Cup cycle will take place in 2028 and 2029, they will have a chance to take some of the baseball spotlight if MLB enters a lockout.
The USMNT is guaranteed to be among the four teams receiving a bye to the quarterfinal round of the competition (the best four teams in the CONCACAF rankings heading into the tournament receive the bye; the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Panama are set to receive the byes as it stands). That means that the USMNT is guaranteed to play a two-leg quarterfinal contest in November, with the two games set to take place between November 9 and 17, 2026.
If the USMNT wins their quarterfinal contest, they would contest a Nations League semifinal and potentially a final on top of that during the late March window in 2027, currently scheduled for March 22 to 30. The 2027 MLB season is set to begin on March 24, though that date could easily be pushed back in the case of a lockout. If that happens, a lot of eyes will certainly move from baseball to a run by the USMNT at the 2026-27 CONCACAF Nations League.
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