The Brief: The US Soccer Pyramid
What it is, why it matters, and what it could mean for Fort Wayne FC.
The US soccer pyramid is the tiered system of professional and amateur leagues that organizes the sport in the United States, from Major League Soccer at the top through multiple professional and amateur tiers. Unlike nearly every other soccer-playing country, American soccer has historically operated these tiers as separate, closed systems with no competitive movement between them. If you’ve ever tried to explain this structure to someone and watched their eyes glaze over, you’re not alone. It’s also in the middle of the biggest structural change in American soccer history.
What Is the US Soccer Pyramid?
In most countries, the pyramid is simple. Win enough throughout the season, you move up a division for the next season. Lose enough, you move down. Leagues are stacked and connected. In the United States, the leagues are stacked but have historically operated in parallel.
At the top sits Major League Soccer, the only league sanctioned as Division One by the US Soccer Federation (USSF). MLS operates as a franchise model: ownership groups buy in, and no team drops to a lower division based on results. Below MLS, the United Soccer League runs two professional tiers. USL Championship is Division Two. USL League One, where Fort Wayne Football Club competes, is Division Three. There’s one more Division Three league called MLS Next Pro, which acts a bit more like a development league for MLS. Below Division Three is USL League Two, a pre-professional level populated largely by college players during their summer breaks.
The critical distinction is that until recently, a dominant League One club couldn’t earn its way into the Championship. A struggling Championship side couldn’t be sent down to League One. Performance on the field determined who won trophies, not who moved between levels.
That’s changing.
Why It Matters
In March 2025, USL ownership groups voted by supermajority to implement promotion and relegation across the league’s professional tiers, the first time any professional sports league in the United States has adopted the system. Nine months later, in January 2026, the league announced the name and structure: USL Premier, a new Division One league targeting a 2028 launch, sitting atop the USL Championship and USL League One in a fully connected three-tier pyramid.
The mechanics are straightforward: the bottom finishers in a higher division drop down the following season, and the top finishers in the division below move up next season. USL Premier will operate as a single national table with a long-term target of 20 clubs. From a US Soccer perspective, the USL Premier would be a Division One peer to MLS. The USL Championship will also move to a 20-club single national table, while League One will organize competition regionally.
Promotion and relegation is the global standard. It’s how England, Spain, Germany, and virtually every major footballing nation organizes competition. It means every match carries consequences beyond the playoff race. For American soccer, this is the first real test of whether competitive mobility works in a sports culture built on franchise stability. And for communities that have invested in clubs at the lower divisions, it transforms what’s possible. A club doesn’t need a billionaire owner to buy a franchise slot in a higher league. It needs to win.
What This Means for Fort Wayne FC
Fort Wayne FC already has an idea of what it takes to move up a league. The club spent five seasons in USL League Two, winning three consecutive Valley Division titles and reaching the Central Conference semifinals twice before joining USL League One. That transition, from pre-professional to professional, required years of investment in coaching, facilities, and roster building. It wasn’t promotion by sporting merit. It was an expansion bid that had to be earned off the field. Promotion and relegation would formalize what clubs like ours have been doing informally: proving they belong at the next level.
Now, for the first time, there’s a competitive pathway above us.
When promotion and relegation takes effect in 2028, the top finishers in USL League One will earn promotion to the USL Championship. That’s not a theoretical future. That’s two full seasons from now. The infrastructure decisions our ownership group makes today (Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, the front office, the academy pipeline) aren’t just about competing in League One. They’re about positioning Fort Wayne FC to be eligible for upward movement when the door opens. We get two full seasons to build a club ready to compete for promotion in 2028.
But this cuts both ways. Relegation means a USL Championship club that finishes at the bottom could drop to USL League One. For clubs at our level, League One is the floor of USL’s professional system. There’s no trapdoor beneath us. But there is a ladder to climb above us, and promotion and relegation give us a path to Division One by US Soccer standards. Every match carries weight. The September fixture against a mid-table opponent could be the difference between competing for promotion instead of watching another season come to an end. For supporters, that transforms the emotional stakes of a regular season.
The bigger picture is what this structure offers Fort Wayne as a soccer city. We’re part of the USL’s plans to build the first promotion and relegation system in American professional sports. We’re not confined to being the best League One club year after year. We have a path to test ourselves against bigger clubs in bigger cities, on merit, with real consequences in both directions. Our ambitions are no longer capped by our division.
The soccer pyramid is designed to elevate the sport at a national level and inspire the next generation of great clubs across the country. That no longer requires building in a major market. Division Three is the entry point, but it’s not the ceiling. More great cities like Fort Wayne will see an opportunity and chase it. A seat at Division One is no longer reserved. It’s earned. Soccer in America is open for business soon, and it runs through communities exactly like ours.