NEW YORK — When the ownership vote was finished on Monday afternoon, LAFC co-owner Bennett Rosenthal and Columbus Crew owner Jimmy Haslam sought out Larry Berg at MLS headquarters in Manhattan.By the time they reached him, news was starting to leak out.“The texts were already flying to Larry,” Rosenthal told The Athletic on Tuesday morning.Congratulations, they told him. The final vote was unanimous. You are the next commissioner of Major League Soccer. They escorted Berg, also an LAFC co-owner, back into the meeting room where 28 other owners were waiting. They greeted the new commissioner with a standing ovation.On Tuesday, Rosenthal and Haslam, who co-chaired the succession committee as MLS picked just the third commissioner in its 30-year- history, joked that they invited Berg out for a celebratory dinner only for him to turn it down.“I got to work,” Berg said. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”A former senior partner at private equity firm Apollo Global Management, Berg will transition into the role of commissioner full-time beginning on January 1, 2027. He was officially introduced to the media in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon. Don Garber, who has served the last 27 years as commissioner, will remain on as chairman through the end of his contract in 2027.A lifelong soccer fan who grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J., and once lost to U.S. World Cup veteran Peter Vermes in the high school state soccer playoffs, Berg says he has missed just one U.S. men’s national team match either in person or on television in the last 40 years.He called the MLS commissioner job, “a calling.”“It has been a passion my whole life, starting at 8 years old,” Berg told The Athletic a few hours before his introduction. “I’ve never known exactly why, but it’s just always been really deep in my heart. I’ve always had this tremendous desire for soccer in this region to elevate, be better, ultimately maybe win a World Cup someday. But even before that, to win more (Concacaf Champions Cup) games, (to be more competitive) when the Club World Cup came along, etc. And I feel like we have that opportunity here in this country in many ways. With Don’s leadership, we’ve obviously built MLS to something that’s pretty extraordinary, but I think there’s so much upside left and I want to see that come to fruition.”Berg will have plenty to do immediately. He will take over the job at the start of a “sprint season” ahead of MLS flipping its calendar to a summer-spring format. That change will be accompanied by significant alterations to the competition structure, which includes divisions and a new postseason format.League owners are also working on a new roster investment model, one that may have to be linked to a new collective bargaining agreement with the MLS Players Association. The current CBA expires on January 31, 2028.Berg said he believed MLS could get changes across the line ahead of the launch of the 2027-28 season, even as the MLS board of governors has opposing viewpoints on how the league should move forward in evolving its on-field product. He pointed to a solution he helped craft on sporting and competition that allowed teams to choose either three designated players or two designated players with extra cap space and an extra under-22 initiative slot as an example of finding ways to bridge divides.“I feel everything is possible,” Berg said. “That’s one of my better skill sets, the deal-maker skills: be creative, galvanize people, bring them in alignment. It’s not easy. There’s different owners that have different views of how to do it. Everybody wants to move forward, but they want to do it in different ways. … You kind of run into these roadblocks, and then you find this unlock. And the challenge for me is to do that on a big scale, and to do it with 30 owners. And I’m looking forward to that.”Berg will begin working on those problems immediately in collaboration with Garber, who said “the future of this league is in the hands of Larry Berg, and my role is to help him be successful.”Berg called Garber “a great mentor to me the last few years,” and said he takes comfort in knowing Garber will be there through 2027 in an official role and “probably unofficially for a lot longer.”“We’ll figure out what we need to do to execute on one of the most important transitional plans in the history of the league,” Garber said. “If we get things done together, then we’ll be successful.”Don Garber and Larry Berg walking together at MLS headquarters in New York (Courtesy of MLS)‘We have the clay’Berg said his passion for the U.S. national team has made youth development a focus of his and that it’s an important part of the long-term solutions around improving the on-field product.“We are, every year, (developing) more and more emerging stars, more and more contributors to the U.S. men’s national team and the Canadian national team,” he said. “Youth development is an incredible opportunity. We have the clay, but I think we can continue to make it so much better. More minutes for younger players, more teams (quality) at the right levels, so that’s really high on my list.” He pointed to the success of the World Cup, and MLS’s growing role with players in the tournament, as important markers for owners, but also that it was yet another indicator around building the fanbase.“The only way to really build this league is ultimately significant fan growth leading to significant media growth, which leads then to more significant fan growth and becomes a flywheel,” Berg said. “The current leadership team (has done well) in terms of building a live game-day entertainment experience, great stadiums, great crowds, great supporters’ culture. I think it is quite exceptional, and I’ve loved every minute of it at LAFC. … We need to take that next step and also create great fan growth outside the stadiums.”A new media deal will be a big part of that. MLS will go back to market soon, with its current deal with Apple set to expire in summer 2029.“My view is it’s product first, right? It’s quality on the field first. It’s the playoffs. It’s the divisions. It’s the new calendar,” Berg said. “And if we get all that going, and especially now, it’s almost like cheating, right? I have this ‘rocket fuel’ that Don talked about from the World Cup. … Everybody’s interested in talking about it. We’re at the head of the table right now. I’ve spent a lot of time in preparation for this process talking to folks, including media folks, and I would say there’s a lot of interest in our league. There’s a lot of interest in different parts of our league. Different people like different parts of it, but I feel like that interest has gotten more intense, and we need to defeat that patch.”Inside the search process for Garber’s successorThe search for a new commissioner started in earnest last fall when Haslam and Rosenthal were picked to chair a committee of owners to oversee the search. The committee also included Cliff Illig (Sporting Kansas City), John Ingram (Nashville SC), Jonathan Kraft (New England Revolution), Joe Mansueto (Chicago Fire FC) and Oliver Mintzlaff (Red Bull New York).The committee hired Korn Ferry to lead the search and also contracted CAA because of its knowledge and reach in the sports ecosystem. Those firms identified 125 names.“It was truly an international search from sports, business, technology, media,” Haslam said.That group was narrowed to 25, then reduced again to 13. Candidates were given psychometric testing and were interviewed by Haslam and Rosenthal. That group was reduced to six names. Those final six candidates then made presentations and were interviewed again over two days in Chicago in June, before a final three were selected.Those three were Berg, former Fox executive David Nathanson and longtime San Francisco 49ers executive Paraag Marathe. According to sources briefed on the process, the committee said it was looking for a “transformational leader,” who could help evolve MLS into a league that was more locally, nationally and globally relevant. Marathe dropped out of consideration, leaving just Berg and Nathanson to make final presentations on Monday ahead of the vote.In the end, Berg, who has served as co-chair of the sporting and competition committee, a powerful subcommittee that oversees the on-field product, won the vote.Larry Berg, left, is part of the LAFC ownership group that brought Gareth Bale to MLS in 2022 (Kirby Lee / USA TODAY Sports)“Congratulations to Larry Berg on being named the next Commissioner of (MLS). Larry is an outstanding leader, and I wish him every success as he guides the league through its next chapter,” Nathanson wrote from his X account on Tuesday.“Larry’s a very capable executive,” Haslam said. “Apollo is one of the top PE firms in the world, and he helped build that firm. Then he went to work for Josh Harris, and I think his knowledge of the game, his love of game, his business background, his understanding of the league. We have 30 great owners and partners, but I think Larry, as an owner, has probably worked harder and spent more time with the league than any of us as owners.”Added Rosenthal: “From managing LAFC together, the intellectual curiosity of just sort of digging into everything is very evident to everybody. When you see what Larry’s done on this sporting competition committee, it’s always probing and asking, and (he has) that intellectual curiosity combined with … an incredibly high level of intellect and ability to negotiate deals. I also think it helped that Larry proved his ability to collaborate with 30 owners.“Sometimes people might perceive LAFC as a big-market club, but Larry and his role on product strategy, I think, proved to everybody that he has an ability to process everybody’s needs and concerns, and then address it and collaborate and drive to a decision. Being able to get a group to consensus and get to a decision, getting to action, is something that was something we really focused on as well.”Berg’s ability to build that consensus — and quickly — will be paramount to MLS’s success in 2027 and beyond.