If find yourself perusing the MLS broadcast schedule tonight — the final midweek matchday of the 2026 regular season — perhaps as a prelude to Sounders-Houston at Lumen Field, your viewing options are a bit more diverse this time.
FC Cincinnati’s visit to Inter Miami at 4:30 PM will be streaming, free and clear, someplace completely distinct from the usual Apple TV umbrella: on the Yahoo Sports app. And not with familiar voices like the flagship MLS broadcast team headlined by Taylor Twellman and Jake Zivin, but The Cooligans, the New York comedian duo of Alexis Guerreros and Christian Polanco, who’ve built a large following over the past decade as wisecracking soccer podcasters, personalities and hosts.*
It’s MLS and Apple TV’s latest foray into alternative broadcasts, or ‘altcasts,’ an effort to reach out beyond the Apple paywall and expand the league’s audience in new ways.
“It's a cool opportunity,” Polanco told Sounder At Heart, “and the fact that we used to have to sneak into MLS events, and now we are kind of the faces of a new kind of venture and a new endeavor for Major League Soccer, is really, really dope.”
This is the Cooligans’ second such altcast; last month they also ran their own feed for Campeones Cup, the annual meeting of the reigning MLS champions and their Liga MX counterparts, which turned out to be Lionel Messi’s latest trophy hoist as Miami defeated Cruz Azul 2-0. It’s probably not an accident that both of these games involve Messi, whose global appeal draws a fundamentally different set of eyeballs than lower-profile fixtures.
“It just presents another way for people to find and engage, and then I think in bringing the Cooligans in, what a great addition – they’re just different, right?” said Chris Schlosser, MLS’s senior VP of emerging ventures, in a conversation with Sounder At Heart. “They’re not Taylor, they’re not Jake, who do a great job week in, week out on a match. It’s a different voice, it’s a different tone, and I think that appeals to a lot of people, and that's fun.
“That's fun for us, to get to try and see what that does from a metrics standpoint.”
Besides the match stream’s prominent placement front and center on Yahoo Sports – which claims 100 million visitors a month, drawn by general sports coverage, fantasy, gaming, collectibles and much more – Polanco, Guerreros and their team are given access to multiple camera feeds, providing a distinct experience above and beyond their audio commentary.
“You can watch the game with us,” explained Polanco in one of their podcasts the week of Campeones Cup. “We have access to the game camera, we have access to replays, AND we have the ref cam. We can pull up the ref cam whenever we want.”
Quipped Guerreros: “We get to decide the camera angles, bro. We might go foot cam.”
Could two irreverent Latino comedians turn out to be the MLS equivalent of Peyton and Eli Manning?
It’s probably an unfair comparison. But the retired quarterback siblings’ ‘Manningcast,’ their alternative broadcasts of NFL’s Monday Night Football, is the most prominent sports altcast, their ball knowledge and compelling chemistry becoming a niche media phenomenon after it launched in 2021, aided by a kaleidoscope of famous guests from all walks of life. It’s an emerging segment of the broadcasting landscape as properties seek out new and/or elusive audiences with various riffs on their core product (even as the Manningcast itself faces declining viewership, and the deeper questions that ensue).
“I like to think that Eli and Peyton Manning are the unseasoned version of the Cooligans,” deadpanned Guerreros. “What we learned from the first one is that there’s a lot of opportunity for a lot more fun angles and a lot more cool areas and things to watch, other than what it gets already shown in the [primary] broadcast.
“If you want to watch something a little bit more irreverent, make it feel like you’re watching with your friends, then we’re the perfect place to go.”
As unfiltered as most of their content tends to be, the Cooligans have found a balance to win over corporate partners like the English Premier League and even Visa and FIFA, who hired them to host a series of official World Cup watch parties across the United States this summer.
Still, given the buttoned-up norm of MLS, including and especially its first three and a half years with Apple, handing them so much creative control has a relative element of daring to it.
“From what we heard from MLS, MLS had a blast. Apple was like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of jokes.’ I don’t think they were prepared for it,” said Guerreros of last month’s occasion. “But I think MLS knew exactly what they were getting into when they hired us. So I’m excited for this next one, and hopefully to be able to do more down the line. I think it’s a really cool opportunity, and I can’t really think of anyone else that would have the same energy and attitude we would.”
There were some challenges to navigate, starting with the fact that this live stream-esque venture does not offer the full range of features found on a live-streaming platform, at least not yet.
“It's not like on YouTube or Twitch where we can see the chat and interact with people,” said Polanco. “Having that direct connection with the audience would add a layer of fun and excitement that I think we could have. The first one, especially, is everybody sort of testing the waters and seeing what this is like.
“The hope is that we can do more of this stuff, and create a space where American soccer can show humor, show personality, because I think it's something we don't have enough of.”
MLS aims to be forward-leaning with technology; it previously integrated match streams into TikTok and the mobile version of the iconic video game EA SPORTS FC. Yet after spending much of the past three years focused on driving eyeballs to its core Apple TV platform – or at least so it seemed from the outside – and carefully managing its relationship with the tech giant, the league seems more ready to experiment as it looks ahead toward its next media deal.
That one is slated to begin after the 2028-29 season, thanks to the agreement made with Apple last autumn to cut short and restructure what had originally been launched as a 10-year partnership beginning in 2023.
“Whether it’s the executive team here or the executive team at Apple, I think that there’s a great appetite to try things and think about things differently, and this was just a cool output of it,” Schlosser said.
“Whether that exact thing then repeats, or we take little bits and pieces and we remix it, we do something else for the future, we’ll see where it goes. But I think there’s a great appetite on both sides to continue to push the envelope.”
MLS sickos, the types most likely to hold season tickets and subscribe to Sounder At Heart, might wonder if all this risks distracting from the core product. On that, Schlosser contends that MLS broadcasts are as good – and as accessible to hardcore fans – as they’ve ever been, pointing to extensive Spanish-language coverage and the MLS 360 whiparound show, the type of ‘RedZone’-esque option fans clamored for in the past.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be an MLS fan, based on all that production work and all that output that's coming out of the studio today,” he said, noting that season ticket packages still include full access to all MLS match broadcasts on Apple TV. “I don’t think there can be an argument anywhere that the quality isn’t light years ahead of where it was in years past. Does that mean that there isn’t an odd thing on a Wednesday night somewhere or an issue here or there? Of course; producing live sports is hard. But that happens in every single sport, in every league on the planet.”
Perhaps MLS’s next step forward here involves a step back: Conceding a bit of control to allow new voices and perspectives a chance to present the product from a different point of view.
“From the moment we started, what we wanted to do is say, what would the game sound like if people from our culture were speaking about it? And 11 years on, I think we’re still doing that,” Guerreros said. “There’s still room for that voice. I think that still hasn’t gotten fully covered by traditional media. So it’s crazy that now we’re getting pulled into that traditional media, even if it’s through a side door as an altcast. To us, it’s an absolute honor, and the fans loved it, the execs have loved it, Yahoo's loved it, Christian and I have had a blast doing it.”
* Full disclosure: The Cooligans are longtime friends of mine.
