Major League Soccer (MLS) is the premier professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. The league has 27 teams in 27 stadiums as of the 2020 season: 24 in the United States and 3 in Canada. At the time of the league's inauguration in 1996, MLS teams used multi-purpose stadiums, often shared with National Football League (NFL) or college football teams. Because of lower attendance, these stadiums had parts tarped off to limit capacity. Starting in 1999 with the Columbus Crew's construction of Historic Crew Stadium, the league has constructed soccer-specific stadiums which are tailor-made for soccer and which have smaller capacity. Today, the majority of MLS stadiums are soccer-specific stadiums. While the league's early stadiums relied heavily on public financing, several mode