2016 Major League Soccer season

The 2016 Major League Soccer season featured 20 total clubs (17 based in the United States, 3 based in Canada). The regular season began on March 6 and ended on October 23. The playoffs began on October 26 and ended on December 10. The defending MLS Cup champions were the Portland Timbers, while the New York Red Bulls were the defending Supporters' Shield winners. FC Dallas won the Supporter's Shield for the first time, and the Seattle Sounders FC won their first MLS Cup in their history after defeating Toronto FC 5–4 in a penalty kick shootout, after playing to a 0–0 result after regulation and added extra time.

Personnel and sponsorship
Note: All teams use Adidas as kit manufacturer.

Average home attendances
Ranked from highest to lowest average attendance.

Highest attendances
Regular season

Allocation ranking
The allocation ranking is the mechanism used to determine which MLS club has first priority to acquire a player who is in the MLS allocation list. The MLS allocation list contains select U.S. National Team players and players transferred outside of MLS garnering a transfer fee of at least $500,000. The allocations will be ranked in reverse order of finish for the 2015 season, taking playoff performance into account.

Once the club uses its allocation ranking to acquire a player, it drops to the bottom of the list. A ranking can be traded provided that part of the compensation received in return is another club's ranking. At all times each club is assigned one ranking. The rankings reset at the end of each MLS season.

United States
In the 2016 MLS season, 96 games aired in the United States on national television. English-language broadcasts once again included Soccer Sunday doubleheaders — 29 games on ESPN and 5 on ESPN2 (mainly on Sunday afternoons), 4 on Fox, and 30 on Fox Sports 1 (mainly on Sunday evenings). The 2016 season marked MLS's debut on the Fox network channel. Spanish-language broadcasts included 28 games on UniMás (mainly on Friday evenings).

Notes:
 * All viewership numbers are in thousands.
 * Average viewership for the previous 2015 season was 245,000 (ESPN2), 197,000 (FS1), and 244,000 (Univ).

Other countries
TSN, RDS and Sportsnet aired matches in Canada of primarily the three Canadian-based teams.

MLS aired on Sky Sports in the United Kingdom, Eurosport in Continental Europe, Abu Dhabi Media in the Middle East and North Africa, Letv Sports in China, beIN Sports in Asia-Pacific, ESPN and Fox Sports in Latin America, SporTV in Brazil and Fox Sports in Africa.

2016 attendances
The following is a list of the average attendance for each of the twenty MLS teams at their regular-season games. It includes the team, the average attendance for the 2016 regular season and the 2015 regular season, the percentage change in attendance from season-to-season, the home venue, the home venue's capacity, and the percent of capacity.

Note: Vancouver's and Seattle's attendances are both over 100% capacity because, for select games, they open up additional sections above the regular limited capacity. Orlando's and New England's attendances are over 100% because their capacities are artificial; both teams regularly sell more tickets than the limit. San Jose's attendance is over 100% capacity because they played one game at Levi's Stadium (68,000 capacity).

Eastern Conference

 * Chicago Fire: Veljko Paunović
 * Columbus Crew SC: Gregg Berhalter
 * D.C. United: Ben Olsen
 * Montreal Impact: Mauro Biello
 * New England Revolution: Jay Heaps
 * New York City FC: Patrick Vieira
 * New York Red Bulls: Jesse Marsch
 * Orlando City SC: Jason Kreis
 * Philadelphia Union: Jim Curtin
 * Toronto FC: Greg Vanney

Western Conference

 * Colorado Rapids: Pablo Mastroeni
 * FC Dallas: Óscar Pareja
 * Houston Dynamo: Owen Coyle, Wade Barrett and Wílmer Cabrera
 * Los Angeles Galaxy: Bruce Arena
 * Portland Timbers: Caleb Porter
 * Real Salt Lake: Jeff Cassar
 * San Jose Earthquakes: Dominic Kinnear
 * Seattle Sounders FC: Sigi Schmid and Brian Schmetzer
 * Sporting Kansas City: Peter Vermes
 * Vancouver Whitecaps FC: Carl Robinson