The 2024 Major League Soccer Playoffs have begun as a grandiose plan with mainstream resonance. Then they hit reality. The Times Square Showcase was marred by the World Series. Big moments were buried behind paywalls and overshadowed by football. And with the play-offs now suspended for two weeks, the secondary stage has already been left to international football.
LA Galaxy star Riqui Puig tells X: “It’s crazy… “There are 22 days left until the next playoff game,” he wrote. “Come on @MLS.”
Multiple sources told Yahoo Sports that all of this is the main reason why MLS decision-makers are considering an overhaul. As The Athletic reported last month, league officials have been working with franchise owners and clubs to gauge the feasibility and attractiveness of changing the MLS schedule. That means the season starts in August instead of February. It ends in spring, not fall. Matches most European and global football.
These potential changes will be a key agenda item at the league’s Sports and Competition Committee meeting in Los Angeles on Nov. 20-21, sources said. Any decision to change or stick to the current schedule will likely have to be made by April or May 2025. That’s because 2026 is considered a “perfect” year, with MLS play suspended for over a month due to the World Cup. ” Opportunity to leap forward.
There is widespread support among club sporting directors and football executives for a shake-up.
“It’s a no-brainer,” Columbus Crew coach Wilfried Nancy said.
But among team owners and business executives, opinions are mixed or still ambiguous, sources said. Any changes must be recommended by the league office and then approved by a vote of the Board of Directors (owners). At this stage, which is still in the exploratory stage, a senior club official told Yahoo Sports that “at best, there is a 50% chance of change.”
And regardless of the details, any change would require “compromises” and “trade-offs” among the league’s 30 franchises, the source explained. Some, namely those living in cold-weather cities like Minnesota or Montreal, should be convinced that the long-term benefits of flipping the calendar outweigh any perceived immediate loss of revenue.
Reason for change 1. Uninterrupted playoff exposure
The MLS schedule is mostly built from spring to fall to maximize attendance for games. In the 1990s, when the league was formed, most clubs were lower-tier tenants of football stadiums. There was schedule flexibility only in the spring and summer. Besides, that was when the weather was at its best. It was also a time when there was less competition from major American sports for eyeballs and media exposure.
In the decades that followed (the 2000s and 2010s), MLS entertained the idea of change, but never came close to doing so. Now the league is conducting a study and discussing the possibility with each club’s top management for two main reasons.
1. The playoffs, which need to attract new viewers and drive broadcast deals to grow the league, are currently buried in the NFL and college football. It also conflicts with MLB’s World Series and the NBA.
And as currently structured, there is no good way to fit all four rounds in between the international break, the period during which FIFA requires clubs to release players to their national teams.
The current FIFA calendar has three periods of nine days each, once every five weeks: early September, mid-October and mid-November. MLS often (controversially) plays during the FIFA breaks in March, June and September, but the conclusion (correctly) is that you can’t force a team to play a playoff game without its stars. Therefore, the playoffs will be suspended from November 11 to November 23 after the first round, and significant momentum will be lost.
Of course, much of that is a matter of the league itself. MLS has continued to expand and weaken the playoffs and encroach on the regular season. But if your goal is to maximize interest in the playoffs, April and May would certainly be better, with crisp weather and an uninterrupted run against NBA and NHL playoffs rather than soccer.
Reason for change 2. ‘The most efficient (transfer) market’
2. The MLS offseason, which is the league’s main transfer period and the best time for clubs to sign and sell players, does not align with most top soccer leagues around the world.
To the casual fan, this may seem like a minor concern. But for executives building (or financing) MLS rosters, it’s important. Most transfer business globally takes place in the summer, when European clubs plan for seasons from August to May. Some are knocking on the doors of MLS clubs, offering lucrative transfer fees to increase their bottom line or validate their business model. It’s like an MLS club taking a step forward or making a playoff push.
Several club executives told Yahoo Sports that this is precisely why they cut back on revenue to retain players who later leave for less money or for free at the end of their contracts. But they also accepted the offer and sold players who regretted the loss. “Midway through the season, momentum is ruined.” One person said:
The reverse is also true in January. European clubs don’t want to lose players mid-season, so MLS clubs have to pay a premium to get them off. And with standard European contracts expiring on June 30, MLS clubs often have to wait to sign foreigners as free agents or pay a fee to secure them in the first half of the season. “The winter transfer market is the least efficient market,” LA Galaxy general manager Will Kuntz told Yahoo Sports in an interview last month.
The theoretical consequence of the calendar switch, then, is that MLS clubs, now participating in the global transfer market to a much greater degree than they did a decade ago, can sign better players without having to increase their budgets. Better players improve the quality of play across the league, raising the league’s profile, attracting more fans and helping clubs make more money. They then spend it on better players to attract fans, drive business, and more.
That’s the growth cycle that can advance any league. And in MLS, things are still moving at a disappointingly slow pace.
resistance
These objections and resistance to change are rooted in the fear that fans will not show up in the winter.
Some southern clubs, such as Inter Miami, do not share the concerns and could actually benefit from more winter games. However, 18 of the 29 MLS clubs play in cities where the average high temperature in December is between 28 and 49 degrees.
The league’s scheduling experts can strategically avoid the coldest markets in the middle of winter. Chicago’s schedule and Toronto’s schedule could be moved forward or back with home games in September or April. This is because most clubs these days either own or operate their stadiums.
But there aren’t enough warm-weather markets to completely avoid snow and cold temperatures. So, citing attendance data showing seasonal fluctuations, many clubs believe ticket sales, and therefore revenue, will decline.
Any new calendar model being seriously considered will require some kind of winter break (starting in December, with play likely resuming in February) to mitigate the damage. Supporters of the change point to the fact that the current MLS season already begins in February and ends with the MLS Cup in early December. So they argue that the annual impact on attendance will not be extreme.
They also point to climate change, which has seen average temperatures soar by more than 2 degrees since the 1990s. This trend, which will likely continue for the foreseeable future, makes playing in Houston in July unbearable and playing in New York in December more tolerable.
Detractors point out that taking a two-month mid-season break to avoid January has its own pitfalls and could be a “momentum killer.” No major American sports league has ever divided its season into two distinct and distant parts.
What will the new MLS calendar look like?
So the most attractive proposition is to start the season in early August, pause in mid-December, and then head to a few host cities in the South for the League Cup, a two-year-old tournament featuring MLS clubs. They face Liga MX from Mexico.
The League Cup is currently held in July and August. In fact, it may fit better into the Mexican soccer calendar in January, between the Apertura and Clausura. This allows MLS teams to play somewhat back-to-back with breaks of no more than two weeks and still avoid the worst of winter weather.
The MLS regular season will probably resume in February the week after the Super Bowl, possibly the empty weekend before that. It will likely end in April, with May geared up for the playoffs. At this time, the broadcast window will be activated as congestion for the NBA and NHL playoffs decreases.
Like European teams, top players leave for the national team in June, then take leave and compete in the preseason in July.
MLS can also pause during international breaks without issue, much like European leagues.
And how will MLS bridge the gap between its last spring-fall season (2025) and its first fall-spring season (2026-27)? Three people familiar with the discussions said they would create some kind of one-off, three-month competition to fill the spring of 2026. This may actually be better going into the World Cup lead than the standard early season grind. .
Key to Calendar Decisions
So will that happen?
League executives say they have been studying various possibilities since last winter. They surveyed fans, formulated a model, and analyzed the data. They met with club leaders from both the business and football sides in “pods” made up of a few clubs at a time to share and gather different perspectives. They spoke with the MLS Players Association. “This is a more collaborative research project than the big decisions of the past,” a top club official told Yahoo Sports. “And it’s not a foregone conclusion.”
The official also noted that Apple, the league’s current exclusive broadcast partner, could be “a big part of these discussions.”
To get skeptics on board, MLS teams will have to persuade them to “put personal concerns aside” and prioritize the league’s future, as officials put it. When the calendar turns, some clubs may see less revenue in 2027. But they have to ask themselves whether they will be able to get more TV and advertising revenue shared across the league in 2037. And is that trade-off a net benefit? Do the potential rewards outweigh the risks?
Some I’m not sure about. Others believe it will definitely happen. Because the downside is minimal and the long-term upside is enormous.
“If you want to compete with all the leagues in the world, the good leagues, you have to do that,” Nancy said.
