MLS must change its schedule to compete with international leagues | comment

Major League Soccer has a major league scheduling problem

As the MLS prepares for its annual postseason playoffs, it is once again faced with an issue that has plagued the league since it took office in 1996: scheduling.

The MLS season has run since its inception in 1996 as opposed to the European season, lasting from February or March until the play-off season towards the end of the year. This leads to enormous spectator problems for the actual climax of the American football season and also to quite large logistical problems for the clubs involved in the postseason.

It’s a scheduling decision that puts America’s premier soccer competition at odds with most soccer fans in the world and, most importantly, with the FIFA calendar. This also means that the MLS playoff season directly clashes with the World Series year after year.

The MLS Cup begins on Friday, October 25, with Atlanta United traveling to Florida to take on Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami, and is in a battle for attendance with the opening weekend of the World Series – and there’s nowhere to go still be a winner.

An average of 9.1 million viewers tuned in for the 2023 World Series between the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks, while an average of just 815,000 tuned in for the 2023 MLS Cup.

Those numbers could rise given Messi’s involvement in this year’s competition, but the World Series is also sure to get a boost from two of the sport’s most storied franchises facing off in a World Series for the first time since 1981.

Regardless, MLS shouldn’t get into a viewership dogfight with America’s Game in the postseason. A league that hosts the greatest league of all time should not be reduced to a side stage for the first two weeks of its premier competition.

That’s because the scheduling conflict with the World Series essentially means that the first round of the MLS Cup – or at least the first two games of the three – will go almost unnoticed as the Yankees and Dodgers face off on both coasts.

Those of you watching may point out that the World Series ends well before the end of the MLS Cup – and you’re right – but that simply draws attention to the next problem – the conflict with the FIFA calendar.

The FIFA calendar is almost perfectly synchronized with the major European leagues. Major tournaments take place in Europe’s off-season and international breaks – annoying as they may be for many football fans across the Atlantic – largely take place at the least important time of the European season.

Not so for the MLS.

Not only were the final weeks of the MLS regular season disrupted by the October international break, creating a two-week gap until decision day and disrupting many clubs’ preparations for the final matchday of the season, but the November international break will now be the MLS disrupt the Cup at a crucial moment.

MLS Cup will be on hiatus for two weeks following the best-of-three opening round, meaning any teams that win their series may have a three-week break before their conference semifinals.

Not to mention, the MLS season faces an impossible battle for viewership during summers when major international competitions like this summer’s Copa America take place.

The MLS season nominally runs over the summer due to inclement weather in some American cities in the dead of winter and to avoid postseason scheduling conflicts with the NFL.

But neither of the two reasons really stands up to closer scrutiny.

For one thing, there are plenty of European leagues that run throughout the winter despite the Baltic conditions – and it’s not as if there isn’t an appetite for sporting events even in the coldest US cities. Just ask Bills fans.

The fact that most of the NFL season takes place during the coldest months of the year makes the weather argument moot. Additionally, the current schedule calls for teams to travel in mid-summer to places like Miami, where conditions are just as extreme as winter in Colorado – albeit on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Second, MLS Cup already competes with the NFL for viewership.

As club soccer returns after the international break in November and MLS clubs prepare for the business end of the postseason, NFL franchises across the country are preparing for life-threatening regular-season games that will still significantly drown out MLS viewership .

It is better to sacrifice attendance for mid-season games, as would be the case in a European season, than to sacrifice attendance for the peak of the football season, as is currently the case.

A European-style season would create conflicts between the MLS Cup and the basketball and hockey playoffs, but at least the season would be completed before the start of the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup.

It’s inevitable that Major League Soccer will be in direct conflict with one of the Big Four sports no matter when it starts its season, but it can limit the damage. Changing the schedule can also have the welcome side effect of mitigating those pesky international breaks and preventing them from affecting the most important part of the season.

For more information about MLS, visit AMNY.com