Huge - HUGE - Changes Coming to Major League Soccer (schedule shift, divisional table shift)

The Game Room
1

So Major League Soccer (MLS) is making some gigantic changes in the next couple of years, both of which might, just might, make our league competitive with the English Premier League, La Liga, and other top European leagues.

The first is that, beginning in 2027, our season will now run concurrently with that of the European leagues - viz, August-ish to May-ish, rather than April-ish to November-ish as we do now. The upside to this is that our transfer window will now align with that of the Euro leagues. I don’t know specifically how this will shake out, but undoubtedly it will be very beneficial on both sides of the Atlantic. The downside to this is that teams will be playing in places such as Chicago and Minneapolis in the winter. Our winters are not as forgiving as those of Western Europe, and the players and fans might very well freeze to death.

The next big change is a switch from two divisions to one single table, with five sub-divisions within each. Details are scarce, but a rumor I read somewhere speculated that, within the sub-divisions, there would be a guaranteed one-home, one-away contest between each of the teams in that division. That would undoubtedly cultivate rivalries (moreso than those rivalries already exist; and remember, we haven’t had 130 years to cultivate soccer rivalries the way you Europeans have).

That leaves Pro-Rel as the last big thing on the table that differentiates MLS from the Euro leagues. Does the switch to a single table represent the first move towards Pro-Rel in the US? I don’t know. I also don’t know what, if any, business relationship exists between MLS and USL Championship (our second league). Nor do I know if MLS’ contracts with owners will need to be rewritten in order to facilitate a change like this. And lastly, I don’t know, and I doubt anyone else does either, if a switch to Pro-Rel is going to put us over the edge towards comparability with the European leagues.

Regardless, MLS is taking two huge steps in the right direction. If only someone can figure out what to do about having to play in Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, etc. in the dead of winter…

2

It’s hard to take a league without promotion and relegation seriously. A functioning lower league system is an underrated quality of some of the big leagues. If the US wants to get serious it should put every soccer club in the country into a pyramid system and allow for some egalitarianism.

And the MLS is currently a long way away from challenging the top leagues for worldwide popularity. The Mexican league currently averages more television viewers per game than the MLS in the US. Worldwide the EPL averages 643 million viewers per game, while the MLS averages 2 million, despite having grown enourmously in recent years.

3

That way you’ve describe it I don’t see how. For releagtion to work you need a hierarchy of divisions with the “top tier” (Premier league, La Liga, etc) at the top and the minor leagues (or “non league” levels in the UK) at the bottom.

I don’t see how that would work with the mini leagues (with 5-6 teams) described here.

Also it took me a while to work out what “pro-rel” is I was thinking professional relations like agents are not allowed or something

4

I absolutely agree, but for now, I think promotion and relegation should only happen between MLS and USL Championship, and between the two leagues below that. The idea of, say, Chicago Fire playing against, say Ozark FC in Rogers, Arkansas, is just too dark to bear.

5

LOL, when I first saw this thread that was the only thing on my mind. Are they going to have promotion and relegation? And of course, it’s “no”. For now.

I think it would be cool, not just because it makes it closer to “football” in the rest of the world, but it would be such a novelty to see this concept play out in the US, because it’s just not something we see.

6

We have that. There’s just no movement between them and, as far as I know, no business relationship between them.

I think I was unclear. MLS’ table will still be a single table, like that of EPL or EFL Championship or whatever. It’s just that there will be a number of divisions set up to guarantee that each team will play each other team in that division twice - once at home and once away. There will still be other matches between teams outside of the divisions, and there will be no heed to the scores within the division.

7

Image that Chicago Fire FC, St. Louis City SC, Sporting Kansas City, Minnesota United FC, and (spitballing here) Nashville FC are in the same division. That means that Chicago FC’s schedule will include eight games against its division opponents, and the other 26 against other MLS teams.

8

But unlike, say, the NFL, they wouldn’t be contesting a division crown the way the Dallas Cowboys, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants, and Washington Commanders contest the NFC East?

Domed stadiums :winking_face_with_tongue: . It works for the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings.

ETA:

As far as promotion and relegation, can I assume that MLS has some “long suffering” teams that suck every year because of bad ownership, sort of like the Pittsburgh Pirates of MLB?

9

Wait why do you need sub divisions for that? That’s just how leagues work: each team plays the other twice, once home, once away.

10

Because MLS has 30 teams, there isn’t enough room in the schedule.

11

Oh like the new weird champions League format. Will the mini leagues be the same every season or will a different set of teams play each other?

12

I don’t know, I don’t believe the details have been announced yet. If they have, my Google Fu fails me.

Just guessing, I think it makes the most sense to keep them the same, to cultivate regional rivalries.

13

Yeah that seems the opposite direction to moving towards a system where relegation could work. There is no way you could do that and have some percentage of teams get relegated or promoted each season.

14

This past season started in February. Montreal played its first home game in April. With the new schedule - a lot of games will be played in the snow, unless the Olympic Stadium renovations are finished.

15

The pro teams already don’t have enough money to attract top tier talent – can you imagine how little money a relegated team would have?

I don’t understand the advantage of pro-rel vs. the minor league/major league feeder system that baseball, hockey, and basketball use. Can someone explain the advantage to me, if it’s not too off-topic?

The new schedule seems like a mistake to me – the weather is a big issue, plus now you’re competing against the NFL, NBA, and NHL for eyeballs and dollars, rather than just the MLB.

16

Seconded. IMHO the only US sport that would benefit from such a system is college football.

17

They tried minor league football (XFL, USFL, probably others), but they never worked. I think running an American football team is just too expensive not to be in the big leagues.

18

ISTM that applies to all the sports, but the problems is most apparent in (American) football. It’s possible that on their best day, the best AAA baseball team would beat the Pittsburgh Pirates or Colorado Rockies, but they aren’t going to be competitive over a whole season against even the typical bottom of the barrel MLB team. The same would happen in basketball and hockey.

I’d imagine that in such a scenario, what would end up happening is that the very worst teams at the top level (who probably suck because of bad ownership) would end up flip flopping with the very best teams at the second level (who probably won’t ever manage to compete at the top level due to being from a smaller market) every year, so that certain teams would get the reputation as being “those teams” that gets promoted / relegated every year, and that having that reputation would reinforce the cycle. How do European leagues avoid that?

19

These “huge changes” strike me as a “Hail Mary” effort by the MLS to revitalize their league.

20

MLS is doing just fine without Hail Mary efforts to revitalize it. If anything, these changes strike me as simple, organic progress. From The Guardian:

By most measures MLS has been a roaring success: average match attendance last season reached a record 23,234, and this year the league will welcome San Diego FC as its 30th franchise. On the field things are humming along nicely enough. Celebrity pre-retirees like Messi and Luis Suárez bring headline pizzazz, but the league has also provided fertile terrain for younger players looking for a mid-career reset (Evander, Denis Bouanga, Riqui Puig). Expansion has brought new investors and fans to the sport, while changing the very fabric of the US’s built environment: soccer-specific stadiums are now a feature of most cities with MLS franchises, giving professional soccer a tangible presence in that it once lacked in the country.