MLS is exploring a calendar overhaul. The case for (and against) change is clear

The 2024 Major League Soccer playoffs began with grand plans of mainstream resonance. Then, they crashed into reality. A Times Square showcase was spoiled by the World Series. Major moments were buried behind a paywall, and obscured by American football. And now, for two weeks, the playoffs have paused, ceding their already-secondary stage to international soccer.

“Insane… 22 days for the next Play-off game,” LA Galaxy star Riqui Puig wrote on X. “Come on @MLS.”

All of that, multiple sources told Yahoo Sports, represents a primary reason MLS decision-makers are considering an overhaul. As The Athletic reported last month, league officials have engaged with franchise owners and clubs to gauge the feasibility and appeal of flipping the MLS calendar — of starting seasons in August, not February; finishing in the spring, not the fall; and aligning with most of European and global soccer.

The potential changes will be a key agenda item when the league’s sporting and competition committee meets Nov. 20-21 in Los Angeles, sources said. A decision — to flip, or to stick with the current calendar — will likely have to be made by April or May of 2025. That’s because 2026 — when the World Cup would interrupt MLS play for over a month — is seen as the “perfect” opportunity to make the leap.

Among club sporting directors and soccer executives, there is broad support for the overhaul.

“This is a no-brainer,” Columbus Crew coach Wilfried Nancy said.

But among team owners and business execs, opinions are split or still equivocal, sources said. Any change would have to be recommended by the league office, then approved via vote by the board of governors (the owners). At this stage, which is still an exploratory stage, one top club official told Yahoo Sports that the probability of change is 50% “at best.”

And any change, no matter the specifics, would require “compromises” and “trade-offs” among the league’s 30 franchises, sources explained. Some — namely those in cold-weather cities, like Minnesota and Montreal — will need to be convinced that the long-term benefits of flipping the calendar outweigh what they believe would be an immediate revenue dip.

Reason for change No. 1: Uninterrupted playoff exposure

The MLS calendar was built from spring to fall in large part to maximize match attendance. Back in the 1990s, when the league formed, most clubs were low-tier tenants in football stadiums. They had scheduling flexibility only in the spring and summer. And besides, that’s when weather was best; that’s also when there was less competition from major U.S. sports for eyeballs and media exposure.

In subsequent decades — both the 2000s and 2010s — MLS entertained the thought of a change, but never got close to making one. Now the league is conducting research, and discussing the possibility with top execs at each club, for two main reasons:

1. The playoffs, which must attract new audiences and drive broadcast deals for the league to grow, currently get drowned out by the NFL and college football. They also conflict with MLB’s World Series and the NBA.

And, as currently constructed, there is no good way to fit all four rounds between international breaks, the windows in which FIFA requires clubs to release players to their national teams.

There are three such windows, spanning nine days each, in early September, mid-October and mid-November — one every fifth week — on the current FIFA calendar. MLS often (controversially) plays through the FIFA breaks in March, June and September, but (rightly) concludes it can’t force teams to contest playoff games without their stars. So, the playoffs go on hiatus from Nov. 11 until Nov. 23, after Round 1, and lose significant momentum.

Much of that, of course, is a problem of the league’s own making. MLS has repeatedly expanded its playoffs, watered them down, and cannibalized its regular season. But, if the goal is to maximize interest in the playoffs, they are clearly better off in April and May, when, in refreshing weather, they can run uninterrupted up against NBA and NHL playoffs rather than football.

Reason for change No. 2: The ‘least efficient [transfer] market’

2. The MLS offseason — which doubles as the league’s primary transfer window, the optimal time for clubs to sign and sell players — doesn’t align with most top-flight soccer leagues around the world.

This, to casual fans, might seem like a minor concern; but to execs building (or funding) MLS rosters, it’s significant. Globally, most transfer business happens in the summer, when European clubs are planning for their August-to-May seasons. Some come knocking on the doors of MLS clubs, offering lucrative transfer fees that would boost bottom lines or validate business models … just as the MLS club is hitting its stride or pushing for the playoffs.

Multiple club execs told Yahoo Sports that, for this very reason, they’ve turned down profits to keep players who ultimately left for less at a later date, or for free at the end of their contracts. But they’ve also accepted offers, and sold players they regret losing. “It screws your momentum up in the middle of the season,” one said.

In January, the inverse is also true. European clubs don’t want to lose players midseason, so MLS clubs must pay premiums to pry them away. And with the standard European contract ending June 30, MLS clubs often must wait to sign foreigners as free agents — or pay a fee to procure them for the first half of the season. “The winter window,” LA Galaxy general manager Will Kuntz told Yahoo Sports in an interview last month, “is the least efficient market.”

The theoretical upshot of a calendar shift, then, is that MLS clubs — which now participate in the global transfer market much more than they did a decade ago — would be able to welcome better players even without increasing budgets. Better players improve the league-wide quality of play, which raises the league’s profile, which attracts more fans, which allows clubs to make more money — and then spend it on even better players, who attract fans and fuel business, and so on.

That’s the growth cycle that can elevate any league. And in MLS, it’s still churning at a regrettably slow rate.

The resistance

The counterargument, and resistance to change, is rooted in the fear that fans won’t show up in the winter.

A select group of southern clubs — for example, Inter Miami — don’t share the concern, and could actually benefit from more winter games. But 18 of 29 MLS clubs play in cities where the average December high is between 28 and 49 degrees.

The league’s scheduling gurus could strategically avoid the coldest markets in the heart of winter. They could front- or back-load Chicago’s schedule and Toronto’s schedule with home games in September or April — because nowadays, most clubs own or operate their stadiums.

But there aren’t enough warm-weather markets to avoid snow and frigid temps altogether. So, citing attendance data that shows seasonal fluctuations, many clubs believe their ticket sales — and, therefore, their bottom line — would suffer.

Every new calendar model under serious consideration calls for some sort of winter break — likely beginning in December, with play resuming in February — to mitigate the damage. Proponents of change point to the fact that, currently, MLS seasons already begin in February and conclude with MLS Cup in early December. So, they argue, the annual impact on attendance wouldn’t be drastic.

They also point to climate change, which has spiked average temperatures by more than 2 degrees since the 1990s. That trend, which will continue for the foreseeable future, has made July games in Houston less bearable and December games in New York more tolerable.

Detractors point out that a two-month midseason break to evade January has its own pitfalls, and could be a “momentum killer.” No major U.S. sports league has ever split its season into two such distinct and distant halves.

What would the new MLS calendar look like?

Accordingly, the most attractive proposal seems to be one in which the season would begin in early August, pause in mid-December, and then head to a few southern host cities for Leagues Cup, the two-year-old tournament that pits MLS clubs against counterparts from Mexico’s Liga MX.

Leagues Cup is currently played in July and August. It actually could fit better on the Mexican soccer calendar in January, between the Apertura and Clausura. That would allow MLS teams to play somewhat continuously, with breaks no longer than two weeks, and still avoid the worst winter weather.

The MLS regular season would then pick back up in February, perhaps the week after the Super Bowl, perhaps the empty weekend before. It would likely end in April, with May carved out for the playoffs — when broadcast windows become available as the NBA and NHL playoffs get less crowded.

Top players would head off to national teams in June, then get vacations, before reporting for preseason in July, just as European teams do.

MLS would also be able to pause for international breaks without issue, just as European leagues do.

And how would MLS bridge the gap between its last spring-to-fall season (2025) and its first fall-to-spring season (2026-27)? Three people familiar with discussions said they’d concoct some sort of one-off, three-month-long competition to fill the spring of 2026 — which could actually be better than the standard early season grind would be as a World Cup lead-in.

The crux of the calendar decision

So, will it happen?

League executives have been studying various possibilities since last winter, they say. They’ve surveyed fans, formulated models and analyzed data. They’ve met with club leaders — on the business side and soccer side — in “pods,” a few clubs at a time, to share and gather various viewpoints. They’ve spoken with the MLS Players Association. “This is a research project that’s more collaborative than big decisions have been in the past,” one top club official told Yahoo Sports. “And it’s not something that’s a foregone conclusion.”

That official also mentioned that Apple, the league’s current exclusive broadcast partner, could be “a big piece of this discussion.”

To get skeptics on board, the MLS collective will have to persuade them to “put their individual concerns aside,” as the official said, and prioritize the future of the league. Some clubs would probably make less money in 2027 if the calendar is flipped. But, they must ask themselves, would they get more TV and commercial revenue — which is shared across the league — in 2037? And is that trade-off a net benefit? Does the potential reward outweigh the risk?

Some aren’t sure. Others believe it absolutely would, because the downside is marginal and the long-term upside is vast.

“If we want to compete with all the leagues in the world — the good leagues,” Nancy said, “we have to do it.”