In a new series we’re doing to make up for the paucity of MLS matches during the June international window, called Waving a Magic Wand Over MLS, we’re asking writers we know to think about one thing in MLS they’d love to change for the betterment of the league and the betterment of soccer. In this second installment, the talented J. Sam Jones (who you might know from the MLS Power Rankings and other less contentious MLSSoccer.com features) remakes the MLS schedule.
I started thinking about what I would do to change MLS for the better and while the list is long, most of the tweaks are minor, or weird ways to fix extra time, or involve me having to worry about things I don’t want to worry about like “salary caps” and “promotion and relegation.” Whatever those things are.
So I didn’t want to present anything you might have heard before or anything that felt safe or on the fence. This is my hypothetical chance to change the world and I want to hypothetically drag your brain along for the ride. Even if it doesn’t end up at my proposed final destination, it may end up somewhere new with something to think about.
Where we’re going today is a place where the MLS schedule is totally and irrevocably changed.
I’ll be honest, I don’t love the way the current MLS schedule works. I know there are logistic difficulties that don’t make things simple for the world’s most travelingest league, but I think we can do it better. I think we can do it in a way that makes the product better and the games more meaningful. And I think both of those improvements can feed off each other in a benevolent cycle that takes the league to new heights on the field and in its game-day atmosphere. Which of course in turn means sweet, sweet cash. Which in turn means more of those new heights. And so on.
Before we really dig in though, I should probably explain my problems with the current MLS schedule, and the schedules of most leagues in every sport around the world.
The guiding principle with everything I’m going to suggest today is scarcity as a driver for demand. I love sports. But there should be fewer of them. I’m not saying we get rid of basketball or anything, I’m just saying that the NBA plays 82 games to decide which eight teams from each conference make the playoffs. You’re telling me it really takes 82 games for them to decide which of the 16 teams in a 30-team league make the playoffs? If over half the teams in your league make the playoffs and really only six or so have a chance at actually winning the playoffs, those 82 games feel a little extra. A lot extra. There’s a reason the NBA regular season doesn’t come in the same stratosphere as its playoff product.
Baseball has 162 games and a whole bunch of expanded playoff suggestions that threaten to make a solitary baseball game (0.61% of the season) even more meaningless. Hockey has the same problem as the NBA. The NFL has far fewer games, but lets in so many teams that you can lose nine of your 17 games and still make the playoffs. Among professional leagues with playoffs—And in this exercise, we can’t get rid of playoffs in MLS. MLS *needs* playoffs—college football is the only one where every single game feels like life and death for its playoff contenders. That’s great, and it leads to a lot of the reasons I’m revamping the MLS schedule, but it would be even better if parity had ever existed in the sport.
Parity exists in MLS in spades. Scarcity is lacking.
We’ve got 34 games in a league where 50% of the teams make the playoffs. The parity makes it so that the last few playoff spots generally stay competitive to the last day, but can you really remember many non-Decision Day games that felt truly important?
The current schedule lacks weight. It tries to play a European number of games (34) while using an American way of champion coronation and it causes both to suffer. The regular season feels less meaningful because it all comes down to a brief post-season that cancels out 34 games of work, and the playoffs feel less meaningful because there’s a legitimate argument to make that the Supporters’ Shield winner is the true champion of the league.
The current schedule is also starving for consistency. You can point to the NFL or college football or, to some extent, the Premier League for an example of this, but fans of those leagues know exactly when and where they can find their product. The NFL is the most rigid with this, putting teams in either the 1 p.m. ET Sunday spot, the 4:15 p.m. ET Sunday spot, the 8 p.m. ET Sunday spot, or the Monday night spot for as long as I can remember. MLS times and days are chosen by a 20-sided die.
Charlotte and New York play on Saturday at 3 p.m. ET and Nashville faces San Jose at 8 p.m. ET. Then there’s a random Sunday game. Then a lone game on Tuesday. Then a lone game on Wednesday. No one else is playing right now during the international break. Why do these games exist at the times and days they do? Why do the standings get scrambled up to the point where we’re having to calculate where teams are based on points per game because we end up with four teams having played 20 games, two having played 16 and the rest having played an amount somewhere in between?
These are factors that keep most regular-season MLS games from feeling like capital “E” Events. Knowing when games happen isn’t intuitive, knowing what the game means relative to your playoff standing isn't intuitive because you’re having to calculate games in hand, and your playoff standing doesn’t feel all that important until the final month or so because half the league makes it in.
You want to make sure the majority of your games have a top-notch atmosphere? Make the games Events. You want your TV audience to grow? Make the games Events. You want the product to improve overall? Bring in more cash, more atmosphere and better ratings by making the games Events, which in turn will lead to more cash, more atmosphere and better ratings.
I’ve got a simple solution here to make that happen. Or at least accelerate the process. In the case of MLS, I think less can be so much more.
Here’s my proposal.
The proposal
When MLS welcomes its 30th team to the league, let’s change things up. We’ll still do 15 teams in each conference, but let’s place those fifteen teams in three geographic(ish) based divisions.
In the East, we’ll have:
Southeast + Florida
Atlanta United
Orlando City
Inter Miami
Nashville SC
Charlotte FC
Atlantic
NYCFC
New York Red Bulls
Philadelphia Union
D.C. United
New England Revolution
Midwestish
Chicago Fire FC
Columbus Crew SC
CF Montreal
Toronto FC
FC Cincinnati
And in the much more difficult to group and name West:
Central
STL CITY SC
Sporting KC
FC Dallas
Houston Dynamo FC
Austin FC
West of the Mississippi
RSL
Colorado Rapids
Minnesota United
Las Vegas
San Jose Earthquakes
Cali-Cascadia
LA Galaxy
LAFC
Portland Timbers
Seattle Sounders
Vancouver Whitecaps FC
Those splits aren’t necessarily perfect, but it's the best I could come up with. I sacrificed the Cali Clasico for El Trafico and the Cascadia Cup. I regret nothing.
We're fixing the playoffs, too
Our new divisions get us to our new, improved playoff format. We’re going to borrow from baseball here and take our three division winners to the playoffs, while the two best records among non-division winners will face off in a single-elimination wild-card game. The winner of that game will head on the road to face the first-seeded division winner.
Since we’re moving to a five-team playoff, you might be worried about losing the Cinderella aspect of a No. 6 or No. 7 seed making a run to the title. Cinderella stories are good. But trust me when I say we aren’t losing much by dropping teams six and seven. The league expanded the playoffs to six teams from each conference in 2015, then seven in 2019. Since 2015, only two teams below a three-seed have won MLS Cup. Seattle did it in 2016 as the four seed and NYCFC also did it as the four seed last season. The '18 Timbers made it to MLS Cup as a fifth seed, 2019's Toronto squad made it as a fourth seed, and last season's Timbers also made it as a fourth seed. The sixth and seventh seeds are essentially just for show or hilariously beating Seattle without taking a shot every now and then.
The spot reduction, plus an additional playoff game for wild card teams, makes winning your division critical. And it ups the ante for every regular-season game. But I’m not going to stop there. We need more of less.
That’s why we’re going from 34 games in the regular season to 24. Here’s how those 24 games break down:
10 games against cross-conference opponents (no repeats)
10 games against each conference opponent outside your division
Four games against division opponents
You might be shocked to see so few division games. But we keep talking about scarcity as a motivator for a reason. MLS understandably wants rivalry games to be Events. But, right now, those just happen to be normal regular-season games. On top of that, you get a second shot at your rival if you lose the first game. Under my format, rivalry games are not only your only opportunity to earn a six-point swing against a division opponent, but, most importantly the only chance you have for bragging rights that season. In a few easy steps, we’ve just taken a rivalry like Portland-Seattle and turned it into a battle royale. That is a must-see, capital E, Event.
On top of that, you’ll know exactly what it means in the context of the standings. No more mismatched numbers of games played. And no more midweek games that no one can attend. Because the limited number of games means we can keep games on the weekend without having to cram them into a random Tuesday night. Games will be played on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday will have Eastern Conference games at 3:30 p.m. ET, Western Conference games at 6 p.m. ET and a standalone Match of the Day at 8:30 p.m. ET. Sunday will have two Matches of the Week at 5 p.m. ET and 7:30 p.m. ET.
These games are going to be Events. We have to make them easy to plan for and around. We have to make them easy to watch. And we have to give people plenty of time to properly tailgate before each game. Early afternoon starts simply don’t get it done.
Now, you might be worried that gridiron football both college and pro will interfere with these regular-season games and my proposed start times. However, you’re forgetting that there are only 24 regular-season games. If we incorporate four weeks a season for byes and international breaks, then we have a 28-game season that takes exactly 28 weeks. If you were to start the season on Feb. 18, 2023, that would put Decision Day on Aug. 27, one week before the start of gridiron football.
Scarcity in scheduling gives MLS a chance to make every game far more meaningful, make rivalries matter more, create Events and carve out their own defined space in the market by consistently filling the weekend void once gridiron football ends. We’re going for quality over quantity here. There might be worries about gate and TV revenue, but you can make up for that by increasing eyes and ticket sales when you deliver a captivating product that draws people in with more consistency.
I could keep going here with all the benefits. I didn’t even get to touch on less games meaning a lessened need for depth and the ability to pour more funds into big-name players and high-caliber starting XIs. Or the potential revenue stream of a highly attended neutral-site MLS game. There’s enough here to talk the powers that be into it if they’re willing to be bold, be innovative and take a major risk that goes against conventional trends in sport.
So, yeah, it definitely won’t happen. But it might be really cool if it did.