MLS to mirror European football schedule

[Kirk Van Houten]

Right but half the season will be competing against football, which trumps all.

Regular season games on Apple TV I think they'll be fine with that it's not that they're getting masive numbers now.

"Under the proposal, MLS would begin early August and run until mid-December before a winter break. The season would resume in February and run until the spring, with the MLS Cup in late May."

So starting roughly when NFL preseason does, which despite everyone saying they hate, millions watch and it gets more attention than even the playoffs of some leagues, including MLS. Couple weeks later college football starts. Get to September and NFL regular season. October MLB playoffs and NHL & NBA seasons start, plus WNBA playoffs will continue to be pushed/marketed. During those proposed opening months of the MLS season there's also the PGA Tour with a major & the FedEx Cup playoffs. Plus those months cover the final stretch of the season for American motorsports, with NASCAR even going into the first weekend of November.

So that's a rough time to start a season.

Winter break, come back in February, presumably avoiding the Super Bowl which is not too many years from being pushed even further back in Feb. So beginning of 2nd half of season NFL is still taking up all the air. Get to March and you have March Madness and spring training/opening day/week of MLB.

MLS Cup playoffs in May, H2H with NBA & Stanley Cup Playoffs. Yikes. Good luck with that Revolution-Red Bulls playoff series going H2H with Knicks-Celtics or Bruins-Rangers, or both.

There's always competition. Tough to find space in the U.S. sports calender but if they do change, it looks tough.

So pretty the way their setting this up is to push big for the second half of the season and the Playoffs. That's a big gamble there.

 

[varsaku]

It's long overdue. Playing in the summer and overlapping the international tournaments isn’t something a serious league can do.

Mess in the transfer market, as well.

many leagues play in the summer too. Brazil's league plays similar to MLS.

 

[Jumptheshark]

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

I think their schedule is part of why they've been successful. Sure things get hard at playoff time with so much going on in the sports world but competing directly with the NHL and NBA regular seasons, + almost the entire NFL & college football seasons for a good chunk of the season? Tough one.

I am looking at the fact that they would more or less splitting the season in half. Avoiding "Winter" all together in some norther territories could be interesting. Places like Florida and California. Some of the norther teams play in cities where it does not warm up till late april