Catanese: MLS Schedule Change Another Short Sighted Decision
"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
I understand that I am a stubborn old man that is set in my ways, but there was a time when Major League Soccer was evolving that you could have convinced me that the drastic changes the league has made were overall good.
Do I think expanding to 30 teams and having a ridiculously unbalanced schedule was a good idea? Not really, but MLS has never operated like the true club model Europe has so it was not the end of the world. The salary cap was a blessing and a curse when it came to transfers, but when half the league still doesn’t make an operational profit it seems like it is still a very necessary mechanism even today.
Now most of the things that everyone points to as holding MLS back, the salary cap, DP rules, etc., are there to specifically prevent MLS from becoming the lawless financial wasteland that is Europe. MLS investing more into youth and academy setups is a good thing long term, even if that has to be counter balanced with bad ideas like the money grubbing Leagues Cup.
MLS financials might be archaic and seemingly non-sensical to outsiders, but they’re actually a fairly progressive and flexible system that lets teams pick whether to spend heavily on Designated Players or be more developmentally orientated with U22 Initiative signings and extra allocation funds. It’s a system that can absolutely work for everyone if they make good decisions on personnel and creates the exact parity the league wants and not being anything close to the big European leagues dominated by the same giant teams.
A system that does not work for all teams is attempting to play a winter focused schedule and foregoing playing in the usual peak summer months to accommodate an international schedule you’ve rarely respected in 30 years of existence.
Yet here we are, the day after the league announced that it was reducing the best in-person watching season for at least two thirds of its own league to chase the dream of competing with and being one of the best leagues in the world.
Which is a comical notion when YOU ARE THE FIFTH MOST WATCHED DOMESTIC SPORTS LEAGUE IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY!!!
(It’s fine…I am not mad…I’m not mad…)
Of all the lame brained cash grabbing ideas MLS has done in recent memory, this one is by far the worst. No where in the leagues’ release does it mention CONCACAF Champions Cup or Leagues Cup or US Open Cup play outside of eventual future qualifications. Nor does it specify what seems like another playoff format change, which makes no sense cause you should have all those dates already. How can you announce the schedule change without the players agreeing to it or even the full tournament list or setup?
But that’s not even the dumbest part, that’s just the common sense of not putting the cart before the horse. The worst part is thinking that there is a universe where MLS thinks they can pull off being internationally relevant when they still barely register domestically.
The bump Messi has given the league is tremendous, and the league taking steps to capitalize on that momentum is fine… in a Leagues Cup sort of way. But a change this massive is a step too far in my opinion and is relying on far too much firing from the hip instead of meticulous planning that I doubt these two years of discussion actually did.
There is no perfect schedule to fit an MLS season into the USA sporting calendar with the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and college sports. But moving your playoffs from after the World Series and against midseason NFL/NCAA throwball and early season NBA/NHL to against the NBA/NHL playoffs and early season MLB seems like a net negative. You’re putting far more regular season games up against the NFL which is the biggest portion of eyeballs you’re never going to touch.
The league can tout it’s 29% increase in regular season viewership this year all it wants, especially against unreleased streaming numbers from last year. Apple scrapping the MLS Season Pass package altogether for next year tells me all I need to know about how well the rollout of this streaming deal went and the vague benefits Don Garber continues to highlight with not a lot of actual data going forward.
Where the league is getting this over 90% of games are staying in the same window when they’re adding regular season fixtures deep into the current playoff window is also a mystery. It’s probably creative math and referring to the vast majority of games being played in the current schedule window but it reeks of PR stink.
Yes the November/mid-December window for the playoffs exists on the calendar, but it was never meant to host a full slate of 15 games a week for those six weeks. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison and pretending that it is; forget disingenuous, it’s downright fraudulent.
MLS probably got that 90% number from the same survey where 90% of people who think the schedule change is a good idea… because I want those 90% who may or may not have attended a single game in a year who agreed to this to spend three games a year freezing their butts off outside in zero degree wind chill watching their favorite MLS team. Cause I don’t have to wait for a significant attendance drop off for those cold weather games to know that number is dubious too.
In-person attendance is down from last year but we knew that Messi mini-plan bump wasn’t going to last. I bet the league and/or big market teams aren’t going to help out anyone with indoor training facilities or heated fields because this was a “league-wide unanimous” decision with everyone’s full support. You want to convince me this has a legitimate chance, start with some significant transparency in financials.
And by everyone’s full support I mean the league still has to negotiate with the players association on these changes. Can’t wait for that drama and to see how the Leagues Cup is going to fit anywhere into a calendar that is now taking three and a half months off in total.
New England can parrot the company line all they want, having the MLS Cup playoffs in good weather but not against the NFL is cutting off your nose to save your face. The schedule change only benefits the markets that already have no trouble signing players, Southern California and Florida in particular. If MLS wants to be like Europe, it’s well on its way by giving four to five teams the best chance to win by kneecapping everyone farther north than Atlanta with this setup.
Now if MLS had been proactive, maybe places like Cincinnati would have installed under soil heating systems in a site that opened four years ago. Maybe NYCFC can pivot to putting a roof on their site in Queens, or RBNY can finish a dome on whatever they’re not calling Red Bull Arena these days. Two of the three Canadian teams absolutely have indoor options, which is going to help the scheduling math when two thirds of your league is covered in snow trying to play outdoors even though I bet that’s going to be a royal pain for them to deal with. Thankfully when the Revs finally get an SSS in my next lifetime it will probably need to have have a roof.
The biggest group that’s going to probably benefit from this? The USL setup.
It plays during the summer, now won’t have MLS as competition during its prime months, and isn’t competing for an elite international player pool. You know, kind of like what MLS used to do. I bet Vermont Green and Hearts of Pine and Hartford and Rhode Island are gonna be booming over the summer when schools out.
MLS making it easier to move players within the league is great, and I guess so is spending more on players, but $336M in transfer spending this year against only $250M in Apple money still means you’re in the red. You’re not making up that difference simply by aligning your transfer windows with everyone else.
We all know that this move is money driven, but MLS is not at a point where the majority of its teams can survive on its broadcasting package alone. Most of its teams aren’t making money now. A lot of teams still need their game day revenue and tickets sales, and reducing that for the majority of your teams in the hopes of being able to sign players more easily seems like a pipe dream when most of your teams don’t even make major transfers sales every year.
Quick, name the biggest outgoing transfer for MLS in 2025.
It’s Minnesota/Canada MNT striker Tani Oluwaseyi to Villareal over the summer for somewhere in the neighborhood of $8M. Honorable mention to Charlotte for a pair of nice sales in striker and East Hartford’s own Patrick Agyumeng and French-Congolese centerback Adilson Malanda to English Championship sides Derby and Middlesboro respectively for $6.9M each. You can still count the number of $10M+ transfer sales in league history on all your fingers and toes.
I had to look all of that up, I legitimately did not know, which tells me everything I need to know as far as where MLS stands globally on the international transfer market.
It doesn’t.
And before you should be jumping into the deep end of that international transfer window pool, it might be smart to solidify your on-field financials rather than just your off-field ones. Just ask France how it’s working out for them right now.
I am all for the New England Revolution continuing to be a selling club, and for MLS being a major stepping stone into Europe and for players getting into the various UEFA continental competitions. Real growth in MLS, isn’t going to come from Beckham or Messi, but from Tajon Buchanan, Matt Turner, Adam Buksa, Djordje Petrovic, Esmir Bajraktarevic. It’s not the people you bring in, it’s the ones you send out to reinvest that money into the developmental and financial ecosystem of a strong and financially healthy sports league.
I’m not for chasing a dream of a notion of MLS being something that it currently is not nor likely ever will be. I’m not for ruining the experience of your fans and paying customers to chase imaginary profits. And I am absolutely not joining the quest that is MLS needs to become one of the greatest leagues in the world when it never is going to be the greatest league in North America.
Because it doesn’t have to.
It just has to be our silly, dumb, ridiculous Major League Soccer. And it was largely fine just the way it was at the beginning of the day yesterday. Someone at some point in like 10 years will have to explain to me how a league still striving for domestic relevance while chasing global clout in some foolhardy quest for viewership and money that may or may not exist makes any sense.
MLS simply needs to exist in a realm where it is profitable on and off the field. And it’s not there yet. But it might be closer than we think. Come back to this in 15 years.
Also to everyone who thinks this is a good idea — which again if you believe everything you see on the internet is 90% of you — then I welcome all from around MLS to come together try and beat the Jets-Patriots attendance from Thursday night of 64,628 in Foxboro at any point in November or December or February after this change happens. I think I’d be happy to see 6,500 Revs fans at any of those games.
Since I remain skeptical of this new and impending growth against watching soccer during throwball weather, I’m sure Mr. Messi and Mr. Son will cover that lost revenue for New England and everyone else though. I bet we’ll even take payments in GarberBucks assuming those still exist in two years.
MLS can celebrate this move all it wants, it’s allowed to bet on itself. Just seems that the league is making this bet based on the whims and potential of five teams instead of all thirty.
Because if the league is wrong, yesterday’s switch is going to go down as the most damaging decision this league has ever done. It might have just thrown 30 years of largely positive growth away on a quest for relevancy it does not need to undertake.