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MLS considers a big bang: Flipping its schedule from summer to winter

MLS has always played on a spring-to-fall calendar. But now the league is considering playing like Europe does, from fall to spring with a winter break. There are risks, but potentially huge rewards.

Cold-weather games at Subaru Park could become a regular experience if Major League Soccer switches to a winter-centric schedule.
Cold-weather games at Subaru Park could become a regular experience if Major League Soccer switches to a winter-centric schedule.Read moreElizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

NEW YORK — There are a lot of things that Major League Soccer could do to capitalize on North America hosting next year’s men’s World Cup.

It could loosen its always-complicated roster rules. It could increase its salary cap, its roster sizes, or its average and minimum salaries.

It could ponder whether an additional linear TV deal would help bring more viewers, beyond the Apple streaming package and Fox’s relatively small offering. It could lean on Apple to let Fox have better games for its package, as it prepares for a second straight year with barely any of Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami.

But there’s one move that would be the biggest bang of all: flipping its calendar from summer-centric to winter-centric, with a break in the middle for the harshest weather.

For all 30 seasons of its history, MLS has played a spring-to-fall schedule, capitalizing on the summer months when soccer traditionally gets the most attention in America. That’s the opposite of how most leagues work, especially in Europe, where they start in August and end in May.

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MLS has previously thought about aligning itself with Europe’s calendar. The main goal has been to get the playoffs out of the way of football season and into a time of year where they’d get more attention. But that goal has always been outweighed by howls from northern cities in which games in winter would be too cold for many fans to attend, so the idea hasn’t gotten far.

Why the debate has changed

This time, there are other factors in the fray. One is that for all the northern teams that shiver in the winter, there are now just as many southern teams that swelter in the summer — especially in Texas and Florida. Even Washington and Philadelphia are tough to play in before the sun goes down these days, and climate change won’t help.

Another is MLS’s growing place in the business of the world’s game. European teams that want to buy players from MLS during their offseasons must pry them away in the middle of MLS teams’ campaigns. MLS teams’ offseason shopping lands in the middle of European clubs’ calendars — with no Christmas discounts.

Then there’s the 2026 World Cup itself. MLS has already said it will stop for a long time during the tournament, since many of its cities will host games and many of its stadiums will be tournament venues or practice sites for visiting teams.

Will that break be long enough to make the league’s power brokers think about the bigger picture? Last fall, reports by the Athletic and Yahoo! Sports hinted that it might just be.

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Finally, there’s the sense of a shift in fans’ tastes. So many people watch the Premier League and UEFA Champions League these days — and venture to bars in the winter to do it — that there might be more appetite for MLS to play at that time of year.

When MLS’s executive vice president of sporting product and competition, Nelson Rodriguez, recently met with The Inquirer at the league’s office, it was a good time to bring this up.

‘Exploration and examination’

“It is being discussed,” Rodriguez said. “It remains in exploration and examination.”

He recalled the idea coming up twice before in his many years as a league and team executive: around 2009-10 and around 2013-14.

“This one has been the most exhaustive, and for good reason,” he said. “The league has changed so much, the league has grown so much, the sport continues to evolve.”

Rodriguez said politely that he did not “recall that we ever said it would occur in ’26,” and that “we’ve not had a discussion on a timeline.” While no one has said it on the record, Rodriguez knew that enough people put the word out behind the scenes to make those reports happen.

“We’re still having a discussion and an examination on the pros and cons,” he said. “Coming out of the December board [of league governors] meeting, we were tasked with doing some more research.”

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That includes surveying the league’s 30 teams, the MLS Players Association, the referees, and fans, which Rodriguez said is going on now.

They’d be asked their opinion not just of starting in late summer and ending in late spring, but of how it would feel to split the season in half with a winter break — likely from mid-December to mid-February.

Many major European leagues take winter breaks, with Germany’s Bundesliga usually taking the longest one because of that country’s cold weather. There’s also a history across Central and South America, especially in Mexico, of playing split-season formats.

A decision later this year?

“If a decision — and it’s an if — to make a flip [comes] … it’s natural, somewhat romantic, to think about it as coming out of the World Cup and you unveil a different, new, improved MLS,” Rodriguez said. “But it’s not essential. What’s essential is getting it right if we make the change.”

Here, Rodriguez acknowledged the “natural break” that the World Cup will provide. But he reiterated that it won’t be easy to take the jump.

“There’s no perfect solution,” he said. “Every benefit that you conceive of, any change, carries a trade-off, somewhere or to someone or to some club. And it’s constantly putting these things on a scale and seeing how they weigh out.”

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Asked what the timeline looks like right now, Rodriguez said: “I think the exploration and examination will end this year. … The work will be done this year, and a decision will be taken at some point this year.”

If there’s one point that the flip’s backers and critics likely would agree on, it’s this: If MLS is going to do this, it must do so unanimously and with full-throated confidence. Once it goes, it can’t go back any time soon.

But right now, it seems the league is giving real thought to taking its biggest-ever gamble. And after all this time, it might just pay off.

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