Major League Soccer’s board of governors voted Thursday to push the start of the season from February to July beginning in 2027, matching the schedule used by most of the world’s other top-tier leagues.
The move also allows the league to better sync up with global soccer’s primary and secondary transfer windows and with FIFA’s international competition calendar, when teams are required to release players to their national teams.
“Our owners made a decision that I think is one of the most important decisions in our league’s history,” commissioner Don Garber said in a conference call.
“This is an opportunity for us to eliminate the competition that we had for our playoffs as they exist today, a very crowded time of the year. It allows us to be aligned with the international transfer windows, which we think is incredibly important. It gives us a wide variety of opportunities that will expand our ability to be on this path to be one of the top and leading leagues in the world.”
The governors, meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., also discussed a new playoff format and a proposal that would rank the league’s 30 teams in a single table rather than in two conferences. Those changes remain under discussion.
“This is a great step forward for MLS to be on par with the top leagues in the world,” U.S. men’s coach Mauricio Pochettino said in a statement. “Having managed club teams and now the U.S. national team, the ability to align with the international calendar will have a huge positive impact for the players, coaches and clubs.
“This also extends beyond the senior national teams; it will allow us to have access to the youth national team players during critical periods of international competition, further advancing their development.”
Additionally, the league and Apple, its main broadcast partner, agreed to bring MLS matches out from behind a paywall and make them available to all Apple TV subscribers beginning next season.
MLS and Apple have kept audience numbers for the first three years of their 10-year, $2.5-billion deal closely guarded, but based on the numbers that have been released, the average viewership on the MLS Season Pass subscription service was down about 100,000 from what MLS drew for single games on ESPN in 2022, the final season before the Apple deal took effect.
That move, Garber said, will expand the TV audience by giving casual viewers “an opportunity to be exposed to Major League Soccer and hopefully become lifelong MLS fans.”
The governors have been discussing the schedule change for at least two years and had hoped to have a new format in place by next season, when the World Cup returns to North America for five weeks during the middle of the MLS season. However pushback from a handful of teams delayed things and while Thursday’s vote wasn’t unanimous, it was one-sided, Garber said.
“There was overwhelming support for this move,” he said. “Frankly there was more support for it than I expected.”
The league is continuing discussions with the union over how to implement the changes but under the current proposal, the MLS regular season would run from late July through April, with a winter break running from December into February. The playoffs would move from November and December to late May, coming out from under the shadow of the NFL and college football seasons.
Aligning the MLS schedule with the rest of the soccer world also allows the league to make better use of the primary and secondary transfer windows, maximizing its potential to both buy and sell players. Teams also will be better positioned to sign free transfers.
“Moving to the international calendar is going to be a massive game changer, especially for roster building,” Galaxy general manager Will Kuntz said. “It finally allows us to operate in sync with the global transfer market. We’ll be able to sign players when the biggest talent movement happens — in the summer — instead of midseason when integration is difficult.”
When MLS began play in 1996 it chose to schedule most of its games in the spring and summer to avoid conflicts with the NFL. In its inaugural season, all 10 of the league’s teams played in NFL or college football stadiums. This season 20 of the 30 teams played in soccer-specific venues.
Playing through the winter months will have a huge impact on training and games for teams in harsh climates such as Salt Lake City, Toronto, Minnesota, Colorado, Montreal and New England. However the same could be said of summer matches in the oppressive heat and humidity of Florida and Texas.
The realignment from two conferences, likely into five six-team divisions, remains under discussion. The move wouldn’t alter the league’s 34-game schedule since each team would play two games, home and away, against the five teams in their division and one match against each of the other 24 teams in the league.
The change to a single table will impact how teams qualify for the playoffs. Currently the top seven teams in both the Eastern and Western conferences are seeded into the postseason field, with the eighth- and ninth-place teams in each conference playing a wild-card match to determine the final playoff qualifier.
“We’re not yet ready to talk about that,” Garber said. But, the commissioner added, the goal is to have that change approved by 2027 as well.