October 25 – As Major League Soccer heads into the business end of their season with the play-offs, the league finds itself competing with the MLB World Series, NCAA College football, the NHL, the start of the NBA season and the big daddy of them all, the NFL.
This has been a consistent issue with the league since its inception and its refusal to align with the international football calendar. But now things maybe be changing.
According to different sources briefed on discussions, MLS executives and owners are finally coming around to the idea that the international calendar is the way to generate income.
They believe that the leagues participation in the global transfer market will be significantly increased by aligning with the rest of the world. The hope is for the league to institute the changes as early as the summer of 2026 coming out of the World Cup.
Nelson Rodriguez, MLS executive vice president of sporting product and competition told The Athletic: “We have been engaged, really, since January, and it’s been very extensive and exhaustive and deliberate. It’s still too early. We’re still asking questions. We’re still collecting and analyzing some data. We’re still formulating models. Some of those models are for formats themselves, some of those models are how to assess the information that we get.”
MLS commissioner, Don Garber, and his team have been holding meetings with sporting directors, chief business officers and owners, who you can imagine are keen to see some ROI. The league is also planning to develop focus groups that will gauge the interest of fans as well as players.
While this change has long been discussed, a variety of excuses have always been put forth with a consistent beef surrounding the weather as the East coast of the country can see significant disruption. However, with most global transfer business done in the summer window, the conflict with the domestic game is a considerable source of headaches.
Clubs want to sell players in the summer, which is often when they are at their highest value, however, no clubs want to lose their best player in the middle of the season. The MLS and Leagues Cup schedule also means summer signings arrive with fewer than 10 games left in the regular season.
“I wish our window was a little bit more friendly to us,” Charlotte FC sporting director Zoran Krneta told MLSsoccer.com.
“I am a big advocate for the window being moved to, like, September 5, because we would not only have way more chances to pick up really good players, but we will also have a chance to pick up the players that suddenly are surplus to requirements.”
With the proposed changes, MLS would begin in early August, break around mid-December for five-weeks, much like the Bundesliga in Germany, and resume in early February. This schedule flip would also mitigate some of the competition surrounding the league from other sports. A fall-spring calendar would also mean that MLS, like the rest of the world, would pause the season during all FIFA international windows, which would be a welcome change for most teams and players.
Rodriguez said: “Any consideration set has a different impact across all our clubs, and so that becomes part of the balance. The greatest strength of our single-entity system is our ability to work as partners off the field, and our ability to evaluate our business – our business being commercial, sporting and brand – and that has proven to be a great aid in this process, because there has been an amazing spirit of collaboration, not just internally among all departments at MLS, but among all our clubs.”
Many in the soccer community have long complained about MLS’s inflexibility surrounding the calendar, but with the World Cup just around the corner, the time is ripe for the conversations to become reality.
Contact the writer of this story, Nick Webster, at moc.l1732270003labto1732270003ofdlr1732270003owedi1732270003sni@o1732270003fni1732270003