I think everyone over here knew that the owners were really keen to do this, so it isn’t a big surprise and the majority sentiment is that this is a big step forward for the league. I am very curious how it plays out.
I do think attendances will go down overall, but if money made from transfers goes up as they align with other top leagues, then I don’t think the powers that be will care.
The season currently starts in February and often the northern teams don’t play at home for a few weeks. Montreal used to open their season indoors at the Olympic Stadium. Toronto is actually not as cold as you may think, but one of the issues is that the stadium is right next to Lake Ontario and at certain times of the year it makes an incredible difference in what it feels like in the stadium. Montreal and Minnesota especially, but also Chicago, the New York clubs, and New England are also going to be affected by the temperatures. The clubs that might be the most affected are Salt Lake and Colorado because cold isn’t great, but they can get freak snow storms in the mountains well outside of December/January/February. The worst blizzard I ever drove through happened in April. This year on Remembrance Day (Nov. 11) it 8 C. In 2019 it was -30. About 10 years ago there was a blizzard a foot of snow. November, March, April… you could get pretty much anything in terms of weather in some of these northern markets. Also, since Apple came on the scene they have been kicking off most of the matches around the same time on Saturday evenings. That can make a huge difference in terms of how pleasant/tolerable it can be to attend in person.
There’s a few things with the schedule that give me pause. First is the late July start. That is a very short off-season and doesn’t leave much time to prepare for the season after your various FIFA tournaments. In the summer their main/only competition is baseball. Which draws an older audience and is less competition that some other major sports. Now they are going head-to-head with football. And they do that some now, but at least now it’s more the end of the season and the playoffs during football season and not early season matches.
I support a club in the Championship. This season began on the first week of August. I believe we had four league matches before the transfer window closed and eight players exited and seven came in during that span. It felt like we were still in pre-season, but we were well into the season and hadn’t even started bedding in the new squad. So let’s look at MLS in a similar boat, but starting even earlier, but also prioritizing being a selling league… and then once you actually got your squad for the season in, you have two international windows in the fall… and then you just stop the league for 6-7 weeks. All while going up against the most popular sport on the continent that whole time. I wonder how much I will really pay attention until things pick back up again in the spring. MLS started the Leagues Cup with the Mexican League which is a joke, but the winner gets a Champions League spot, but mostly teams don’t take it seriously. I am thinking that might fill the winter break void. Have the MLS teams all head down to Florida or something and have a meaningless tournament before league competition resumes. The fixture congestion looks like a nightmare at this point, but we’ll see.
The Apple TV deal has really hurt the league (at least domestically, I think their global audience is expanding) and it feels like the league has the least amount of attention on it that I can remember which is crazy considering they have Messi and the World Cup is coming.
It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out.
