MLS pushes a calendar flip down the road, but perhaps not for much longer

Major League Soccer’s board of governors has again pushed off a decisive vote on changing its calendar, but it seems the moment might come later this year.

“We’re not making any announcements today, but we continue to do enormous amount of work with our fans, with our partners, with all of our chief soccer officers, and with our clubs to get ourselves closer to the point we’re able to make that decision,” commissioner Don Garber said at his traditional All-Star game news conference, held Wednesday in Austin, Texas. “But we believe that alignment is something that makes sense.”

He made it pretty clear that he favors the shift and that a lot of influential people around the league do, too. But the votes might not be there yet. They weren’t when the board first formally discussed the idea in April.

“There are a number of key benefits to it,” Garber said. “Aligning with the world standard, we think, is important for our brand as we try to continue to engage as one of the important and influential leagues in the world. We want to align on the calendar to be able to be even more engaged on the player transfer market.”

That was a reference to the fact that big European leagues and other circuits play fall-to-spring seasons.

“We also have our most important games in the busiest part of the [U.S.] sports calendar,” Garber said. “And I think where we are today in the fall or winter might be very different [from] when the league was founded. The league continues to have its Cup [final] later and later and later in December, and that is a challenge that has got to be addressed.”

Garber also directly acknowledged the impact that climate change is having and the increasing challenges of playing through the peak of hot summers. That is another reason more and more people want to shift the calendar — and notably why Japan’s J-League agreed at the end of 2023 to make that same move next year.

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

“We’re all, as citizens of the planet, dealing with that, and our league is no different,” Garber said. “It’s getting hotter, and that’s clearly an issue in playing through the depth and the core of the warmest months in many of our markets.”

Nor is it just about playing in heat. There seem to be evermore major thunderstorms during the summer, and Garber spoke about that just as bluntly.

“We’re also managing through storms, and floods, and hurricanes and delayed games and canceled games,” he said, speaking from a region of Texas that recently was slammed by huge floods. “And that’s the uniqueness of being an outdoor sport not having the same schedule flexibility that baseball might have if they have a rainout. So it just adds to the challenges and complexity that MLS has to deal with every day.”

While teams and fans in warm climates are more likely to favor the calendar change, people in colder climates naturally are more likely to be against it. They don’t want a greater portion of the schedule to be held in cold-weather months, even if MLS likely would play a lot more afternoon games than it does now.

“How do we create a schedule that minimizes the impact of supercold or superhot, and how do we do that in the most number of markets?” Garber said. “How do we manage the schedule in a way where it minimizes that? We have ideas and ways in which we’re able to do that.”

He didn’t specify what those ideas were, but he did say twice that some teams are going to have to upgrade their stadium infrastructure as part of the change.

» READ MORE: The Union won’t say how they’ll vote on MLS’ calendar change, but they’re hinting they’re for it

“How do you get creative and unique around that so that our stadiums are managing that with investments that they’re making in infrastructure?” he said. “All going into why this has been such a long-discussed project and one that we have to check all the boxes before we could go forward with it.”

And as he said at another point: “How do we ensure that when we make that decision, our facilities are ready for it, and our fans are ready for it, and our corporate partners are ready for it? I would rather get it right and take our time than get it wrong and do it quick because life’s a long time when it comes to something like your schedule.”

Asked if the league would bring the MLS Players Association into the discussions, Garber perhaps didn’t give as formal a “yes” as the union might like. But he did say the players would be involved in some form.

“They’re one of our key stakeholders,” he said. “No different than our fans, no different than our corporate partners, no different than our owners who are building facilities and would have to get some of them to be climate-ready. So we’ll sit down with everybody at the right time, and I’m confident we’ll make the right decision.”

» READ MORE: FIFA admits the heat had an impact on the Club World Cup in the United States

He also acknowledged that the current collective bargaining agreement’s expiration on Jan. 31, 2028, will bring everyone to the table for another reason — and, coincidentally, the league previously has said that’s the same year a calendar flip most likely would happen.

“As we’re going into CBA negotiations, it is a time for us to rethink, as we’re developing the future of our league, what our roster strategy should be,” Garber said. “We’re looking at an evolution of our competition format that looks at a different structure to our regular season.”

That includes, Garber said, a potential revamp of the league’s playoff format.

“It’s going to make the regular season more meaningful,” he said, and noted that the change could be unveiled before the end of the year. “It’ll be more aligned with the rest of the world in terms of how they play their competitions, and I think our playoff format will be really cool, really unique, very different from anything that happens in North America. But let us get through crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.”

» READ MORE: ‘This market wants to see trophies’: MLS commissioner says Union’s success is ‘going to have to deliver a championship’

That last sentence applies to the overall calendar change, too. Garber did not say whether there was a formal vote at the board of governors meeting that took place earlier Wednesday, but he said enough to show where things stand.

“Making this change is seismic,” he said. “It’s not something we should do lightly. We obviously have teams across multiple climate zones, multiple time zones, unlike any other league in the world.”

The last question left, one there wasn’t time to ask, was whether the time will come soon when he puts his foot down and calls a vote. If the league is to make the change in 2027 — which also marks the start of the next set of linear TV deals alongside Apple’s streaming — then a decision has to be made in the next few months. Garber seems aware of that.

“I think it’s a matter of not if, but when,” he said on Apple’s All-Star Game broadcast. “We’ve had a calendar for 30 years — you’re only going to change once. When we change, it will be because we’ve spoken to fans, we’ve spoken to owners, we’ve spoken to partners, we’ve spoken to cities, and get it right.”