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September 5

This week, Deputy Commissioner Ivan Gazidis posts:

While Commissioner Garber attends the United States’ World Cup qualifying match in Cuba, he asked me to “guest blog” about the thinking behind the MLS schedule.

Let me begin by saying that MLS continues to make remarkable progress for a young league. We have established stability and we are constructing an infrastructure for the sport across North America that will last for generations. Our scheduling decisions are complex, and at times they may seem difficult to understand. We are conscious of our schedule’s strengths and weaknesses, and we welcome the passion our most ardent fans show on this issue. We are fortunate to have such engaged fans who, like us, desperately want the league to become all that it can be.

As we grow, we have to balance many priorities to achieve our broader goals. In that vein, the MLS schedule must:

1. allow us to have our best players on the field as much as possible;
2. include enough good dates for the revenue streams necessary to sustain the league and finance new stadiums;
3. be as competitively fair and balanced as possible;
4. provide young kids – our future fans – exposure to the sport by prioritizing weekend scheduling;
5. help our broadcast partners grow our television audience through consistent programming;
6. give our clubs the opportunity to engage in meaningful international competition.

In addition, there are real world constraints including stadium availability, a crowded U.S. sports landscape, the international soccer calendar, long-distance travel and diverse weather conditions.

All of these factors, and others, have their place. At times they align and at times they conflict. We don’t take scheduling lightly. As a League, we spend an enormous amount of time weighing these factors while formulating our competition format and schedule. This process involves some of the most knowledgeable and experienced soccer people in North America, including representatives from many teams, who work through the MLS Technical and Competition Committees before making recommendations to our Board of Governors each year.

MLS is not the only league in the world to experience conflicts with the “international calendar.” The Mexican and Brazilian leagues, for example, are among many that play through FIFA dates at various times of the year. But, because we are not the dominant domestic sport, our scheduling challenges are significantly greater than those in countries where soccer is king.

This year, each team plays 30 games during a 31-week regular season. In the next three years of our four-year cycle, in addition to FIFA’s periodic international fixture dates, the FIFA World Cup and the CONCACAF Gold Cup will be positioned in the middle of our season. Unless MLS moves to a winter season (not practical now, or perhaps ever), we will continue to face these conflicts. But we are taking incremental steps each year to try to reduce them. As we build our own stadiums, we gain more control over our schedule. As our fans become more avid, we can schedule more games on weeknights or in colder months. As our television audience expands, games at diverse times will still attract the viewers we need to grow the league. In the coming months, we will review all aspects of our schedule – including issues such as the schedule “window,” the competition format, and tournament qualification criteria – to do all we can to reduce the number of international conflicts.

This weekend, Toronto FC will be without 9 players from a possible 28 man roster due to international duty, and others are missing for injury and other reasons. Toronto FC explored whether it would be possible to reschedule because of the competitive impact on their team. We fully understand that sentiment. But if we were to reschedule this game, which has been on the calendar all season, it would cause an avalanche of questions from other clubs. As just one example, shouldn’t the League also have considered rescheduling a recent match when Toronto’s opponent this weekend, Chivas USA, had 11 senior roster players injured? One can quickly see that is a slippery slope.

There are extreme circumstances in which the league reserves the right to reschedule a game due to competitive considerations, but to do so when a team has the requisite number of available players on its roster to play would create a precedent that would be unmanageable.

We understand the frustration that our fans feel and we often share it. We are conscious of the issues we face and continue to take steps to address them as we progress as a league. Thank you for caring about the progress MLS is making and for helping push the League forward.