Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber announced bold changes affecting MLS' rules of competition for the 2000 season and beyond and examined details of the league's 2000 ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 contract, along with ESPN Vice President of Programming Steve Risser during this special media teleconference call on Wednesday, November 17 at 11:30 a.m. ET.

Today's guests:
MLS Commissioner Don Garber
ESPN Vice President of Programming, Steve Risser

Garber Opening Comments:
"One of the things that I have said is that this league deserves more credit for where it is after only four years. We do have regular media coverage, we do have our games broadcast on cable and network TV, and we have massive interest in the sponsorship world, and we have averaged over 14,000 fans in attendance over this season.

Even though we feel that we are doing okay, our expectations are much higher, our goals are much broader. We believe that there is a lot of interest out in this market that we have not been able to capture. We had many of those fans in 1996, we have not been able to keep those fans in the league, and that is something that we believe we need to do in order to get to the next level.

In travelling around the country, I have spent time with media and staff - as well as fans - and every city that I have visited over the past two and a half months have pleaded with us to align back with the international game, with FIFA rules… to bring the MLS game into accordance with how the game is played throughout the world.

We believe that one of our core strengths is that soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and that by not playing in accordance with international rules, we are not fully capitalizing on that core equity.

So, beginning with our season in 2000, the shootout will be dead. We will attempt to resolve all ties that occur in the regular season with two, five-minute golden-goal overtime periods. If no teams scores in overtime, then the match will end in a tie. MLS will adopt the traditional point system used throughout the world, with three points for a win - regardless of if that win is in regulation or in overtime - one point for each team in a tie, and zero points for a loss.

We'll also adopt the international convention of the referee keeping the official game time. Our scoreboard clock will count up from zero to 45:00, and after halftime, from 45:00 to 90:00. Injury will be added at the referee's discretion at the end of the first half, and at the end of regulation time. As is the case worldwide, the approximate injury time added will be communicated to the in-stadium fans and television audience in accordance with the international convention.

MLS will also realign its conferences from the current Eastern and Western Conferences to a three-conference system consisting of a West, Central, and Eastern Division. Each Conference Champion will automatically qualify for the MLS Cup Playoff - the new name which we will call our playoff system - in addition to the five teams that have the best records throughout the regular season, regardless of conference. There will be eight teams in the playoffs: three conference champions and five wild-card teams. We believe that this new system will ensure that the best teams make it to the playoffs, as well as create more compelling races throughout the regular season.

The MLS season will be reduced by at least five weeks. The season will begin in mid-March and conclude MLS Cup in early- to mid-October. We're currently studying various alternatives for our regular season, as well as for our playoffs, the schedules, as well as the formats. We're hoping to announce our schedule, as well as the date for MLS Cup 2000 at the MLS Cup press conference, which will take place here in Boston on Friday.

Our next announcement regards television. We've strengthened our relationship and partnership with ABC and ESPN. We believe that these folks are the strongest supporters of soccer here in this country, as well as the biggest supporters of MLS. We are pleased to announce that we will begin the millennium with two new television programming directives.

ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 will combine to present live Saturday soccer coverage of the league, as well as a weekly, Monday night, 60-minute program on ESPN2. The three networks together will feature 36 regular season and playoff matches in 2000. Soccer Saturday will consist of a series of 28 league matches on national television over 19 consecutive Saturdays, providing our fans with destination viewing on English-speaking TV to complement the destination viewing we've had with Univision.

MLS and ESPN will kick off the Soccer Saturday schedule on March 25th, and the schedule of consecutive Saturday matches will conclude on August 19th.

Additionally , MLS will debut an exciting new weekly show - a one-hour show that will air on Monday at 11:00 p.m. ET on ESPN2, and at 8:00 prime-time CT. Although the details will be finalized sometime later this year, the Monday show is expected to feature a condensed Game of the Week, as well as other exciting soccer-specific elements for our fans. The twelve weekly programs will begin on June 19th and run through September 4th.

We feel strongly that our new schedule provides the key elements and components that our fans have been demanding - a single destination day of the weeks for games, and a weekly program that is going to provide elements that go beyond just having a game. Our new television schedule, we believe, is the most fan-friendly organized broadcast venture that we have had in our brief history.

Some highlights: 19 consecutive weeks of MLS regular season matches on Saturdays - five on ABC, six on ESPN, and seven on ESPN2; twelve weekly, one-hour highlight shows on Monday at 11:00 p.m. ET on ESPN2; fourteen matches on ESPN2 will be at prime-time on Saturdays; nine of the nineteen Soccer Saturdays will feature two MLS matches, you can call them double-headers.

In addition, we are in final discussions with Univision, who has been a very important partner of Major League Soccer over the past number of years. We hope to announce our new Spanish-speaking package in the weeks to come. "

Risser Opening comments
"Let me just say that on behalf of ESPN and ABC Sports., it is our pleasure to continue the support of professional soccer in the United States, and especially Major League Soccer. We are very excited about some of the recent developments that have taken place in the League….

The league has recently announced the extension of several sponsorships, and we view that as a very positive development for the league.

We support all of the changes that Don has outlined, and especially the shortening of the season. This is a positive for the league, and it will get the league to conclude at an earlier time - certainly before the later season NFL and college football games kick in. We're thrilled that the owner/operators and Don are moving in that direction.

As for branding a Saturday schedule with consistency, we're very excited about that. All of the ABC games, with the exception of MLS Cup, will be on Saturdays. For those of you who watch, you know that we cross-promote heavily, and we think that it will be a very big positive for the soccer fan to know that Saturday is soccer day in America.

We have [over the past years], with varying degrees, been on Thursdays on Saturdays. We really made a concerted effort this year to find the best night to market and to find the night with the most consistency, and Saturday happened to be the best day.

We really think that this [Monday night show] is an exciting venture and an excellent way to be fan-friendly. This is going to be an action-oriented show, but we are still working on some of the details. This is a great opportunity to expose new viewers to soccer in the United States with an action-oriented show featuring the best of the MLS. We applaud the league for coming to us with their creativity on this, and we hope to make this into something that everybody in the soccer community is going to embrace."

Don Garber on the Overtime Period
"It was a totally unanimous decision. Our view is that is that having our games being as exciting as possible is something that we should strive for…. I don't think that anybody would argue that shootouts are exciting, but so are foul shots to conclude NBA games.

What we're trying to do is make the games as exciting as we can, and having a short overtime period to work with should help. If, over time, we find that this is not helping us achieve what we want to achieve, then we will continue to evolve. We're making the change that we will not have a contrived feature to end our games. I think that this feature will work well for us."

Garber on the death of the shootout
"I think what we have found -- and it took a couple of years to find that - was that the concept of rearranging the rules was based on the original thought that the American soccer fan had different tastes than soccer fans that lived outside the United States.

What we have found -- through research and through the fervor and furor that arose over this issue -- is that there are millions, if not tens of millions, of soccer fans in this country who have played the game without a shootout, whether they are five years old or have been playing through the amateur and professional ranks. These people watch soccer on TV and followed international soccer, either through us or through games that were coming over from overseas. This league had bypassed and underestimated this market, thinking that our future was based on the future fans here in America. Our strategy is, as I feel it should be, is to go back and shore up our relationship with the core soccer fan and build our fan base from these fans out, as opposed to trying to leap over the core fans and go after the fans that we don't know who they are or where they are.

The competition committee vote was unanimous, the board vote was unanimous, and it's something that we are very excited about."

Specifics on Realignment
"Let me lay out the conferences for you. The Western Conference is Colorado, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and San Jose. Central is Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, and Tampa Bay. Eastern is Miami, D.C. United, New England, and the MetroStars.

At this point, this was not construed to have any impact on the number of games, it was construed to try to create as much compelling interest in the regular season as we possibly can. The ability to have three conference races as opposed to two was the motivator there.

In addition, this would be able to support future expansion in a way that is logical. It also allows us a way to develop a wild-card system that would grant teams a spot in the playoffs based on their won-loss record as opposed to their conference standing."

Garber on Future Announcements
"The only announcements that we have not made - and it is simply because we have not been able to finalize many of the issues that relate to finalize our schedules, such as stadium availability, blackouts, and finalizing Cup locations - are our exact schedule and our exact Cup date, which we hope to announce on Friday."

Garber on the Potential Revamping the Playoff Format
"We're evaluating that… it's part of the analysis of our final schedule."

Garber on Broadcast Package
"What we were hoping for - I think the announcement got a little ahead of itself - what we were looking for was a consistent schedule. The vast majority, of not all of these games, with the exception of the ABC games are on Saturday night.

What we were looking for was a consistent place for fans to view our games as a consistent destination point. It works very well for us, because it gives us the broadcast coverage on the same nights when we do have our best in-stadium attendance. We were able to work with Steve and his crew on Monday nights for the our one-hour specials. We believe Monday night is the perfect night for that, and it will have lots of action. It's a time when we can sum up not only the game of the week, but also the other action that took place the previous week. It couldn't be a better scenario for us."

Garber on Fans Avoiding League because of Old Rules
"I think that there is a skepticism and a negativity that been buzzing out there among the hardest of our hard-core fans that has reached a momentum that we needed to address. I don't know if it was one million, five million, or ten million. We do know that there approximately sixty million people in the United States that consider themselves soccer fans, and we don't have sixty million people who are paying attention to our league by attending our games and watching them on TV. It wasn't necessary for us to quantify it as much as it was knowing that we did not have a big chunk of the core fans."

Realignment's Effect on Expansion
"As you know, the NFL has been able to expand and have lopsided numbers of teams in conferences. I think we're comfortable with that. We are working on schedules of 28 games, as well as 32 games. We were working until the wee hours the past couple of weeks, trying to finalize our schedule, and we were just not able to get it done in time. We're looking at both models."

Garber on the Structure of Overtime
"If we could convince FIFA that we should have an overtime going in one direction, as opposed to having it split, we would have preferred it since it compresses our time frame a little. We are going to play in accordance with FIFA's rules on overtime periods."

Garber on Shootouts in the Playoffs
"We will definitely not have shootouts on the playoffs."

Risser on the Time of Saturday Broadcast
"We are going to try to have the games primarily at 8:00 p.m., but we will have a few LA games at 10:00. It's going to be Saturday Soccer, but we will expect our viewers to be a little flexible with regards to start times. We'll try to keep it as consistent as possible."

Risser on the Format of the Monday Night Show
"By watching that one-hour show, you will be watching the best of MLS for the past week. One thing that we do know that we will have will be the condensed version of the game of the week, and we are working on the elements that we will have in addition to that. If anything significant happens in Major League Soccer, then it will have to be in that show - we don't want anything left out of it."

Overtime and the Scheduling of Television
"The average length of the shootout over the last four years is around 7 minutes, 34 seconds. I guess that what we will be faced with will be stretched a little bit more, with ten minutes of overtime versus a little under eight minutes of a shootout. But the good news is, once it's done at eleven or twelve, it's done. We are not that concerned about stretching a few minutes here… because it's a known amount of time. We're supportive of this, and we don't think that it'll have a radical effect on us."

Garber on the Overtime versus the Shootout
"What we have found was that it was the specific vehicle for deciding the game that was the issue. Even the hardcore fans - like the ones that were screaming at me to the point that I had police walking beside me when I was in Dallas during the playoffs against LA -- were screaming like crazy when they thought their team was going to win before they were screaming at me when they thought that their team was going to lose. Fans want their team to win, they just hate the fact that we have contrived a vehicle to get to that point."

Garber on the All-Star Broadcast
"We have been able to secure ABC coverage for Saturday, July 29th, for the All-Star game that weekend."

National Team Call-Ups during the Regular Season
"We have, for the first time, sat down with the Federation to work on a unified schedule. Part of what we're doing to finalize our final schedule is working with them throughout the soccer season. We are making every effort, as is the Federation, to coordinate schedules and to make some very hard compromises so that we are not competing for gate and not competing for players." Garber on the Competition between Gate and TV Ratings
"We have to be careful to balance our gate priorities and gate priorities, but I think that we all agree that by having a destination point for television viewing will create more interest in our games, and hopefully by having a place where our fans know that they will have a game locally in their market will hopefully be a motivator for them to go see their local team. It's a tough balance to manage."

Risser on the Competition of TV and Attendance
"From a television point of view, we're not really that concerned either…. We need to find the best consistent night, and Saturday night happens to be that night."

Garber on the location of MLS Cup 2000
"We're continuing to go back and forth between Tampa and Washington, D.C. on a finalized Cup date. We have had some changing priorities, including paying a great deal of attention to the end of the Olympics and its impact on our players. We've also been paying attention to stadium availability in Tampa, as well as D.C.'s continuing interest in hosting that game. This is a juggling act of a variety of different factors that we hope to put in place shortly. Our goal is to announce the date on Friday, but not the site."

Risser on the Flexibility of the Television Schedule
"During the beginning of the year, I think we'll show games based on what ESPN and MLS both agree are the most compelling matches. Near the end of the season, we want to look for flexibility to look for the best games…. I think we'll still identify a primary game at this point, and we'll try to stay with those. If we need to make a switch, we'll have that flexibility, and I think we'll have the League's support."

Garber on Scheduling of the U.S. Open Cup
"The best way to describe this is that we both believe that the U.S. Open Cup is an under-marketed, and not fully capitalized, property in this country. We are working on ways that we can more effectively manage this together, and the current plan would be to have the Finals outside of the end of the MLS season, with the games taking place mid-week during our season."

Garber on the Flexibility in Choosing New Sites for MLS Cup
"We had not really given it that much thought. But, as [the date for MLS Cup] gets earlier, there is no reason that we shouldn't be able to move the Cup to all the places where soccer is popular in this country."

Risser and SportsCenter highlights of Soccer Action
"I don't know if you've noticed this, but this year I have seen and increase in the coverage of the League. For a league that is in its infancy, it's going to come. I think that this is an issue that has been debated heavily with the League, and we feel that it is important that we let SportsCenter produce their own show.

I think we have made some strides, though. I think that we are better than where we were a couple of years ago, and I think that as the league grows and gets more attention, coverage will improve…. On ESPN, we are producing six hours of SportsCenter a day. A lot of times, I think it comes down to the editorial decisions of the guy that's putting the run-down together that day."

Garber on the Date for MLS Cup and the Olympics
"I think that we have to live in a world that is different from all other sports in how it relates to the Olympics and other international competition. To the extent that the Cup is later than October 1st, it certainly provides some more room for teams that have players that would need to be available for the playoffs and for Cup. But, at the end of the day, we have to make the right call at the right time. It's part of the variety of factors that we have been considering."

Garber on the Quality of Broadcasts
"I think that we, as a league, have to ensure that we have the best possible product to put forth. I have been hearing that many of our fans have real issues with our production. Much of what we are wrestling with is that many of our producers and camera folks are new to the sport. We are struggling with their level expertise. It's a growing process, much as it is with everything else with this league. We are not in the position to import international production people and keep them her for nine months out of the year. We're looking at it carefully. I have met with Winner to discuss it. It is an area of the sports world that I have a lot of experience with at the NFL, and we're going to do the best that we can to turn it around."

Garber on Improving the Quality of the Game
"This is the beginning. We're taking the first steps to improve the fortunes of this league, by taking care of what we can get our hands around quickly - around the things that I thought were the most glaring when I first came aboard.

But we're not done. We're trying to help this league grow, and it's not going to be starting and stopping with the shootout. There's still a lot of work that we need to do. It's not just about rules. It's about what we need to do to bring this game down to the fans and to communities. It's about outreach and improving the quality of play. It's about having a player strategy, as we previously announced, of focusing on younger players and keeping those players in the League.

To be fair to us, this is just the beginning. Give us some time to roll out some of the things that we are working on in the months to come."

Risser on the Ratings of MLS Games
"ABC regular season games have rotated around the 1.0 rating. Some have fallen a little South of that [0.87]. The MLS Cup have been around the 1.4 and 1.3 range. On ESPN, it's around 0.33 and ESPN2 is about a 0.27.

When we entered the league in 1996, we focused we knew that it would be a growth property. We have not overly focused on the ratings. We're encouraged by the ESPN2 ratings, as they grew a little bit. ESPN is down a little bit, but that may because ESPN2 provided a more consistent schedule.

We're still in a growth pattern here, and the League is still young. We're not disappointed by the ratings because we didn't have unrealistic expectations. I feel very strongly that we knew going in that the ratings were not going to be very large, and it is our job to build them."

Risser on the NHL Ratings for ESPN2
"They're similar to those of MLS. Depending on the match up, the [regular season ratings] are around the high 0.2, low 0.3 range. It's similar, very similar."