MLS Leaders Think New Schedule Will Be ‘Transformative’

ATLANTA — MLS is amped about its new schedule, which brings it in line with nearly every other pro soccer league in the world.

Top MLS brass touted the league’s upcoming shift to a fall-to-spring calendar in Atlanta this week. The league’s Board of Governors voted in November to approve the new schedule starting in 2027.

Clark Hunt, FC Dallas chairman and CEO, said he thinks the shift will be “transformative” for MLS.

Currently, the rest of the world takes its break while MLS plays in the summer. This means that it’s harder for MLS to compete for top talent internationally, because players have minimal rest time if they’re jumping from Europe to the U.S., and they’re arriving or departing in the middle of a season.

With the international schedule, MLS clubs should be more competitive in the transfer market without the logistical barrier for top talent.

“If we want to be a major player on the global stage, we’ve got to play the same game the rest of the world’s playing, even if it’s a little harder for us,” MLS commissioner Don Garber told reporters.

Garber, Hunt, and others were speaking at the Sports Business Journal Business of Soccer conference.

The change will usher in a natural break for the World Cup, another selling point for players considering the league. This summer, MLS will pause for seven weeks, the most significant break it’s taken for the World Cup by over a month.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the upside of the switch like this week’s news that Egypt captain Mo Salah would leave Premier League side Liverpool.

Garber said he’s not sure the league needs to get involved with backing deals for global stars with lengthy, established careers—as it did with David Beckham and Lionel Messi—but the outgoing commissioner still said he would “love” to see Salah in MLS and thinks it “would provide him with a great platform.”

Team executives including New York City FC president and CEO Brad Sims and San Diego FC owner Mohamed Mansour also spoke highly of Salah at the event. “I mean, I would love to have Mo Salah,” Sims said Wednesday, adding that NYCFC hadn’t spoken with the player or his representatives. (Somewhat awkwardly, NYCFC is part of the same ownership group as Salah’s longtime hated rivals at Manchester City.)

“I think [attracting top talent] is one of the main drivers behind this, right, and I’m confident that that will happen,” Dave Baldwin, president of business operations for Chicago Fire FC, told reporters Wednesday. “I do think when the schedules are a little misaligned it can make it difficult.”

Another upside is that MLS playoffs will no longer have to compete for viewers with the NFL and college football, though late May is also a crowded TV window with NBA and NHL playoffs, WNBA, MLB, and Roland Garros. But a big change will be playing outside during the winter for teams in cold weather markets like Chicago, Minnesota, Colorado, and Salt Lake City. MLS has said it will hold a winter break—as many international leagues do—and try to “limit the number of home matches in northern markets during December and February.”

To accommodate the transition between the old schedule and the new, MLS announced last week it will hold a “sprint season” next year from February to May. “It looks like a short season that will come and go, and everybody will forget it as we go into the new calendar,” Garber said on a panel.

A spokesperson for the MLS Players Association tells Front Office Sports that the league and union don’t have an agreement yet on a calendar shift “in general.”

“Our focus remains on getting that finalized first, so we don’t have any comment on the sprint season announcement,” the MLSPA spokesperson says.