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Jeff Carlisle, U.S. soccer correspondent
CARSON, California – MLS commissioner Don Garber said that the league is dealing with an increasingly crowded calendar, even as MLS ponders aligning the league calendar to match that of Europe.
Speaking to reporters at his annual State of the League address, Garber indicated that the league had previously considered changing the league calendar to a fall/spring format – as opposed to the current February to December schedule – in 2004-05 as well as 2014-15 time frame. He confirmed that there is more momentum around a possible change this time, but plenty of work remains to be done among the league’s stakeholders.
“I do think that we are considering more than ever before this opportunity to change, but it’s not something that we’re ready to talk about right now,” Garber said. “The schedule does get more crowded. The summers, in particular June now, that has been taken up by most of the international tournaments. [It] has us digging in even deeper than we ever had in the past, but we’ve got a lot of work to do and that work is ongoing.”
In addition to its league schedule, MLS now finds itself juggling the Leagues Cup, U.S. Open Cup, the Club World Cup, as well as competing international tournaments. Garber said that the league would be taking a break in play during the 2026 World Cup and for part of the 2025 Club World Cup. Such is the level of congestion that not every team will be able to enter all of those tournaments. Only eight teams participated in the USOC in 2024, a tournament won by LAFC.
“We will participate in the US Open Cup again next year. We will likely have more teams and believe that tournament play, if we could manage it with 30 teams where at least each team is in one tournament, it’s good for the club, it’s good for the fans. We want teams to have an opportunity to lift a trophy and maybe if some of them could lift multiple trophies, that’s a good thing. But it is going to be nearly impossible for all teams to be able to participate in all tournaments. It’s just not enough [dates] during the schedule with or without any change in the calendar.”
Garber added that there will be changes to the Leagues Cup format, and ESPN had previously reported that only 18 of the league’s 30 teams next season would take part. Garber said the idea is “we need more MLS versus Liga MX matches.” He added, “I think make it more focused on what it is that we’re trying to achieve, which is this great rivalry between our two leagues.
The commissioner continued to tout the success of the league, noting that MLS is now the second most attended league in the world with 12.1 million fans. It’s worth noting that MLS this year had 29 teams, and will add it’s 30th team in San Diego next season, considerably more than other leagues around the world. The English Premier League, for example, has 20 teams.
Garber also noted that the league continues to benefit from the presence of Inter Miami and Argentina international forward Lionel Messi, even as the Herons were bounced from the MLS Cup playoffs in the conference semifinal round by Atlanta United.
“Obviously it’s been an enormous phenomenon, more than I had expected, I think more than anybody expected,” Garber said about Messi’s presence. “The away game crowds are more than we would’ve imagined. The popularity of Leo is remarkable. His love for the league, his kids, his family; we did release the MVP video this morning, had 250 kids lining up into stadium on the field. And Leo was emotional.” Garber added, “He’s remarkable. He’s a really, really, really special guy and we really appreciate the fact that he’s in our league.”
The league’s broadcast rights deal with Apple TV, now at the end of its second season, was also a topic of discussion. Garber said that MLS was “very pleased” with the viewership numbers, though he declined to provide precise viewership numbers. Garber said that it was difficult to find an appropriate metric to define success.
“We have 12 to 15 games on a Saturday night. Should we be measuring one game like we were measuring on ESPN or should we measure the totality of all 12 games? Is it 12 games? Is it 15? Is it on Wednesday when we have eight? So what is the right comparison?
“We have over a million viewers watching those games on a Saturday night, the collective viewership of those games. We’re proud of that. That’s way more than we’ve ever had for a regular season match. We’re having more than that watch our playoff games…We’re pleased. They’re pleased. It’s early, and at some point soon we’re all going to have a measurement that the industry is going to accept and we’ll be the first ones to be happy to talk about it.
“We’re very much leaned into this idea of destination viewership, intentional viewership, a partnership with a company that understands the customer relationship and is just getting into this business. So we’re patient. I don’t know how patient the media is, but we’re patient and we’re committed.”
Garber added that there would be no big changes in roster spending, even as he noted that of the teams taking part in the Club World Cup, the two MLS entrants – Miami and the Seattle Sounders – are in the “lower quadrant” in terms of transfer value of their players. While he said, that the league is “working on ways that we can provide each team with some opportunity to be more competitive,” he doesn’t anticipate a significant increase in spending on players.
“MLS is constantly every year looking at ways that we could incentivize our teams to use their resources better to be very, very productive and efficient,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a collective bargaining agreement with the MLSPA. We’ve got a great relationship with them, but I don’t anticipate anything significant happening in the next couple of years.”