The 2023 MLS Schedule Could Bring Playoff Change, Average Attendance Decline

After weeks of speculation, Major League Soccer released its 2023 regular season schedule on Tuesday, bringing some expected changes and hinting at more that have not been finalized.

The season opens on the last weekend of February and runs through the third full weekend of October, a similar trajectory to the last several years. But more than ever before, matches are concentrated on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, in part due to the league’s new world-wide streaming deal with Apple TV. And there’s also an extended break in July and August for the newly created Leagues Cup competition that will include all 47 teams from MLS and Liga MX.

The most telling aspect of the schedule might be what wasn’t included: The date of the 2023 MLS Cup final.

Here’s what we learned or might infer from the new fixture list.

1) The Playoff Format Could Change

As The Athletic had first reported back in October, the league appears to be considering an expansion to its playoff format to create more high-stakes games for its new TV partner.

The timing of the end of the regular season, combined with the lack of information about the playoffs certainly suggest that is the case.

This year’s season will end on October 21, the first playable weekend after the October international match window. And the league release also said MLS will be idle during the November international match window, which presumably means there will be competitive matches played after that window.

If the postseason is going to stretch beyond the November window, it’s unlikely to take the form of the 14-team, single-elimination format of the last few years.

According to The Athletic, the most likely new format is a World Cup-style postseason in which eight teams from each conference qualify into four, four-team groups. After round-robin play, the top two teams in each group would advance to conference semifinals, finals and then the MLS Cup.

2) Average Attendance Could Decline

Although MLS set a record for gross number of spectators in 2022, the record average attendance from 2017 of 22,113 spectators per match is still standing. And the 2023 average attendance could decline because of scheduling related to the league’s new TV deal and The Leagues Cup.

The first part of this is the shift of the overwhelming majority of games to Saturday nights, including those in colder climates that previously preferred to schedule more day games in the spring and fall months. The reason for this is MLS will produce an NFL Redzone-style show on Saturday evenings to cover all the action from across the league. That would be tougher to do if games were stretched across a 12-hour window, as they were at times in previous spring and fall Saturdays.

The result is that Toronto, Philadelphia, New England, both New York teams, both Ohio teams, Chicago, Minnesota, Salt Lake and Colorado will all host multiple night games before the weekend of April 1. Those could be very tough sells at the gate.

Then in the summer, the league takes a 35-day break for the Leagues Cup in July and August when regular season attendances are typically highest. And to fit in that competition, the league will play five full midweek matchdays that fall during the average American school year. Two of those come in May, and one each in late August, September and October.

Teams may be able to make up the ticket revenues lost from less-than-ideal regular season kickoff times with more tickets sold to Leagues Cup fixtures and a larger postseason. But for people who monitor the average regular season attendance as a barometer of the league’s vibrancy, one result of this new schedule could be bad press resulting from a declining figure.

3) This Could Be A Record-Long MLS Season

If reports about a potential playoff expansion are true, that likely means the MLS Cup final will be played in early December, as it has been in most recent years. If so, that combined with the late-February start will make this the longest season in MLS history from start to finish.

That is actually probably a good thing, since the number of gsames the average MLS team will play will only slightly increase. An offseason of three months or less is the norm around the world, though it typically falls in the summer months in the major European leagues.

In MLS, teams that don’t reach the playoffs are still facing more than four months without competitive matches if the 2024 season begins around the same time as the 2023 campaign. That’s longer than most coaches and technical staffs would like, given the importance of maintaining fitness levels in an endurance-based sport.

4) MLS Is Asserting More Control Over Clubs

It might seem like a small detail, but MLS insisting that the overwhelming majority of kickoffs come at 7:30 p.m. local time represents an exertion of power over clubs that we haven’t really seen before. It also doesn’t necessarily make sense, even in the name of Apple’s new TV deal.

For teams in warmer climates in the summer, MLS could still maintain the uniformity of games kicking off at the bottom of each hour while allowing clubs like Orlando, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte and Miami to kick off at 8:30 p.m. local time.

Because of summer weather patterns, there’s a strong chance games in those markets will face weather delays anyway with storms that frequently erupt in the early evening.

The same is also true of earlier season games in cold-weather markets like Salt Lake and Colorado, which could easily kick off an hour or two earlier local time while still conforming to the overall pattern of games concentrated on Saturday evenings between 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.