A title game in the snow actually shows why it’s wise for MLS to change its schedule.
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Over the weekend, the snowy scenes from the Canadian Premier League final between Atletico Ottawa and Cavalry FC went viral across the soccer internet. And, maybe predictably, some of those posts and retweets warned that scenes like what transpired in Ottawa’s 2-1 victory would become commonplace across Major League Soccer if the league goes through with flipping its calendar to a fall-to-spring schedule.
We saw similar assertions back in February when a winter storm forced the postponement of the first leg of Sporting Kansas City’s Concacaf Champions Cup series against Inter Miami, and to a lesser extent with Real Salt Lake’s snowy home win against LAFC early in the 2024 MLS regular season.
Then on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that owners could vote on a schedule switch at Thursday’s board of governors meeting, prompting even more panic among some that the MLS live match experience will become far colder and less enjoyable for fans in a lot of markets.
The truth isn’t as straightforward, of course, as this space and others have detailed before. Any schedule switch would include a winter break at least as long as Germany’s, and possibly as lengthy as in Denmark and Russia, where the mid-season gap is actually longer than the one between the end of one season and the start of the next.
Winter Wiggle Room
But beyond that, there’s another aspect of most of the famous snowy or icy fixtures in recent North American soccer history that is going unnoticed: Almost all of them were played because scheduling constraints meant postponement wasn’t an option.
The frigid Concacaf World Cup qualifying games in Edmonton and in St. Paul were part of extremely compact international windows with three matchdays stacked over seven days. Kansas City and Miami had to play both legs of their Concacaf tie in time for the winner to begin the next round a week later, while also balancing the beginning of the MLS league schedule. Ottawa and Cavalry were playing during a rare, devoted national TV window for the league on CBC.
Currently, the MLS Cup Playoffs already run from late October to early December. And while the league has never faced the kind of conditions seen in Ottawa on Sunday, the 2016 and 2017 finals in Toronto and 2013 final in Kansas City were quite chilly. The threat of snowy conditions for a potential 2025 final on Dec. 6 in Philadelphia or Cincinnati is real.
But in a flipped MLS schedule that begins in late July or early August, and one where the playoffs begin in late April or early May, those December and February games are just run-of-the-mill league fixtures that can be shuffled if circumstances require.
Shuffling Schedules Isn’t New
We see that happen somewhat regularly in MLS due to severe summer weather. In 2025 alone, Austin FC’s home match against LAFC and the Houston Dynamo’s home fixture against the LA Galaxy were both rescheduled because of sudden, severe weather.
And anything, winter weather systems are slower developing and more predictable than their summer counterparts, and would be easier to maneuver around.
There are other mitigating steps MLS could also take. The reported single-table format with divisions that club owners are considering would potentially give the league more flexibility to schedule creatively so that colder markets play fewer of their home fixtures in December and February. During the 2025 season, there was also a move toward more daytime kickoffs in the early and late months. Leaning into that trend further could help make games more palatable for fans to attend in person in colder weather.
There is also still the question of the Leagues Cup. It could potentially be re-imagined as a tournament to be played during the winter regular season break, exclusively in warmer weather MLS markets. That would ease some fixture congestion, making rescheduling the occasional winter postponement easier.