Top MLS Voices Advocate for International Schedule Change

While Major League Soccer owners are waiting to implement a major calendar shift to a fall-to-spring schedule, momentum continues to build around the change.

“One of the attractive things of the calendar flip—if that happens, it’s why obviously it’s been discussed and talked about and thought about deeply—it would be to align better and it would make everything more efficient,” MLS Season Pass lead play-by-play announcer Jake Zivin said on Front Office Sports Today during the MLS All-Star festivities in Austin.

Last week, after the league’s board of governors did not vote on the change like some expected, MLS commissioner Don Garber said he “would rather take our time and get it right.” 

Moving from its traditional winter-to-fall schedule to the fall-to-spring timing would match MLS with most of global soccer, including the Big Five European leagues of the U.K.’s Premier League, Spain’s LaLiga, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A, and France’s Ligue 1.

“I think it would help with international breaks mostly, and the playoffs that won’t get interrupted by international breaks, and I think that’s very important,” MLS insider Tom Bogert told FOS Today.

Zivin highlighted how the shift would help align MLS with other leagues’ transfer windows. “If you talk to the chief soccer officers of all these clubs, there can be challenges with buying players or selling players because it’s misaligned with Europe,” he said. “You don’t want to part ways with some of your best players right now in the summer with 10 games to go if you’re competing for a championship. But it’s the offseason right now in Europe, so, that’s when they want your good player. If you align it, that helps the business aspect of it.”

The Flip Side

Despite the momentum, shifting the schedule wouldn’t be without its challenges.

“Everybody has their own ideas of growth and everything that they want,” Bogert said, noting the intricacies of flipping the calendar. “That’s difficult in a country as big as this because right now it’s hard to play in Austin in the summer and it’s going to be hard to play in Minnesota in the winter. So, there are details to be ironed out.”

Weather was a concern for Garber, too. “It’s getting hotter, and that’s clearly an issue, playing through the depth and the core of the warmest months in many of our markets,” he said last week.

Moving forward, it appears the earliest MLS could shift its calendar would be 2027.