MLS to stick with existing schedule...for now

Garber has been a strong advocate for a schedule shift for years and is not alone. Many of MLS's most progressive owners also support the change. 

Their logic is simple: switching MLS to an August-May season (with a brief winter break over the holidays) will align MLS's transfer windows with Europe's, free up summers for international competitions like the World Cup and reduce the number of premium American sports airing against the MLS Playoffs.

But support for the change isn't universal. The league's northern teams — New England, Montréal, Toronto, Chicago, Minnesota, Colorado, Salt Lake and Vancouver — view it as an existential threat. With much of their revenue coming from ticket sales, these teams rightfully fear the economic impact of a winter-heavy season.

"There are challenges for the northern teams that need to be addressed through this scheduling construct, to no surprise of anyone," an anonymous MLS general manager said in the league's annual GM survey. "Not just games: it’s training as well.”

Fans seem aligned with the northern teams on this issue. They enjoy summer soccer and believe that winter scheduling would cause game-day experiences to suffer across the league. The North teams would take the biggest hit, but many other key MLS markets would struggle, too. December isn't Montréal-level cold in New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Cincinnati and Seattle. Still, it isn't exactly warm, either, and teams in those locations would likely lose a significant amount of their casual attendees in a winter-heavy season.

While a schedule change is off the table for now, MLS's Board of Governors is exploring short-term structural changes to the league's existing season. Commissioner Garber announced that the league was experimenting with "different competitive formats," particularly for the poorly run, drawn-out MLS Playoffs. Fans and GMs alike support that experimentation.

"We can’t keep playing where our season ends in October and then all of a sudden you play a round of playoff games and then you have an international break, then you play another couple rounds of playoff games, and you’re in a thick of it, and then you have another international break,” said another anonymous GM in the survey. “I mean, you lose all momentum as a team. It’s terrible for our game, fans, everybody. I just don’t see how it works."

"Right now, the playoffs start, playoffs go on with international breaks, college and NFL football are on," said another. "My friends just kind of stop watching it."

While these short-term experiments happen, MLS's Board of Governors will continue researching the financial impact of a full-on schedule shift — but no shift will occur until 2027 at the earliest.

MLS will return for Matchday 8 of the 2025 season on Saturday, April 12.