Tuesday, September 14, 2010

MLS Expands Season

MLS announced today that the season will be expanding from 30 games to 34 games next year as a result of the two new expansion franchises joining the league. The schedule will remain balanced. MLS has been expanding and looks to keep expanding with Montreal joining after next season. With Montreal the league will have 19 teams. MLS is going to get to a point where there are more than 20 teams which poses a scheduling problem. In order for the schedule to remain balanced with more teams joining, the leagues has to add more games. So if you have 24 teams, that means each team plays 46 games for the regular season with 23 of them being at home. Obviously 46 games is way too much for MLS. To be honest, I think 34 games is really pushing it. Teams had 15 home games this year, they'll have 17 next year. I think 15 games was pretty close to being a perfect number. You throw in a friendly here and there and you're left with around 17 or 18 games. Then if you throw in Super Liga or the Champions League that number can go up to 20+. The more home games you add the tougher it is for season ticket holders to make it to all of them. Attendance throughout MLS has been improving but it's not at a point where the league should be adding games because the demand is there (something the NFL is currently dealing with). Adding more games also makes it difficult for teams to focus on the Champions League. The schedule is tight as it is, more games makes it even tighter. It looks like the most sensible thing to do going forward is to keep the season at 30 games and not have a balanced schedule, which sucks because I think having a balanced schedule is awesome. But it's going to get to a point where the schedule is going to be to tight and teams will be thin as a result of roster size limits and the cap. The league is going to be looking into this in October and hopefully they come up with a way to make it all work.

About John's previous post. I'm not to high on the idea of using ratings from sites like sky sports. There's just too much subjectivity there. I do agree though, draft based leagues are much better than salary cap leagues.

-Andrew

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