By surfing the playoff expansion trend, MLS has devalued the regular season

NEven the most gifted medium could muster much of the aura of a big game from a match between 10th- and 11th-ranked teams in MLS’s Western Conference. Still, there is a potential play-off spot, depending on Sporting Kansas City’s outcome against Minnesota United on Saturday.

It’s the last weekend of the regular competition: Decision Day, in competition marketing language. It will be Thank-A-Commish-Day in Kansas City or Minnesota if any of these mediocre teams still dream of lifting the MLS Cup at the final whistle.

Minnesota fired their long-time manager, Adrian Heath, after a 5-1 loss to Los Angeles FC earlier this month and have won two of their past ten games. Kansas City was winless in their first ten MLS games. Both could still be crowned champions in December.

That includes Montreal, which has won one of its last eight and has 12 wins and 16 losses from 33 games. That includes the San Jose Earthquakes and Dallas, both of which have three wins in their past 16 games. And the Chicago Fire (two wins in 10). Nashville has already qualified despite going on vacation for the second half of the season (four wins in the past 16).

This is possible because on February 21 – four days before the start of the season – MLS announced radical changes to the play-off structure.

In 2022, 14 of the 28 teams qualified and the postseason lasted 13 games over three weeks. (The World Cup in winter shortened the timing). Now 18 of the 29 MLS teams – the top nine in each conference – make the playoffs. This means: a 34-game regular season only eliminates a third of clubs – 62% of the league makes it to the postseason.

Like any playoff structure, MLS rewards teams that handle the pressure of win-or-go-home games. But this format only punishes the most egregious flops in the regular season. On Decision Day, only six of the 29 games have already been eliminated; three of which – Miami, Toronto and LA Galaxy – have the highest payroll costs in the MLS. Even New York City FC, who are 13th out of 15th in the Eastern Conference and have won eight of 33 games, with 30 points fewer than Supporters Shield-winning FC Cincinnati, could make the play-offs.

Ten teams compete for the last five places. And so the meh of MLS, sides like Kansas City and Minnesota have reason to be grateful for the generosity of the league’s executives who have kept their campaigns alive. “We have been trying to find the right format for a long time. Playing here in North America, we know the importance of playoffs to boost the energy in the latter part of the season,” said MLS Commissioner Don Garber. told reporters earlier this year.

That hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement for the standard product. But it’s true that without the drama of a relegation battle, it’s harder for North American teams to stay relevant when they’re at the bottom of the pile. And the expansion would have looked like a masterstroke if, as seemed plausible for a few weeks, Inter Messi (to give them their official name) had sneaked into the play-offs, created a compelling storyline and sought out the CEOs of ticketing companies gone to new yachts. .

However, energy is a finite resource. What you produce in September and October, you juice in March and April. For the casual fan, someone who might attend a few games a year based on the opposition, the weather, ticket prices and whether there is something better to do with their time, the stakes of an early season match are so layer that is almost underground. And while the forgiving format keeps many teams scrapping until the end, it eases the tension for the best sides; Cincinnati qualified for the playoffs in August.

MLS is an instinctively experimental, in-love league ingenuity from the beginning. It’s tempting to see this latest move as some kind of back-to-back psychological flex, with Garber, the proud parent, drawing a line on a growth chart on the wall and seeing how much bigger his kid is. In 2014, there were only 19 teams in the entire league.

Even then, the playoff structure consisted of 10 teams and four rounds. This year I finished in the top seven at every conference gives access to a best-of-three round after the eighth- and ninth-place sides faced off in a wildcard eliminator. These all go straight to penalties if they are level after 90 minutes. Extra time returns for the conference semifinals and finals and the MLS Cup itself, all single-elimination matches.

Previously, winning a conference led to a first-round bye and all matches were single knockouts. Now, the best-of-three series will offer valuable home field advantage to the top four finishers from each conference, which should reduce the risk of upsets. The first seeds play against the wildcard winners.

It seems strange that the second round of a five-phase affair is a spherical best-of-three, while the other rounds are one-off eliminators. And it’s inconsistent that some phases get extra time and other phases go straight to a firefight. Of course, every team wants to play in front of their fans, but a two-legged format would have achieved this without the potential need for a third match.

But any analysis that focuses on sporting injustice or common sense misses the main driver of postseason inflation: money. MLS is simply surfing a broader trend toward more knockout games, albeit in a particularly powerful way as it rides the wave. UEFA and FIFA have blown up the European Championship and World Cup with profit-driven expansions that place even more demands on overworked players.

In 2020, the 32-team NFL expanded its playoffs from 12 to 14 teams. The MLB, which has 30 clubs, went from 10 to 12 clubs last year. The NHL, with 32 franchises, has not expanded its (non-Covid-modified) playoffs beyond 16 teams since 1979-80. The NBA competes with the MLS for the most excesses: including the play-in tournament (playoffs to reach the playoffs!), 20 of the 30 teams qualify. The College Football Playoff will shift from four to twelve teams in 2024-2025: and why wouldn’t it, if the number of teams is tripled? triples income?

With live sports cherished by broadcasters in the age of cord-cutting, it’s inevitable that leagues and their TV paymasters will expand the number of games and, of course, the hyped-up postseasons attract larger audiences. Last seasons about half a million viewers watched MLS regular season matches. But the 2022 MLS Cup final, a thriller won by Gareth Bale’s LAFC, seduced 2.16 million viewers.

After signing a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal with Apple, MLS is now trying to convince customers to pay for live games on Apple TV+. The more matches available to stream, the more attractive the package (though Apple and MLS do). do not publish target group data).

“More games are generally better than fewer,” says Patrick Crakes, media consultant and former Fox Sports executive. “The amount of inventory drives the media economy. A general rule: if you expand your playoffs, there will be money somewhere. While it may upset purists, he doubts extended postseasons will have a negative effect on viewing or advertising earlier in the campaign.

“When you unpack the objective truth of this, the economic numbers show up really nicely,” he says, noting that people in the NBA “have been talking about ‘nobody starts playing until Christmas’ for a long time,” but rights values ​​continue to rise . And with player salaries and overheads rising, MLS, like any other business, needs to grow revenues.

“It was the right thing for them to do and expanding the playoffs is what everyone is doing,” Crakes said. “That’s what Apple needed, to show more value by giving them $250 million, which was twice what they would get anywhere else. That deal with Apple made it possible for Messi to come. You can link extended play-offs to Messi. That’s really possible.”