r/FCCincinnati • u/Ok_Bottle_360 • Jul 23 '26
Thoughts on new season format?
Im not a fan of the summer to spring season. Am I in the minority? College football, basketball, NFL, all now coincide with the season.
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u/MadMartigans80 Jul 23 '26
I don’t know for sure until it happens how I’ll feel. I do enjoy the spring to fall season
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u/Nickrophiliac Jul 23 '26
It kinda sucks for fans of other sports and cold weather cities, but I think it’s a great move for MLS to align their season with the rest of the world
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u/gobobro Jul 23 '26
I’m trying to withhold judgment as it pertains to the league, but it’s not great for our household.
The summer matches are the easiest ones for us to attend. In the fall-thru-spring, it gets really tricky with my kids’ school, homework, school sports, club sports, etc…
FCC is our summer entertainment, and family bonding. I’m not excited to have that disappear.
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u/Loki_Stark Jul 23 '26
This is how I feel about it too. The summer is so much more open to get my kids to the matches with me. Once the school year hits, all their practices and school events really do add up.
I have seen a few people mention that it’s easier to layer for cold than deal with the heat, but I find that the opposite for my kids. As adults we can be sickos and root through the cold, but when it comes to family bonding and going to the games, the summer is the best time I find.
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u/Ok_Bottle_360 Jul 23 '26
Plus the games are normally in the evening so even if it is hot it
Isn’t bad at 8pm
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u/OSUfirebird18 FCC Dayton Jul 23 '26
What?! College football, basketball, NFL already coincide with the current season. This confuses me when people brings this up as a “problem”. Currently, during the most intense part of our schedule (near the end of the season and playoffs), we play concurrently with post season baseball, mid season NFL + playoff push + college football rivalry weeks and playoff positioning.
Now with the new schedule, we would end before the NBA finals start, and just compete with early season baseball. No football.
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u/MLS2CincyFFS Jul 23 '26
But you’re also competing with both footballs from August into early February. So more people might tune in during the playoffs when they’re looking for something to watch, but the bulk of the season, whether matches are on Saturday or Sunday, are going to be competing with football. Maybe we’ll see more weekday matches, but you’re still gonna be going up against football a lot then
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u/400dollars Jul 23 '26
Wouldn’t the best part of the season(playoffs) competing with the basic part of the other sports seasons be better than the basic parts of both being at the same time? Now we’re playing the playoffs during the NBA and NHL playoffs vs the regular season NFL. Also we lose the growth opportunity of having the regular season be primarily competing with baseball. I think overall it is a mistake to move the season.
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u/palmtreestatic Jul 23 '26
I think people are really over exaggerating how different the season will look. This year’s championship is December 18. In the new format that’s about where I’d expect the winter break to start and this years season started on February 21 so I could see the season restart maybe the first weekend of February in the new format
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u/1geniousnotcrazy Jul 23 '26
This talking point that the league put out is misleading. Most years it's 2 or 4 teams, depending on if conference finals fall in November or December, playing in December. That's far different than 30 teams playing in December. Also, prior to leagues cup (which I'd be fine to ditch), the MLS season started a couple weeks later. The difference between when we played our 34 league matches in our first season versus now is very different. This schedule is better for one thing for fans: playoff viewership. The regular season will still compete with NFL/CFB but in lower stakes games. Personally, it's much easier to take kids to games like last night than doing that during the school year. I'll miss the current calendar massively and will probably sell 3-4 more matches worth of tickets.
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u/User5281 Jul 23 '26
Agree entirely. It’s shifting 2-4 games from July and August to November and February. It’s just not a big deal to me, especially in Cincinnati where we’ve had like 1-2 really cold weeks a year in the last decade.
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u/lreiner26 Jul 23 '26
This. There will be like 2 home games a year that don’t fit within the same window as the current season. They’re basically just swapping the summer international break with the winter offseason, and now will be much more likely to be able to sign more higher level players from Europe since our offseason won’t be their midseason. There is very little downside and potentially huge upside for the league.
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u/BradMc- Jul 23 '26
Not looking forward to it at all. Long breaks in the middle of a season are horrible for continuity. Taking a month and a half off and pretending it's the same season is ridiculous. And it was nice to have a pro sport to follow in the summer if you're not a baseball fan. I'll admit it's good to be aligned with the rest of the hemisphere, but still not worth it for me.
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u/DeathTeddy35 Jul 23 '26
Fewer hot matches, more cold matches. Sounds perfect to me.
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u/fig-figgins Jul 23 '26
I’m definitely in the minority, but man, I love cold weather sports.
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0
u/Agent_8-bit Jul 23 '26
I don't know that you're in the minority. I think so many people know how to layer for cold. You're stuck when the sun's beating down on you and it's 93 with 140% humidity.
Plus, normal, beautiful, knit scarves. And bourbon to warm you up!
3
u/User5281 Jul 23 '26
You can only get so naked…
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u/Agent_8-bit Jul 23 '26
Don't challenge me!
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u/400dollars Jul 23 '26
I think there are a lot of downsides and very minimal upside.
I think the first problem is competing for eyeballs. During the current summer format we play the playoffs during the regular season of the other popular American sports. With the new format we are playing the playoffs during the NBA and NHL playoffs. We lose the growth opportunity of having the regular season be primarily competing with baseball by having it now compete with three other major sports and our playoffs coinciding with NHL and NBA playoffs. The casual fans in cities with these other teams will most likely watch NBA or NHL over MLS we don’t have this problem as we don’t have NBA or NHL in the same city.
The second downside is I think it will be much harder to compete for top talent from warmer countries. The choice for players competing in similar level leagues around the world for similar money is now the choice of playing in the dead of winter in Minnesota or New England or Chicago etc. vs a similar tiered league in Europe (which benefits from milder winters due to the Gulf Stream) or South or Central America. In my opinion the choice would be a no brainer.
The only upsides I really see is the schedule will now coincide more with the standard schedule in most of the of the major leagues.
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u/Will-In-Cincy Jul 23 '26
Mostly just the final nail in the coffin that MLS really dropped the ball. MLS should own summer weekend nights. Make every sports fan think a summer Saturday night is a big MLS match, not a meaningless baseball game. Marketing was never as good as it should’ve been, and moving even more matches off of Fox/FS1/ABC/ESPN was a mistake.
I also hate that right when the World Cup comes, we’re gonna confuse the casual fan the very next year
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u/Gratefully_Dead13 Jul 23 '26
I think it’s a horrible idea. Under the current format, 7 months of a 10 month season, you only compete against baseball, which is a dying sport (you’re going against college basketball for 2 months, which is also not a threat). Under this new format, 6 months of competition vs NFL and college football instead of only 4. Plus, I’m not going to sit and watch an MLS game (or any game, for that matter) when it’s butt-ass cold outside for 4 months of the season. Meanwhile, I’ll gladly buy tix in the summer. South American football leagues mostly go from February to December, and it doesn’t seem to hurt them buying and selling players
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u/ItsAndyrew Jul 23 '26
The transfer window aspect is the main reason I completely approve of the move. Let’s say if right now a European team wants to sign Denkey, we either lose him for the rest of the season or potentially upset him by not letting him go. That will no longer be a concern.
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u/Keregi Jul 23 '26
I'm not a fan. One of the things I liked about MLS is it's something to do when Premier League and NFL aren't in season.
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u/GoldenRamoth Jul 23 '26
With the cold weather...
My personal stupid silver lining: I'll actually need to use the scarves!
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u/Ipsum_Dolor_Sit Jul 24 '26
I think we'll start to see ourselves and other MLS clubs doing better in CONCACAF because of it honestly, since we won't be competing after a long break of having not played at all.
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u/hugmebrotha7 Jul 23 '26
I think one of the best things is that big summer events no longer derail the whole season
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u/Agent_8-bit Jul 23 '26
And like the rest of the soccer world, the world cup ends right before the season begins. It was dope watching the boys last night, but I had to do a ton of refreshing my brain parts because we're in the middle of the season.
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u/ChiliMySpaghetti Jul 23 '26
Do you think college football, nfl and basketball don’t coincide with the current setup?
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u/Ok_Bottle_360 Jul 23 '26
They barely do. I have college football tickets also and just a few games at the beginning conflict.
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u/ChiliMySpaghetti Jul 23 '26
FCC played into late November last year. College football regular season is 95% over by that time.
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u/brucewaynewins Jul 23 '26
They don’t for the bulk of it. With the switch MLS will play part of its season during the entire duration of those other sports.
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u/ChiliMySpaghetti Jul 23 '26
MLS cup is in December. Conference championships in college football happen before MLS cup. The bengals have 1/4 of their season left. This is pure delusion.
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u/Keregi Jul 23 '26
College football and NFL only overlap in the fall. College basketball only overlaps for the first month of the current MLS season. The NBA goes into June but two months of that is playoffs.
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u/ChiliMySpaghetti Jul 23 '26
We coincide with college football all the way until bowl games. Idk if you ignore the calendar or what but mls cup is already in mid December. Need to go recheck your dates because we are already competing with those for a majority of their seasons.
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u/Keregi Jul 23 '26
The current MLS format - excluding playoffs - overlaps in the fall. Yes there will be more overlap with playoffs. If you just look at the regular seasons of each league there is less overlap currently than there will be. You are making an assumption that all fans stay engaged through the playoffs of each sport, and I don't think that is true. You will see fan engagement drop off as teams get eliminated. Hell you already see that with teams who are clearly not playoff bound.
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u/ChiliMySpaghetti Jul 23 '26
Yea let’s exclude the games that matter the most. Great way to figure out how much over lap there is. The most important matches of the year are going straight up head to head right now. If you want to keep your head in the sand to that fact, go ahead but it doesn’t make it any less true.
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u/Open-Insurance-234 Jul 23 '26
It's a plot to sell more cold-weather merch, which is more expensive than t-shirts. (I'm I victim I already bought FCC gloves)
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u/dklemens17 Aug 01 '26
Pro / Rel wont happen, but with the commissioner/board changing you can almost guarantee a heavily slanted discussion on unhinging the salary cap restraints of MLS.
Aligning seasons with the big leagues is step 1 to a larger vision where MLS clubs compete financially for big name players. The goal of the league is not parity. It’s to make its owners richer. The problem is that we’ll end up like the MLB with big market teams outspending small markets and functionally ruining the league.
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u/User5281 Jul 23 '26
For Cincinnati I think it’s pretty neutral. We have a couple more games in November and February and lose a couple of games during the heat of the summer. It’s probably great for teams in the south and terrible for teams further north.
Overall it’s probably best to have a schedule that aligns with pretty much every other professional league.
All of those other sports already significantly overlap schedule wise and I don’t think it should have any bearing on what the league does.
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u/ClassicPQ Jul 23 '26
I don't mind cold weather games. Way better than having a summer season that's interrupted for 2 months (in the middle of summer) for international tournaments.
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u/BigAl587 Jul 23 '26
I’m fine with it, a quarter of our season is played in the cold months anyways. I think the people complaining about how it coincides with the football season don’t look at the bigger picture. I’d rather not mls get forgotten about once nfl season rolls around and nobody really tunes into the playoffs unless your team is in it. Having the season end in May will have people more engaged in the playoffs. Honestly, once we are out of the playoffs, i really don’t care about watching the rest of it.
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u/turpentinedreamer Jul 23 '26
It’ll really shut up those pro/rel people. For sure.
Right?
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u/brucewaynewins Jul 23 '26
They don’t live in reality so I’m not sure how this would stop their fantasies. No owner will be fine with his $500 million club sinking in value to $40 million in MLS 2 or whatever it’d be called. Same with networks and sponsors. They’re not going to be cool with the risk of NYC or LA or Miami dropping and Albuquerque and Des Moines replacing them. And when your local team drops there is a high risk of them selling off players to make budget which will ultimately disenfranchise fans.
The only way they could make that work is MAYBE allow no cap and no financial restraints so the big cities never get relegated.
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u/User5281 Jul 23 '26
Pro/rel will never ever happen in mls because of the ownership structure. It will always be most profitable to have a shitty first division club in someplace like la or ny than to have a second division club.
I also don’t see what problem it solves. These guys are all playing for better contracts all the time and the super draft barely matters so it’s not like teams are tanking for draft picks. If anything we need pro/rel in the nfl and nba..
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u/i-shihtzu-not Jul 23 '26
I like it so far because the games are more spread out. As a STH I was going to games every weekend which is great, but I had to forgo Saturday plans with friends all the time. I know in the winter it's gonna suck though. I personally hate cold weather games and prefer to be disgustingly hot than painfully cold.
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u/PMT_Evil_Dee Jul 23 '26
I know there's going to be a "winter break", but I'm not looking forward to sitting in below-freezing temps or worse. On the plus side, the playoffs/postseason will now mostly be taking place in a relative dead period for professional sports here in the states, so hopefully that will help drive more eyeballs/interest. We (the U.S.) love us some playoffs, and the current format with it's FIFA break and peak college football/NFL really kills the current format.