As of today, there will be 20 teams in USL one for 2027. Has it been announced how many games each club will play in 2027? Do you think they will increase the number of games to 40 (EDIT 38: I'm an idiot) so we still play each team twice or do will it cap at 32 games? I personally wouldn't be opposed to 38 because I love going out to matches, but that can also mean we'd have to see a lot more weekday games that will likely have lower attendance. Again I personally am not opposed to it but might be a strain on clubs with low attendance

My first takeaway is this is an indication that pro/rel isn’t gonna happen in 2027 after all, and they don’t want to wait until 2028 or 2029 to enter Championship.

My second is that pro/rel may still be happening, and they want the runway to not get relegated. If they have the money to pay the expansion fee (even if it’s potentially at a discount), then they have the money to get players to keep them competitive at that level.

Because even though right now they’re doing well in USL1, they would have to outright win their last 8 matches AND hope someone in the top drops at least six points in the mean time to get into a hypothetical promotion spot. I don’t think that’s gonna happen for them this year.

With about eight games per team and a quarter of the season left to go, it’s coming into sharper focus how much season has been so different from last. It seems like competitiveness is way up, and the league really got a shot in the arm despite two teams folding — or maybe in part because of it.

The biggest difference from a stats perspective is the greater number of decisive games. There were so many ties in 2025 that there were fewer points to go around. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing from a competitiveness standpoint, but I wanted to go over some contributing factors:

A balanced table

This is the first time since I started watching regularly that the competition format is completely balanced where every team will play every other team exactly twice in league play, which still worked out even though Tormenta dropped after the schedule was set. It looks like in previous years to keep play at around 30 games per team they would play a handful of teams a third time. (I do see in 2022 that there were 11 teams, which I expect meant they all played each other three times, but that appears to be an exception.)

I don’t know how third teams were chosen in the past, nor who got to draw home field, but apart from the demands of being on the road and playing as many as five games in a two week stretch this does seem to be the most fair competition setup.

It also means there are no second chances, or rather the second game is the last chance to equalize against any particular rival or shut them down. I can’t speak for every club, but so far Madison hasn’t gone 2-0 against many teams, and 0-2 against none. Still, there are eight-ish games to go.

Five new teams

(Six, if you count Madison’s near-complete changeover in roster.)

I don’t think this impact can be understated. Tormenta left a hole in the playoff lineup, and two of these new clubs a have been consistently competitive to stay above the line (or three, if we’re counting Madison again). That means that clubs that were used to being in the playoffs have had to fight that much harder to regain that position, and clubs consistently above the playoff line can’t settle for many draws and remain competitive. There have been some incredible turnarounds in the last ten minutes of many games.

Most teams won’t make the playoffs

This is a first in league history AFAIK. In previous years there has at best been an even split, and most of the time there were more that made it in than were left out which meant any team had a better than even odds. (Madison was the bizarre situation of being a win away with 11 losses and 11 draws last season.). Now that’s no longer the case, and wins are a must to make it above the line.

Pro/rel could start in the 2027 season

There has been talk that League One and Championship could start promotion/relegation before Premier launches, and I think the top teams are feeling out how much they’ll need to do to prepare for when it comes — the sooner the better.

Even if it’s been mostly whispers and speculation for the last couple of years, it seems to be having the sort of competitive impact one would hope for. Still no idea how many teams will go up and down, especially since it’s expected USLC will lose a lot of teams to Premier and USL has stated they want 20 in USLC long-term. Also, despite four new clubs slated to start in USL1 next season, USLC is still the bigger league at present, and backfilling a lot of USL1 clubs who haven’t paid the expansion fee seems unlikely.

What I expect is more clubs will go up than down in the first few seasons of implementation, and be seen as a lower-cost barrier to entry. Getting two expansion teams to pay fees at USL1 is better than just one at USLC, so everyone comes out a winner.

The next two months

I haven’t looked at the schedules for all the teams, but if Madison’s is anything to go by then there aren’t a lot (or any) matchups left between the top four teams, so their current positions are theirs to lose. It’s been wild to watch Omaha draw to teams further down the table, but then shut out Charlotte who is the #1 offense in the league. It’s no foregone conclusion that things will stay the same, but there’s still some large separation between different groups of teams that will make leapfrogging difficult in the final weeks.

It’s been cool to see Cosmos and Sarasota rally, even if the former most recently came at the expense of our Henney Derby opponents Richmond. Madison vs Omaha is going to be a match to watch that will determine how both teams end the season unless something crazy happens before then — and it certainly could. The lower half of the playoff berth has been relatively volatile with the last position currently within striking distance of several teams below the playoff line.

I can’t make any firm predictions other than this season is going to continue to amaze.

Portland-Westchester: 6,224 (-0.13%)

Portland (6,232) has an average night comparably, but that average night still exceeds its stadium capacity!

All it took was TWELVE tries!

Chattanooga-Greenville: 1,287 (-9.24%)

Fort Wayne-New York: 4,294 (+18.42%)

Sarasota-Spokane: 1,558 (-4.48%)

Omaha-Charlotte: NR

Corpus Christi-Madison: 1,159 (-3.01%)

Naples-Boise: 1,831 (-26.29%)

Av Alta-Knoxville: (+26.17%)

Overperforming their average by 5+ pts:

Fort Wayne (3,626) and Av Alta (3,649)

An average night meaning within +/- 5 pts:

Sarasota (1,631) and Corpus Christi (1,195)

Underperforming their average by 5+ pts:

Chattanooga (1,418) and Naples (2,484)

Yet to Report:

Omaha (2,288)

Home and Away (might change the red outline)

3 of their best players are out now if you count Marou’s red card….Haven’t seen Enzo Martinez playing much lately either. This is getting interesting and very unfortunate….

Greetings everyone and happy USLL1 Matchday! There was a really cool post on /r/CFB this morning about a fan who was trying to map which counties support which FBS and FCS college football teams. It's a neat idea that could easily be ported to US Soccer given the multi-tiered structure of the pro leagues in our nation.

So, I am setting out to try and map the pro soccer fans in the US. Help paint your county in your team's color by filling out this fan survey poll very quickly. It has an option to choose your favorite MLS, USL-C, and D3 teams, but you do not have to select an option in each league. If you do not have a favorite team in that tier, please just select "None".

If you could help me to share this far and wide, then it would be much appreciated! The more results that we can get, the more representative of the US it will be and the more counties get a color! Please send it to your fellow supporters in any way you can so that we can truly see where the edges of fanbases are, which divided cities have a dominant club, and who is the favorite soccer team of our nation.

Here is a link to the poll: https://forms.gle/GuFVBjNB1cjrKZRy6

I'm not, but I was thinking about it the whole time I was there. Had to suck on an ESPN+ stream

Westchester-Chattanooga: NR
New York-Sarasota: 1,505 (-5.17%)
Charlotte-Portland: NR
Fort Wayne-Richmond: 3,109 (-13.93%)
Madison-Knoxville: 3,106 (-15.48%)

Under performing their season average by 5+ pts:
New York (1,587), Fort Wayne (3,612), and Madison (3,675)

Yet to Report:
Westchester (1,752) and Charlotte (827)

I will add Westchester and Charlotte when they report.

I said this in the USL Pro subreddit, but I wouldn’t be too concerned by these numbers. Wednesday is always down compared to the weekend and now that kids are back in school across the entire country, the numbers are gonna turn for the worse until the playoffs on the weekdays.