MLS Will Play During The UEFA Champions League Final, For Some Reason
In the third year of Major League Soccer's relationship with Apple TV, there have been major steps forward in making a more sensible schedule.
The Sunday Night Soccer package has been a welcome addition that brings a big-game feel and allows fans to watch some of the league's most compelling storyline without missing their own teams' games the night before. And showing more scheduling flexibility in general has been a positive, particularly for clubs that play the early season in colder climates where Saturday night games aren't ideal.
All that said, the this weekend's Matchday 17 schedule is extremely puzzling, particularly the early portion of it, in which there are two matches that will clash significantly with the UEFA Champions League Final between Paris-St. Germain and Inter Milan.
Here's how it lines up:
With the possibility of extra time and penalties, the Champions League running time could stretch as long as three hours and overshadow the majority of both MLS fixtures.
It's a relatively minor oversight, but it's also a maddeningly avoidable one, and one that suggests the people making big commercial decisions for Apple TV or MLS (or both) still don't know what they're doing. Because there's no justifiable rationale for this.
The 2025 schedule has featured at least one daytime Saturday kickoff every week through the end of May. Those scattered matinees mostly stop this summer, then resume in mid-September for three weekends.
It's unclear whether that was meant mainly to give colder-weather markets some relief, or if it's also about trying to play some games at times more appealing for audiences in Europe and elsewhere around the world. But either way, it's nonsensical to include the final weekend in May in those plans.
If it's about attracting worldwide viewers, there's fat chance of that happening this week among soccer fans other than absolute MLS diehards.
The Champions League final is literally the most-watched annual sporting event on earth, exceeding the Super Bowl several times over. Avoiding scheduling clashes with it – particularly soccer scheduling clashes – are simple common sense.
If there is some sort of self-consciousness about being too accomodating for a different competition, there shouldn't be. The NBA and NHL both avoid scheduling games after 3 p.m. ET on Super Bowl Sunday, and those aren't even the same sport.
If it's simply about playing a few more MLS matches outside the Saturday night window when lots of other fans are at their local stadiums, the games just should've been moved to Sunday, where there's wide open real estate on the MLS schedule before 6 p.m. ET.
There were numerous ways around this, and MLS chose none of them. Whether that's born out of a lack of forsight or a lack of self-assurance, it's damning either way.
The best version of MLS' future is one where it becomes one of the world's biggest leagues, but also a league that collaborates with and respects the world's other high-profile competitions. Rising tides lift all boats, and all that. But that ideal future can't happen if the forces guiding it have such narrow vision as to schedule random, run-of-the-mill league fixtures against their sport's version of Super Bowl Sunday.
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