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MLS 2023


Jerry Callo

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  • 3 weeks later...

fyi for t-mobile customers - mls season pass will be free beginning tuesday 

 

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/offers/t-mobile-customers-score-mls-season-pass-on-the-apple-tv-app-on-us

 

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What’s the news: Soccer fans, let’s go! T-Mobile customers can soon experience MLS Season Pass on the Apple TV App on Us — the unprecedented subscription service bringing the action and excitement of Major League Soccer to the Apple TV app. MLS Season Pass ($99 annual value) features every live regular-season match, all MLS Cup playoff matches, and the Leagues Cup – all with no blackouts. Available for all T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile customers on Us beginning Feb. 21 in the T-Mobile Tuesdays app.

 

Edited by joe dirt
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From those who brought you Bad Idea Jeans…

MLS adds best-of-3 series to expanded playoffs for 2023 season

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Major League Soccer has announced a new, expanded playoff format that will see nine teams from each conference qualify for the postseason, with the addition of a "wild card" round and a best-of-three series in round 1.

The new format will take effect for the 2023 season, which begins on Saturday.

With the league expanded to 29 teams this season following the entry of St. Louis City SC, it means that 62% of clubs will qualify for the playoffs.

Nine clubs reaching the playoffs from each conference will be the highest number ever in MLS, other than when 10 made the postseason from both the East and West conferences in the pandemic-impacted 2020 season.

Last year, seven teams from each conference made the playoffs with the No. 1 seeds getting a bye to the conference semifinals.

As part of the new format, the teams that finish eighth and ninth in each conference will face off in a one-off wild-card game for the right to move onto round one and a matchup with the No. 1 seed.

Other round one matchups will see the No. 2 seed vs. No. 7, No. 3 vs. No. 6 and No. 4 vs. No. 5.

For the first time, round one will be contested over three matches, with the higher seed hosting the first and, if necessary, third games. The games cannot end in ties, with matches going straight to penalty kicks if tied after 90 minutes, and the first team to win two games advancing.

As has been the case since 2019, the conference semifinals, finals and MLS Cup will continue to be contested in a one-off winner-take-all-game with the higher seed hosting.

MLS also confirmed dates for each of the playoff rounds. Following the climax to the regular season on Oct. 21, the playoffs will begin with the two wild card matches on Oct. 25-26 and round one series matches from Oct. 28-Nov. 12.

The conference semifinals and conference finals will be played between Nov. 25-Dec. 3, with MLS Cup taking place on Dec. 9.

https://www.espn.com/soccer/mls/story/4883685/mls-adds-best-of-3-series-to-expanded-playoffs-2023-season

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This is fucking dumb. The playoffs sucked enough already, but first round being best of 3 on top of it is an added layer of stupid.

 

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As has been the case since 2019, the conference semifinals, finals and MLS Cup will continue to be contested in a one-off winner-take-all-game with the higher seed hosting.

And this makes the new playoffs even more dumb when you read this. Why bother making the first round best of 3 if you are going to have 1 off the rest of the way?

 

The MLS is dumb, and just seems to be getting dumber.

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If they want extra games, they could make Round 1, the Conference Semi-Finals and Finals all 2 legs with aggregate score advancing. That gives them guarantees THREE extra games, instead of just 1, maybe 2 extra games in round 1 (when most people really don't care).

 

Even in terms of money, this doesn't make sense, because you don't get a set number of games and you ignore ticket sales from half your playoff teams!

i-dont-get-it-clueless.gif

 

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34 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

Why bother making the first round best of 3 if you are going to have 1 off the rest of the way?

 

11 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

Terrible idea, but I guess money is money

Perhaps you didn’t follow 2021’s playoffs

Three out of Four of the #1s & #2s lost in their first playoff round. Last year’s playoffs went according to seed, but they don’t want another 2021 happening again. 
https://www.mlssoccer.com/competitions/mls-cup-playoffs/2021/bracket/

PS- I hate it.

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38 minutes ago, Jerry Callo said:

That's way too many games.  With Concacaf Champions League and the US Open Cup, decent teams will be playing 40something games this year.  

🤨

Top European squads are playing well over 50 games a year! Just looking at last year:

Man City - 58 games

Madrid - 56 games

Liverpool - 63 games!!

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11 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

🤨

Top European squads are playing well over 50 games a year! Just looking at last year:

Man City - 58 games

Madrid - 56 games

Liverpool - 63 games!!

That's nuts.  I don't follow European soccer much - do they have larger rosters?  

It just seems like an increasing likelihood of injuries, especially towards the end of the season.  

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1 hour ago, Jerry Callo said:

That's nuts.  I don't follow European soccer much - do they have larger rosters?  

It just seems like an increasing likelihood of injuries, especially towards the end of the season.  

25 man rosters with U21 player allowing teams to go beyond that number.

 

And yes, there are a lot of people that worry about injury due to this number of games. Especially when you consider top players having to fulfill national team duty which is around a dozen more games a year.

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MLS on Apple TV is dumb in my opinion. They should do what my brother suggested: every week on Sunday they should have their 4 biggest games on Fox and ABC, 2 games at noon, 2 games at 3:30. I guarantee if they did that there would be higher viewership ratings. Folks who don't follow soccer would watch because it's a sport. 

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2 hours ago, ztejas said:

If you have an android there isn't an app for the Apple tv shit so you have to watch through your browser and it's all fucky.

Does anyone know how long the contract they signed is? 

Supposedly the app is coming soon for android. I watched on Roku and PC and thought it was great, but I do want an app for the summer though when I'm more on the go.

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4 hours ago, Longboard Horn said:

MLS on Apple TV is dumb in my opinion. They should do what my brother suggested: every week on Sunday they should have their 4 biggest games on Fox and ABC, 2 games at noon, 2 games at 3:30. I guarantee if they did that there would be higher viewership ratings. Folks who don't follow soccer would watch because it's a sport. 

On the last pages of the 2022 thread, a lof of us have said this was a short term money grab that isn't long terms healthy for the league. 

They can get money, but they aren't growing the sport at all.

Looking at the schedule, there appears to be 1 game per week on Fox. That puts the rest of Apple TV, with over half of the games behind the paywall.

The casuals just won't be able to find the games. Drawing in fans will be really hard.

And that doesn't even talk about how expensive MLS season pass is. It's more than other networks, that give you the EPL or Champions League!

Edited by Captain Ron
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16 hours ago, Captain Ron said:

On the last pages of the 2022 thread, a lof of us have said this was a short term money grab that isn't long terms healthy for the league. 

They can get money, but they aren't growing the sport at all.

Looking at the schedule, there appears to be 1 game per week on Fox. That puts the rest of Apple TV, with over half of the games behind the paywall.

The casuals just won't be able to find the games. Drawing in fans will be really hard.

And that doesn't even talk about how expensive MLS season pass is. It's more than other networks, that give you the EPL or Champions League!

And MLS really wonders why their viewership and ratings aren't higher... Try to get an NBC sports contract like EPL has. 

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This kid was so excited when he scored the first goal in the LAFC vs Portland match…

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Kids these days. 
 

Also, would anyone believe that these three stragglers in the visiting fan section were Portland fans?

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The guy on the left bet that no one could out-Portland him.

The guy in the middle saw that bet and raised him. 

The guy on the right stated that he was ALL IN!

Health food outside before the game. 
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The size of Danny Trejo’s “Trejo’s Tacos” that were 3 for $15. (Dollar bill for scale.)

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Merch…

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How much for the long sleeve t-shirt?

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You gotta love the hats  

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MLS on AppleTV+ 👍

MLS on Fox 👎

https://worldsoccertalk.com/amp/tv/foxs-mls-coverage-is-so-bad-in-contrast-to-mls-season-pass-20230305-WST-422265.html

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Perhaps the best word to describe FOX’s MLS coverage is nonsensical. For instance, instead of FOX Sports broadcasting Saturday afternoon’s LAFC-Portland game from the stadium or its studios in Los Angeles, Holden and Strong called the game from the same studio that USL uses in Florida. That’s also the same studio that had a backdrop resembling a shower curtain in week one.

 

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16 hours ago, Jerry Callo said:

I think Apple has 14 or so cameras in every stadium.  Some of the previous games look like they're recorded with a single iPad.

I don’t think that Apple has any cameras anywhere. 

I think that Apple is providing an assload of money and a distribution platform. I think that all of the production is done by the MLS. NOT 100% positive on that, but I feel like that is what Max Bretos has said, and he made the jump from LAFC local announcer to Apple announcer… but maybe that’s really MLS announcer. 

Whatever it is, production value can increase in a massive way when money is poured into a project. Like comparing to EPL production value to CONCACAF road matches from the ‘90s until recently. 

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On 3/1/2023 at 12:50 PM, Captain Ron said:

On the last pages of the 2022 thread, a lof of us have said this was a short term money grab that isn't long terms healthy for the league. 

They can get money, but they aren't growing the sport at all.

Looking at the schedule, there appears to be 1 game per week on Fox. That puts the rest of Apple TV, with over half of the games behind the paywall.

The casuals just won't be able to find the games. Drawing in fans will be really hard.

And that doesn't even talk about how expensive MLS season pass is. It's more than other networks, that give you the EPL or Champions League!

I'm just looking at this from my own myopic perspective, but this is going to kill the league.  I've been a pretty casual fan, but I got pretty engaged with Austin last year.  But now, I can't see their games.  And even if I could, I wouldn't think of searching them out.  

I've only got so much leisure time.  And that means that I only have so much sports bandwidth.  With MLS right now, it's just completely out of sight, out of mind.  So far as my sports-fan universe goes, it might as well not exist at all.

I suspect I'm far from alone in this experience.

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It's hard for me to come to terms with going from being able to watch every game for free (unless it was an ESPN game) to having to pay $12-$15 /mo (ON TOP of whatever Apple TV+ costs) just to watch one sports team I follow. And it's not like I'm going to watch all 34 games every season.

Hopefully some illegal streamers pick up on it but I'm doubtful as there isn't that much of an audience. 

They need to either lower the price or offer a one-team package for significantly less. 

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On 3/9/2023 at 2:47 PM, ztejas said:

It's hard for me to come to terms with going from being able to watch every game for free (unless it was an ESPN game) to having to pay $12-$15 /mo (ON TOP of whatever Apple TV+ costs) just to watch one sports team I follow. And it's not like I'm going to watch all 34 games every season.

Hopefully some illegal streamers pick up on it but I'm doubtful as there isn't that much of an audience. 

They need to either lower the price or offer a one-team package for significantly less. 

I hear you but I expect that the vast majority of the audience only really wants to watch one team.  MLS must rely on the match going fan much more than any of the other major American sports leagues.    

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22 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

Why on earth is NE @ LAFC on tonight at 10:30 Eastern the night after a spring forward? This would've been a great 4:30 local Sunday start with a 7:30 start in New England. 

I just don't get it.

Academy Awards ran until 11:36pm Eastern (8:36pm PDT), so this allows people (in SoCal homes) to switch over to watch the 2nd half.

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3 minutes ago, Napoleon said:

Academy Awards ran until 11:36pm Eastern (8:36pm PDT), so this allows people (in SoCal homes) to switch over to watch the 2nd half.

Sure but do you give up pretty much all of the East Coast (including Rev fans) to hit that submarket of Oscars + MLS fans?

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