i feel the opposite. if it's too hot and humid, you can't get cool. but you can always put more clothes on. get hand warmers, scarves, hats, etc. yeah it'd be cold, but you can always put more on. you can only take so much off.
General MLS Discussion
- Thread starter Shwafta
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i feel the opposite. if it's too hot and humid, you can't get cool. but you can always put more clothes on. get hand warmers, scarves, hats, etc. yeah it'd be cold, but you can always put more on. you can only take so much off.
It just struck me: this is pretty close to the academic sports schedule. My alma mater, Siena College, started the season with a couple scrimmages in mid-August before the season kicked off on Aug. 22, and plays its last league game at Marist on Nov. 6. The MAAC Championship game is on Nov. 17. When I was a student -- back in the day when we got our grades on stone tablets -- the last games were in early December, and it was a lot colder then.
There's no spring season, though; by the time the snow melts and the ground thaws it's mid-to-late March. That might be the biggest drawback for this plan. Cold weather teams would have to come back from break on the road, kind of like they start the season now, but if the season resumes in early February, it might mean five or six consecutive road games. Not good, especially if you're on the bubble.
Anyway, that thought just hit me. It's really the second half of the season where weather really could be a problem.
One alternative might be to schedule the Leagues Cup in February and early March and play it in Mexico, then come back to regular MLS action at the end of March and play through May. But I don't think that would work from a financial standpoint. matches were played at neutral sites in places like Cancun, so fans in the States could take a "soccer holiday.")
There's no spring season, though; by the time the snow melts and the ground thaws it's mid-to-late March. That might be the biggest drawback for this plan. Cold weather teams would have to come back from break on the road, kind of like they start the season now, but if the season resumes in early February, it might mean five or six consecutive road games. Not good, especially if you're on the bubble.
Anyway, that thought just hit me. It's really the second half of the season where weather really could be a problem.
One alternative might be to schedule the Leagues Cup in February and early March and play it in Mexico, then come back to regular MLS action at the end of March and play through May. But I don't think that would work from a financial standpoint. matches were played at neutral sites in places like Cancun, so fans in the States could take a "soccer holiday.")
I think the plan is potentially to play Leagues Cup during that winter break in December and January in southern markets. Which, as fans of a northern team, would stink.
Yeah, that would be a tough one. How do you have us playing Tigres in, say, Houston in Leagues Cup? Very funky. Which is why I mentioned playing in neutral sites (sorry for the garbled comment -- my neighbor dropped by while I was typing it and I hit reply as we went out for our walk without double checking it).
As it is, upending the schedule would definitely mean something of a risk. Maybe a big risk. The league was built on contra-scheduling. What makes sense from a personnel acquisition and squad-building perspective might not make sense from an attendance perspective. I'm sure that's what the Powers That Be are focused on.
Add in keeping the Leagues Cup going and it really gets tricky. Stringing it out through the regular schedule like the FA Cup and keeping a full break from mid-December until early February might or might not be possible. I haven't really gamed it out yet, but it sure reads like too heavy a workload considering the travel involved.
Would it be crazy to have two editions of the leagues cup? Summer and winter? Summer in MLS market and winter in LMX market. I mean never ending soccer sounds nice. It just may turn into a preseason tournament for both leagues which wouldn’t be a good look. Plus MLSPA would probably be against it.
Intriguing idea. Players are guaranteed six weeks off in the CBA, but it may be workable.
People wonder why MLS gets no TV viewership.
Maybe this is instructive: They're putting Inter Miami as the first playoff game in a standalone window. OK, makes sense, it's Messi. That makes sense.
They scheduled the game for tonight. Except we've known for months that would be Game 1 of the World Series. Gee, I wonder which game is going to get more viewership. Miami/Messi on a streaming platform, or Game 1 of the World Series?
They could have put the game on tomorrow afternoon (even opposite college football, that's still better than going up against Game 1 of the World Series). Obviously there's no perfect solutions here, but when you wonder why this league gets no TV viewership, it's because they're not on terrestrial TV and they try to go opposite other major events.
Maybe this is instructive: They're putting Inter Miami as the first playoff game in a standalone window. OK, makes sense, it's Messi. That makes sense.
They scheduled the game for tonight. Except we've known for months that would be Game 1 of the World Series. Gee, I wonder which game is going to get more viewership. Miami/Messi on a streaming platform, or Game 1 of the World Series?
They could have put the game on tomorrow afternoon (even opposite college football, that's still better than going up against Game 1 of the World Series). Obviously there's no perfect solutions here, but when you wonder why this league gets no TV viewership, it's because they're not on terrestrial TV and they try to go opposite other major events.
Pretty sure viewership for messi will be better than game 1 of the world series. You forget Messi's audience is the entire world.
Then why is the game in American primetime? The game will be overnight in Europe and morning in Japan.
If this league is more concerned with worldwide viewership over what happens at home, then that is exactly part of my overall complaint about how badly they've lost the plot.
Because it's an American League played in the US. They aren't more concerned about worldwide viewership. They are concerned about viewership period. If they get subscriptions they don't care where they come from.
It's MLS so it's played at American East coast prime time. Messi fans will still tune in.
i don't really understand your gripe. for you, it's a problem but for many (like myself) it's not. I didn't even know game 1 of the world series was tonight and i only just found out who is playing in it the other day by chance. I'm sure i'm not the only one who just doesn't care about baseball so any conflict with game 1 of the world series makes no difference to me. I will watch messi tonight because i'll be rooting for atlanta to knock them out (despite my bracket having miami winning).
MLS using appleTV is no different than a lot of other leagues using amazon, paramount, peacock, etc to stream their games. People still watch. Yes, some of those other leagues/events also have local channel broadcast times but doing appleTV was probably the more lucrative option for MLS. My biggest gripes with them using appleTV are the user interface is complete ass and they schedule all the games at the same time instead of throughout the day. poor announcers a close 3rd.
this is how it is now though. we have appleTV. we have games conflicting with other leagues. fans will have to choose or watch both at the same time. it is what it is.
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How many people are going to do both?
Personally, tonight isn't going to be different than any other weekend when it comes to watching sports.
I'm going to watch Messi v Atlanta on the tablet. The Yankees - Dodgers on the big screen. And surf the net on my phone.
Personally, tonight isn't going to be different than any other weekend when it comes to watching sports.
I'm going to watch Messi v Atlanta on the tablet. The Yankees - Dodgers on the big screen. And surf the net on my phone.
Since you are talking about tv viewership... I was at the townhall the other night and I spent about 1.5 hrs after the Q&A to just hang out next to Simms to listen to him and ask questions. The apple tv deal came up and he essentially said he disagrees with the direction of the league and that it is being "to innovative" for its own good. (I wonder what that means for viewership numbers). He also mentioned head fox execs believe MLS is fumbling the growth of mls and soccer for a variety of reasons. One of which was parity. Fox execs have told MLS they'd rather have 2-10 Dallas Cowboys vs 1-11 Pittsburgh Steelers over a 12-0 Carolina Panthers vs 10-2 Jacksonville Jaguars because the Cowboys and Steelers are legacy teams. Sims and Fox execs have essentially said who cares if everyone in the league is .500 as that doesn't drive viewership. What does are storylines, dynasties and dominant teams, EX: Inter Miami (obviously Messi is a special case, but I digress...). He mentioned parity wasn't always a thing in the NFL. Look at the dynasties from the 70's and 80's like Dallas and Pittsburgh. That made people to become fans and that carries over to today. The conversation then went into about 10 different directions that I don't have the time to type, but I found it to be an interesting insight to what happens behind the scenes with a single entity league.
There is a lot to unpack here. I personally dislike the simultaneous games, but I wonder how much more TV viewership they would acquire if they staggered the MLS games throughout Saturday and Sunday, since they would be competing with the big European leagues during most of the day until 5 pm. It would work for the summer, when they are almost the only soccer available. Since teams are still dependent on stadium gate receipts, I wonder if having earlier games would be better or worse.
Maybe we could do a poll to see what percentage of forum regulars follow other sports, and which are they? If there are heretics who would admit to have a fandom that surpasses NYCFC and/or crosses over to other sports? etc
The parity question that was mentioned in another post is fascinating. The Miami experiment shows that a super team generates revenue and interest and lifts viewership for all the league, but there aren't enough Messis around to create other teams with the same amount of glitter. It is a one-off. And because of MLS rules even that team is more super on paper than on reality.
They already screwed people with younger school age kids when they set 90% of the games to 7pm start times. This will just make it worse.
One huge negative impact of the Apple TV deal is that very few bars and restaurants have it. Even soccer bars don’t have it.
My biggest gripe with Apple TV is they’ve made it impossible to not watch a game live without knowing the outcome. The fact that they put the final score in the image of the game completely ruins it. I honestly hate that more than anything else.
Every sport has horrible announcers. As a Mets fan if the game was the national game I’d have the tv on mute and listen to the radio coverage.
The times aren’t convenient but I just went through baseball playoffs with 5pm games on a Tuesday and a Wednesday and football is so spread out that games have lost their meaning (Sunday, Monday, Thursday) So no league is doing well with it.
The biggest advantage of AppleTV has been that no matter where I am I have the ability to watch the game on my devices without worry about blackouts. Ask anyone with the MLB package how irritating it is to be on the road but not able to watch your team play because they are in the local market and you can’t access it.
you can turn off the scores in your account settings. you have to do this on every device you use to watch games. sometimes this setting will suddenly reset for some reason, but for the most part it works.
what is still shitty and you can't change is their choice to put goal highlights on the team home page (on appleTV), which you have to scroll through to get to past games. if you somehow make it past those and you get to the past game, soon as you click into it, the goal highlights are shown right under the game replay button. so you kind of have to know these things and navigate while covering stuff with your hand or whatever.
Thanks. I’ll try to find and change that setting.
But I agree: AppleTV tries their hardest to be a spoiler
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