you did change it.
Stadium Discussion
- Thread starter Gene
- Start date
you did change it.
We need to find someone who has a balcony from those apartments in Flushing that face the stadium
I feel like most new stadiums that have been built over the years get one eventually. Just been really quiet lately. I heard a rumor now about potential opening in 2028??
ZYanksRule
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If the league switches to the winter calendar, they would open it for the 2027-28 season.
franchise646
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This will always feel like one of the dumbest ideas I've heard for the league
I've always felt this way up until I went to a tennis tournament a few years ago in DFW area in August while FCD was playing a home game at the same time.
My conclusion is that playing games outside in Dallas in August is just as silly as playing games outside in Toronto in February.
Obviously, there are ways to mitigate the heat by playing night games only, but even that can be oppressive. I've seen many teams in MLS really hit a wall after high heat games.
Winter weather has severe issues as well obviously, and I'm still leaning towards preferring a spring-fall schedule, but I don't think avoiding summer is as wild as I once did.
Obviously, they would have to ditch the Saturday evening preferred window because playing winter games at night in the northern cities is silly business.
I've also become more open to the switch recently for the same reason. In terms of climate, it's a pick your poison scenario. We can't avoid both extreme cold and extreme heat & humidity.
As a whole, North America has always had more extreme weather, both hot and cold (and snowy), than most of Europe. This makes a long outdoor sports season difficult to schedule, and really only affects soccer. Hockey and basketball are indoors. Football runs just 4 months plus playoffs, about 5.5 total. Baseball goes 6/7.5.
Major League Soccer is 8/9.5. You cannot play nearly 10 months in North America and avoid conditions you shouldn't play in. So pick what you want to endure. For me, I think it's close to a wash, with extreme cold and snow probably a bit worse than super H&H, but not by much. Add in the benefits of aligning with the rest of the world and a flip maybe makes sense.
Either way, there would be substantial benefit in weather relief derived from a real midseason break, with nothing - no Leagues Cup, no USOC - just time off to avoid the worst heat or cold conditions.
Forget about the players for a moment, but what about the fans? How many people are going to show up in Chicago, New England, or here for four matches in February when it's 12° out? And how many of those would be buying beer and hot dogs? I mean, I'm watching Rams-Eagles at the moment and they're playing in the snow with a feels-like temp of 22° with a stiff wind. Yes, it can get hot in the summer but you could always find a shady spot in the stadium if needed.
I'm not utterly against it, I just don't think it'd work at all attendance-wise (and income-wise).
I 100% agree about cold games. Spare some consideration for Houston humidity in August. It doesn’t get better at night.
Either way is a trade off.
Also a pause of 6 weeks in January and February is pretty much required if you flip so just 2 games in February.
From a purely playoffs standpoint, having the playoffs occur at some point between April and early June would be much better than the current calendar, and that has left a window of potential support for the flip from me.
If they can fix the format and scheduling of the playoffs, which have been horrible the last couple years, I think I would firmly support sticking with Spring-fall. The last couple years have had such a miserable playoff experience that clouds this calendar.
If they can fix the format and scheduling of the playoffs, which have been horrible the last couple years, I think I would firmly support sticking with Spring-fall. The last couple years have had such a miserable playoff experience that clouds this calendar.
That doesn’t change much from our current calendar which now starts in February.
Also, consider how those summer matches will feel as we continue to set new record high temperatures 9 out of the next 10 years.
And totally agree with 413Blue about the quality of the playoff experience. I want NYCFC to host MLS Cup. But do I really think we get our best soccer product if we play in NY in early December? Maybe we get a decent warm patch. But just as likely we get 30 degrees. I’d much prefer we host MLS Cup in May/June.
Plus I can’t wait to travel for the August preseason tournament in Nova Scotia.
could do something like the NBA in-season tourney. Do a big tournament at Disney in the winter.
I think the real thing to weigh is competition with other sports and how to approach that. With the current schedule, there is a very large amount of the season whose only competition is baseball. Another month or two with the only overlap being basketball and hockey playoffs. So in terms of sports being enjoyed outdoors, very little.
But then, the competition for playoffs / MLS Cup is NFL, college football, a little bit of overlap with college basketball. If the playoffs and Cup are in late spring / early summer, should have more eyeballs.
Lots of gives and takes
Revfugee
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A cold weather schedule would exclude large numbers of casuals in, by my count, 16 markets (I left out Nashville, but it’s borderline). Four would be relatively unaffected (ATL, Sea, Portland and SJ) which leaves 10 where summer heat is a big factor, though with night games I think this really only gets down to the Florida and Texas clubs. In Europe maybe this doesn’t matter, but judging by the crowds I see, I don’t think MLS is ready for that.
Agreed it's tradeoffs all around on every issue (weather, competition), with one exception: aligning the schedule with most of the rest of the world is by itself unambiguously a positive. So I think if you do it that's why. But schedule alignment doesn't necessarily outweigh the balance of all the other factors, depending on how you weight them.
I've basically moved from thinking a flip is stupid and clearly a big negative, to thinking either way works with different types of pain.
A big part of my changed thinking was prompted by shutting down MLS for six weeks every summer for the last few years for a tournament I don't care about. Having a break in decent weather, with school out, and front loading the schedule so 70% is played before both the hiatus and the summer transfer window puts me in a burn it all down mood. Might as well make that the off season.
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ZYanksRule
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Does the heat and humidity down south impact crowds? It certainly impacts the quality of play, but many of those teams seem do very well with attendance even though their games are hot and humid.
Northern teams would not do well with attendance if they had to play in winter. One of our lowest-attended games of the season was the 2nd home game in March. Opening Day listed an attendance of 24,000 but anyone who was there knows how few people actually showed up. Now imagine that's not Opening Day, but game 26 of the season.
I'll make another point about scheduling. Let's say you need six weeks to finish the MLS Cup playoffs and you want the season to end by Memorial Day with a restart in August like the Premier League. The playoffs take 6 weeks. Lets posit that a Memorial Day finish puts MLS Cup this year around May 25. That would put Decision Day around Apr. 12 and the 3-game conference quarterfinals start around Apr. 19.
Baseball is in the early weeks of the season, but the Masters is the weekend of April 12. The NBA and NHL playoffs are mid April to June, so you'll be trying to finish your postseason during the NBA conference finals and maybe the start of the NBA Finals. Not exactly a clean time of the sports year.
There is no time in America that would give MLS its own window to host a major event.
franchise646
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hopefully not Twitter.What's the latest and greatest on our new? (kudos Seth for being a legend)
Anyone got any update footage? I can't find any online
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