MLS looking to unveil regular-season schedule on Feb. 10

MLS Commish Don Garber-Thinking About Releasing the 2011 Regular Season Schedule

I am a huge Major League Soccer Fan and a season ticket holder of the Columbus Crew. The first match of the season is Tuesday, March 15th, 2011. 39 days away.

Guess what? The MLS hasn't released their regular season schedule! Crazy right? For a league on the upswing this is very disheartening for me.

I have seen quite a few complaints on Twitter from fans and soccer journalists/bloggers about this situation. Today's press release from MLS soccer says they will unveil the regular season schedule on February 10th. That is 33 days from the first match.

I am not aware of any major sports league in the United States who waits this long to release their schedules.

Quote from the press release: “Assembling the schedule begins after MLS Cup and involves several interdependent factors including competitive fairness, international competitions, stadium availability, broadcast windows and club preferences,” the league said in a statement released Friday. “The 18 home openers were announced Dec. 20, and we have waited until the entire schedule is complete before making it public.”


What an insult to MLS fans. Major League Baseball has 30 teams that play 162 regular season games each. They released their tentative schedule on September 14th, 2010, before the end of last year's season. Does the MLS really think they have more factors to consider than Major League Baseball?


I drive 4 hours round-trip to Columbus from Cincinnati to watch the Crew play. I also subscribe to MLS DirectKick on DirecTV. There are thousands of other fans that invest time and money to follow their favorite teams. MLS is disrespecting it's fans by not releasing it's regular season schedule in a timely fashion.