MLS Commissioner Don Garber addressed the media on Thursday morning in his annual State of the League address, just days before the 20th MLS Cup Final. In his opening remarks, Garber reflected on how far the league has come since its early days, when executives were faced with the decision to either shut down the league or push forward and restructure.
Much has changed since that time, with MLS now the third highest-attended sport league in North America, thanks in no small part to 2015 expansion clubs like Orlando City SC, New York City FC as well as Sounders FC, who once again led the leage in attendance in its seventh season in the league. The Sounders set a new MLS single-season franchise record with an average of 44,245 fans per game in 2015.
"We never expected that we'd have a club like Seattle that has 44,000-plus fans per game," Garber said.
As he spoke about fans' commitment to their teams, Garber also mentioned Seattle's renewal rate of nearly 100 percent among season-ticket members this year, and highlighted this year's Renew for Life option that allows fans to automatically renew their season tickets each year.
"70 percent [of Seattle's fans] have agreed to do it [renew] for life," Garber said. "They own that ticket."
Garber also applauded the expansion of the league over the last few seasons and spoke extensively about the plan to push forward to 24 clubs. He also discussed his "belief in the soccer pyramid" and the need to continue spending at the academy and USL level. In 2016, the Sounders and 10 other MLS clubs will operate their own USL teams to help develop young players.
"There's more total spending at the academy and USL level among MLS teams than players' salaries four or five years ago," he said. "It's a deep investment and something that bas been much more productive than the Reserve League approach."
With the playoffs ready to close with MLS Cup on Sunday, questions also arose about the league's current playoff format and any potential changes in the future. Garber explained that league officials examine the competitive format every year and that one of the topics discussed could be a change to the away-goals rule, first implemented in 2014.
"There are a number of different views on the away goals rule," Garber told ESPNFC.com. "It certainly is a part of the soccer landscape around the world. I'm not sure it's as important for us as we originally thought. Frankly, I think it's hard for many people who are not core soccer fans to understand. We've seen an increase recently in interest from casual fans, and it is difficult to explain to them that a team could win the second leg and lose the series. That's what happened with Seattle and LA last year. We've always said that we should look at our format every year, and see if what we have works."
The rule, which uses away goals as the deciding factor in the case of an aggregate-goal deadlock in the current two-leg playoff format in the conference semifinals and championship directly affected the Rave Green in 2014. Seattle advanced past FC Dallas in the conference semifinals despite a 1-1 aggregate-goal scoreline (the Sounders scored the series' only away goal), and was then eliminated by the LA Galaxy in the conference championship after the Galaxy scored the series' only away goal, despite an aggregate scoreline of 2-2.
Garber also alluded to a potential break in the league's 2016 schedule during Copa America Centenario, running June 3 -26 in Seattle and nine other U.S. markets.
"We’re seriously considering a two week break during Centenario,” he said.
