Not going to lie, the 2023 MLS season has been a very long marathon. The season started nearly 270 days ago on February 25!!!! After the regular season, inaugural Leagues Cup, and the new playoff format we've reached the last game of the 2023 MLS Season. The Crew came from behind to best their Hell is Real, and Supporters Shield Holding, rivals FC Cincinnati after extra time 3-2. The reigning, defending, undisputed MLS Champions LAFC bested the resurgent Houston Dynamo at BMO Stadium 2-0. On paper MLS Cup should be a banger of match. As usual all game times are eastern. National broadcasts & Free games are listed. All games can be viewed using MLS Season Pass on Apple TV. MLS N&A play by play threads are neutral spaces. Keep all rivalry-esque banter out of these parts. Bullying. personal attacks and/or trolling will not be tolerated. Saturday, December 9 CLB vs LAX 4:10PM Fox / Free For those who are sad to see MLS' year come to an end.... preseason starts in about 4 weeks!
This is the 2nd consecutive year in which the MLS Cup Final features the teams finishing 1 and 2 in regular season xGD. It's the 4th consecutive in which the final features the #1 team in that category. Screw the Supporters Shield; win the Advanced Stats Trophy.
Season ticket holders are having all kinds of issues even finding tickets to this game. The league apparently let sponsors swallow up a huge percentage of them before fans even had a chance.
I'm following the thread over on the Crew boards, so I'm seeing the frustration. Still, I wonder if much of what we're seeing is based on unusual, huge demand, a very short window of opportunity, and technical glitches rather than sponsors already having purchased piles of tickets.
Just posted on Reddit: FYI - From the Crew "We wanted to let you know that, as of now, we have no tickets remaining to offer for MLS Cup on Saturday, December 9 against LAFC. MLS Cup is a Major League Soccer-run event, and MLS controls all aspects of this match, including all allocation of tickets. That being said, we were only able to offer the tickets that were made available to us as an organization to 2023 Season Ticket Members that opted-in for 2023 Playoff Strips. Should more tickets be released to us by MLS, we will first offer these to those that were not able to get tickets before we release them to the general public. There is no guarantee we get more tickets from MLS. We appreciate your support of the Club. Glory to Columbus!"
Tickets to all those seats that the season ticket holders can't get must have gone somewhere. Give us a credible guess where that somewhere else is, if it wasn't sponsors buying them up for the mark-up in the resale market. If it was "technical glitches" the tickets would have shown up for sale by Ticketmaster by now.
All those sponsors sitting at home Saturday night waiting for the game to end to book flights/hotels etc. Thx, Jay!
I guess what it comes down to is this: do you think this game should be ticketed like every other Crew home game, or do you accept that the league controls ticketing for this game and distributes tickets using a very different model? Crew fans are used to having free access to close to 20,000 seats every home game, and the team sells out every match. What if that number is only 15,000 or 16,000 for this match? The idea that the league sets aside lots of tickets for itself, sponsors, a larger contingent for the other team than is normally the case, shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. Doesn’t mean you have to like it. But the situation would be the same for any other team with similar local demand coupled with stadium capacity limitations.
I still think situations like this could be alleviated by playing the MLS Cup final at a neutral venue like Jacksonville, Tampa, Houston, Arlington, Phoenix, or Las Vegas. MLS sets its schedule long before the NFL does for its regular season, so if the Cup final is set for NRG Stadium or Raymond James Stadium, that means the Texans or Buccaneers will be on the road the second weekend of December. You'll have more seats available for fans of both teams, as well as those allotted for preferred MLS sponsors.
For comparison: although the 2022 finalists were the top seeds in their conferences and 1 and 2 in the Supporters Shield standings, the other three finals have involved no #1 seeds. Also note, this season, Montreal almost getting into the playoffs despite having much worse GD than several teams below them. The play on the field looked much more like their GD than their point total.
More seats available for fans of both teams? Not really, unless you assume that everyone who’d otherwise attend the game in their hometown stadium will, instead, buy airline tickets on short notice and book a couple of nights in a hotel in the neutral host city PLUS buy tickets.
Right because the Super Bowl always has a good 50/50 mix of fans..... Maybe MLS should make the final TWO legs??? That way each team gets a home game?
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not. And is 50/50 mix the goal? One team got more points during the season, they deserve to play at home. And in the old days, when they had neutral site finals, the atmosphere was often poor. It made for bad TV.
Yes. Full stop. And I'd say the same thing about MLS Cup being held in any other city. If the league wants to take control of an All-Star Game, that's fine. If they want to go back to MLS Cup being a neutral site game and control it, that's OK too. (Although I think letting it be a home game is better.) But what's the point of qualifying for an MLS Cup home game if the people who have been buying the tickets all year because they love the home team don't even have an opportunity to get in? You earn more points throughout the course of the season, you QUALIFY for the Final, and then... the most loyal fans get shut out? This isn't a neutral site game. It's a home game.
1000% agree with this. As a STH of an MLS team since their first season, if the Union were hosting and I couldn't get a ticket..... I'd be livid.
Well... turns out that a presale code was leaked, and there were many unauthorized purchases, which are now going to be cancelled. A new presale for STMs will now happen tomorrow.
The point of winning home field for the Cup should be home fans in the majority. I get the sponsors but the joy of a Championship is the exclamation point for season ticket holders to finish a season.
Is the Crew's statement accurate that STH who opted into the full playoff ticket strip got access to MLS Cup? That's pretty normal US sports industry practice--requiring a commitment to buy every possible playoff game to get a guarantee of the finals.
PACK THE FUCKIN’ DOT!#Crew96 https://t.co/01lQenTWAM— MLS Gone Wild ⭐️ (@MLSGoneWild) December 5, 2023
There was definitely no guarantee. Thousands of people who were in that group todays did not get tickets. Only some of the people who signed up for the playoff package were able to buy MLS Cup tickets. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.
I see everyone's point about the MLS neutral venue post I made. I'll just add that there were many instances of great crowds watching teams that weren't local in the Cup Final. I don't know what the atmosphere was like at these games since I've never been to one, but as an MLS fan, those in attendance looked pretty engaged and excited on television. Kansas City and Chicago drew more than 39,000 for their title game in Washington in 2000. Salt Lake and the Galaxy drew 46,000 in Seattle in 2009. While the capacity in Carson was just 27,000 fans, the place was packed in 2008 when Columbus won its first MLS Cup title over the Red Bulls. Through the course of the regular season, LAFC and Columbus were not the best teams in MLS. They just happen to be the last teams standing, and that's fine. That's what the playoffs are all about. I understand it would be silly for MLS to pay rent for a one-day event at a stadium not owned by one of its franchises, but unlike 20 or 25 years ago, the league is on a more solid financial footing. Maybe a stipulation could be that the Supporter's Shield winning team gets to host MLS Cup for that particular season, even if the Shield winner doesn't make it that far (like this year). Perhaps both participants in MLS Cup could get berths in the CONCACAF Champions League, with the winner moving into the Round of 16 automatically. Like so many things associated with professional soccer in the northern part of North America, the landscape now is very different than it was in the 1990's.
I'm not trying to argue with you or anything, but I would like to point out that you're suggesting that Crew fans should be allowed to take over the Bailey down at Tickle Stadium. Though now that I think about it, a lot of Crew fans have already stood there for National team games. (Though thinking about it further, I seem to recall that section seemed to have more Guatemalans than anybody else last summer.) (Actually, now that my memory is catching up to me, a large number of them looked to have put down their Guatemala flags in between games and waved US flags for the second game. Must be fun to have 2 national teams you can legit claim as yours.)
As a Rapids fan, I’d have to say as long as the shield winner is not Toronto. Or another northern team without a dome. Perhaps one day day destination finals could come back, I propose Las Vegas as a permanent home then.