1. Unbalanced Schedule
Each club’s total matches will remain the same, at 34 regular-season matches, and the regular season will run from mid-March through October, as it has in recent years.
Here is how the conference-based schedule will work:
Western Conference clubs will play each other three times, totaling 24 matches. They will play four conference opponents twice at home and once away, and play the other four conference opponents twice away and once at home. The location arrangement will be reversed in 2013.
West clubs will complete their schedule by playing each of the 10 Eastern Conference clubs once. Five of matches will be at home and five will be on the road. Again, the arrangement will be reversed in 2013.
Due to the higher number of clubs in the Eastern Conference, things are a little different on that side. Each club will play a total of 25 conference matches.
Each East club will play seven of their conference opponents three times each (21 total games) and the remaining two conference opponents twice each (4 games).
To complete their full slate, East teams will then play the nine West teams once each. Those nine games will be split either five at home and four away or vice versa. The locations will be reversed in 2013.
The league says it plans to announce the full schedule earlier than they have in previous years.
2. MLS Cup goes to the highest seed
The MLS Cup final will no longer be a neutral-site game, according to a plan approved on Saturday by the league’s Board of Governors. Instead, the league’s championship match will be played at the home venue of the participating team with a higher regular-season point total.
That effectively brings an end to the system of rotating the MLS Cup final to different venues around the league, as MLS has done since its inaugural 1996 season.
3. New Playoff Structure
The playoff format itself will also get a tweak. As in 2011, the playoff field will remain 10 teams. However, the top five teams in each conference will qualify for the postseason without wild card spots.
The No. 4 team in each conference will then host the No. 5 team in its conference in a single-elimination game for the right to face its respective conference’s top seed in the Conference Semifinals.
The Conference Championships will shift to two-leg series instead of a single game, as they have been since 2003.