Lionel Messi and Inter Miami under pressure, LA Galaxy play waiting game, sellouts and strong ratings: MLS playoffs not short on drama, but is the revamped format working?

This wasn't supposed to happen. There was a widespread assumption that a best-of-three opening round format would decrease jeopardy. In effect, ask teams to play each other three times - as opposed to a winner-take-all single match - and the better one probably comes out on top the majority of the time. Upsets are less likely, drama comes at a premium.

So much for that.

New York Red Bulls did away with the assumption within a week, beating highly-rated and defending champions Columbus Crew twice in a row to secure a series win. Both victories with nervy things - the first a classic smash and grab on the road, the second a penalty nail-biter. And it was all magnificent entertainment, a No. 7 seed pipping a No. 2 seed.

Miami, too, could be sweating. Although the Herons handily beat Atlanta United in the first game of the series, the Black and Red pulled off an impressive win at home. Miami, all of a sudden look beatable. There is a real chance that Lionel Messi and Miami could exit the playoffs early. LAFC, too, find themselves in trouble after being handily beaten by Vancouver in game two. Perhaps these are momentary slips ahead of a big run, but if drama was the goal, then drama fans have received.

Fixture congestion has steadily crept into the global soccer picture in recent years. And it seems to be getting worse, with some top stars in Europe threatening to strike if things aren't brought under control. MLS, meanwhile, hasn't covered itself in glory on this front. The addition of an expanded Leagues Cup to the calendar put more stress on the schedule, and increased injury risk. Players are now playing more games than ever before. Tired legs are an issue.

It is a knock on the format, then, that three games are deemed necessary to decide the first round. It would seem, in some ways, a strange way to play out an initial round of playoffs. After 34 regular season clashes - all played at a high intensity - as well as Leagues Cup and some continental tournaments, there isn't room for extra games.

In most major European leagues, matchday revenue verges on irrelevance. The Premier League, for example, has such a bloated TV rights deal that even the smallest clubs aren't too heavily reliant on fans showing up to games. The same goes for La Liga and the Bundesliga - albeit with less financial backing.

MLS is different. Although the massive Apple TV deal has certainly helped clubs, smaller markets in particular need match-going fans to buy tickets. This is not a question of financial life and death, but soccer clubs are businesses. And home playoff games are the perfect opportunity to generate gate sales.

The Colorado Rapids serve as the perfect example. They were handily beaten, 5-1, by the LA Galaxy in their opening fixture. But game two, in which a win could have kept the side alive, was played out in front of a packed house at Dick's Sporting Goods Park. The Rapids got to host their first playoff game since 2021. These can only be considered good things - even though they lost.

The same can be said for Vancouver, who won 3-0 at home as a wildcard contestant.

Riqui Puig put it best in an angry tweet:

And he's right. The Galaxy were, in effect, punished for wrapping up their series early. After beating Colorado on Nov. 2, they were forced to wait until the end of the month to resume playoff play. By that point, there will have been an international break - where a few of their first team players might get called up - as well as perhaps just too much time for rest.

There is something to be said for recuperation here, especially in such a busy sport. But the opposite can also be true - three weeks off is a momentum staller, a time in which sharpness can be lost, and performance can suffer. New York Red Bulls will face the same problem in the East. Only with them, after beating the Crew, they might just want the next game to come around quicker - if only to keep the good vibes going.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber summed up the status of the league's streaming relationship with Apple TV in pretty clear terms last month. "It may end up being one of the best deals in sport’s history," he said at a summit in London.

There is certainly some basis to his claim. MLS and Apple reached an agreement on a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal for all streaming rights in 2022. At the time, reaction was mixed. Sure, this would get more eyes on MLS, and gear the league up to more comprehensive worldwide viewership, but could a streaming deal with an entity that had little sports experience truly work?

Thus far, Garber seems to have been proven right. MLS surpassed 2 million subscribers at the end of the 2023 campaign. Apple announced that the 2024 First Round opener, Inter Miami's playoff matchup against Atlanta, was its most-watched sporting event ever (although it didn't release exact figures.) There are complexities here, and without exact numbers, it's tough to pin an exact value. But logic dictates that more games means more eyes. And for MLS, more people watching this ever-improving product can only help.

There is one major problem in the MLS payoff format, at least from a sporting perspective. MLS is doing it the wrong way round. Longer series, with the best teams in the competition, and more at stake, should be played later in the tournament. It's something the NBA has mastered, going from a play-in, to best-of-five, to best-of-seven. MLB does a similar thing with its Division Series (5 games) and Championship Series (7).

Soccer is a different sport, and exists in a different landscape. This is a game that is familiar with aggregate scorelines and two-leg ties (which have been immensely successful and captivating in European competitions over the years.)

If MLS is to disrupt - and Garber has repeatedly said that it is his aim - then bringing in best of threes for the Conference Semis, or even Conference final, might make far more sense. If jeopardy and drama between the best teams is the goal here, then making them play more in later rounds seems the more sportingly apt way to do so.