We are definitely doing something very different for the 2023 MLS season, given the new Major League Soccer media landscape.
MLS has prevented U.S. English and Spanish language outlets from carrying Canadian MLS teams since 2020 (outside of the 2020 Orlando tournament) during the regular season. The difference was that Canadians could watch Toronto FC, Club de Foot Montréal, and the Vancouver Whitecaps on TSN and TVA Sports while Americans could watch the home feed for those teams via ESPN+.
All of that is pretty much gone as most U.S. and Canadian rights have slipped behind the paywall of the MLS Season Pass via Apple TV. You don't get the games if you are an Apple TV subscriber without paying the extra charge.
If you relied on your local team coverage in the United States to watch a Canadian team, you are out of luck. No more local MLS telecasts in your market. That goes for the Seattle Sounders as well as FC Cincinnati. You would still have local radio coverage but the idea of listening to soccer on radio is better than white noise for going to sleep.
The relative good news for our Canadian readers is that TSN and RDS will have a limited schedule of games featuring the Canadian teams. The Canadian outlets will show a lot fewer MLS games than ever before but they will get more local games than U.S. soccer fans, meaning zero. A MLS press release says the Canadian outlets will have "at least one match per week featuring a Canadian team."
Canadians will have to pay for the MLS Season Pass through Apple TV to get the other games. The CTV games, which was a way to grow the sport in Canada, are no longer a reality.
There will be U.S. national games involving Fox Sports and Fox Sports 1 as well as Spanish language outlets. ESPN is not a part of the MLS package. Then again, that package will be limited and almost certainly won't include Canadian teams.
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Une identité qui renoue avec les symboles de notre histoire.
— CF Montréal (@cfmontreal) May 27, 2022
Nous dévoilons notre nouveau logo qui sera utilisé en 2023 >>> https://t.co/nrwtFjZ67M
We unveil our new logo, which will be used in 2023 >>> https://t.co/XhjME42VXo#CFMTL pic.twitter.com/5Vp8wKiSDc
Club de Foot Montréal has a new logo for 2023 as well as a new coach. Hernán Losada, who briefly coached D.C. United in 2021 and very early in 2022, has been hired to replace Wilfried Nancy, who left to coach the Columbus Crew.
Columbus sent Montréal undisclosed compensation to acquire Nancy as well as assistant coach Kwame Ampadu, fitness coach Jules Gueguen, and video analyst Maxime Chalier, who followed to Columbus.
Across all competitions, Nancy had a 38-25-16 record in Montréal.
The team fired its reserve squad coach Sandro Grande a day after hiring him over a backlash from a 2012 tweet about how he thought the then premier Pauline Marois of Quebec should be assassinated.
2022 MLS Canadian teams preview
CanadianCrossing.com soccer coverage
We don't mean to ignore the changes on the pitch for Club de Foot Montréal (they lost a lot of good players) or any changes for Toronto FC or Vancouver FC. MLS doesn't really give us a reason to care.
Questions we might theoretically have such as "do we need Apple TV to watch the 'free' games" are nice but pretty irrelevant. More confusion than we can keep track off leading to the start of the season on Saturday. We get that MLS wanted the money from the Apple TV deal but driving local support away from soccer won't help you grow the sport.
photo credit and Twitter capture: @cfmontreal