Dynamo undefeated at home. Abysmal on the road. Watched the game today and it absolutely looked like they were giving the ball up constantly. Shots on goal were light footed.

Every single MLS team won at home today. 75% empty stadiums aren't exactly huge home field advantages.

Is this league still rigged? Home wins mean more fans return and buy $10 hot dogs? From a marketing and business stand point, it seems so.

FWIW, I did a quick and dirty comparison between 2016 MLS season (340 games) and the 2016-17 EPL season thus far (369 games as of this post)

The win rates for home teams are almost identical. 49.71% for MLS home teams last year. 49.32% for EPL home teams so far this year. That said, there is a fairly large difference in draws. 2016 MLS home teams drew 31.47% (losing only 18.82% of the time) while EPL home teams only managed a draw 22.49% of the time (losing 28.18% of the time).

In addition to the travel time argument that has been brought up, MLS parity has something to do with it as well. Home field advantage is a lot more important when most of your teams are of similar talent. Home field advantage doesn't mean nearly as much when Hull or Sunderland host Chelsea or Tottenham.

So if you mean that MLS is rigging the system by encouraging refs to favor the home team, I think you're way off. But parity in a league will naturally favor home teams and MLS does "rig" the system in that regard with their salary cap rules.

PatAg said:

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You don't think the amount of travel is a big factor? Don't travel like this in England or Germany.

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they also fly coach commercial and stay in standard hotels (I think in Houston it is the downtown Hyatt. Adequate but meh).

PJD Ag 10 said:

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You're not watching MLS if you think the stadiums are 75% empty

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I think eh meant they would be if it wasnt rigged for the home team to win


it was hard to read and understand

PatAg said:

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PJD Ag 10 said:

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You're not watching MLS if you think the stadiums are 75% empty

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I think eh meant they would be if it wasnt rigged for the home team to win


it was hard to read and understand

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Ahhhh

To be fair, with the bizarre single-entity ownership structure, it's easy to jump to the "rigged" conclusion.

Fans in every sport feel like things are rigged in favor of the popular teams, but at least in those sports, owners of individual teams/clubs can make a good amount of independent decisions to improve their team even if their team is not a favorite. And owners have skin in the game to try to make this happen. On the other hand, the MLS front office controls everything and all the owners profit if (and only if) the league is doing well.