Welcome to the 2024 Major League Soccer playoffs. Nine months and 988 games have led us to this point: of MLS's 29 teams, just 16 remain in contention for the Cup. If you're new to MLS, here's how the playoff system works.
The league's 29 teams are split into two conferences (East and West), and while they play teams from their own conference more often during the regular season, they cross geographic boundaries and face faraway teams, too. Each team plays 34 games during the season, recording three points for a win, one point for a draw and zero points for a loss. At the end of the season, the seven teams in each conference with the most points automatically qualify for the MLS Playoffs.
The eighth and ninth placed teams in each conference (in 2024's case, Montreal and Atlanta in the East and Vancouver and Portland in the West) play each other in a one-off wild-card game, and the winner of each goes to the playoffs as the eighth seed. From there, it's a simple knockout tournament. The top seed in each conference plays the wildcard-winning eighth seed; the second seed plays the seventh, and so on.
In the first round — the round we're entering this evening — the teams will play a best of three series to determine the winner. The top seeds will have home field advantage. The bracket is locked and loaded for Round 1 of the Audi #MLSCupPlayoffs pic.
twitter.com/FLLXyL4GD0 Once we find our Round 1 winners, we'll move onto the Conference Semifinals and the Conference Finals, eac.
