Tropics will conclude MASL regular season with two March road games in California

LAKELAND, Fla. – The Florida Tropics, presented by Bond Clinic, will only play two regular season games in the Major Arena Soccer League in March, both on the road in California.

The only games scheduled for Florida are on Wednesday, March 10 in a 6 p.m. PST start against the Ontario Fury, and then the next evening against the Tacoma Stars in another 6 p.m. kickoff.  The same four teams that will visit Lakeland for six games in four days – Ontario, Tacoma and the San Diego Sockers –   will play a round-robin of games March 10-14 at the Toyota Center in Ontario.

The Tropics opened the season with five-straight games at home in January, and will host three games next weekend starting with a matchup against the Tacoma Stars on Thursday, Feb. 18 at 3 p.m. Florida will play San Diego Friday at 7 p.m. and finish the home portion of its schedule with a Feb. 21 4 p.m. kickoff against Ontario.

This schedule will complete the 2021 regular season and playoff information will be released at a future date. Due to the reduced schedule, the minimum number of games required to qualify for the playoffs has been reduced from 12 to 10. Since teams will have played an unbalanced number of games, playoff seeding will be determined by winning percentage first as opposed to win-loss record. 

Initially, the MASL Season Pass allowed fans who purchased this option to view every MASL game live and archived, and a Playoff Pass was going to be available following the regular season. Since the regular season has been reduced by a few weeks, the competing teams’ owners have voted to extend the Season Pass to include the playoffs for fans. Those who do not have the package will still be able to purchase single games.

 The Season Pass is still available and will allow purchasers to view archived games from this season, the remaining regular season games live, and every post-season game as well. Regular season games are $7.99 per contest and playoff pricing will be announced before the playoffs begin. 

The seven teams competing this season have entered a partnership to broadcast on Facebook and split revenue evenly. Teams in Monterrey, Sonora, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Utica, Harrisburg and Rochester are not participating in the abbreviated 2021 season due to pandemic restrictions.

As the MASL is a gate revenue driven sport, many teams have had to weigh the ability to field a team in a region where fans are not allowed to attend games. A few teams have taken that a step further and agreed to an entire schedule on the road and the PPV option gives teams the ability to compete. Fans can purchase the Season Pass or single games on the MASL Facebook page or by visiting www.facebook.com/MASLsoccer/events.