The Cup rarely goes to the best regular season team. The sharp money fades the fanfare and finds the edge in momentum.
MLS Cup games are known for their frantic pace.
With a one-game format introduced in 2019, this has only gotten more intense.
Soccer betting has had to adjust, since it can come down to the smallest lucky bounce or fingertip save to have people either cash or take the L.
Sharps need a strategy to navigate this chaos. But it might not come down to crunching data or metrics.
Check out the latest MLS odds at Lucky Rebel
Only 7 Supporters’ Shield Winners Have Won the Cup Out of 27 seasons
The league’s best regular season team goes home with the Supporters’ Shield.
That’s about all they go home with all year, based on the stats.
Only 7 of them have gone on to win the MLS Cup out of the league’s 27 seasons.
Sounds low, but in another league that plays one-game playoffs, it’s about average. The NFL’s best regular season team has won just 12 times out of 59 Super Bowls.
Reputation and regular season records get a full reset when the MLS Cup Playoffs begin.
It’s possible that players crack under pressure. Something about a heavy crown? We skipped that day in history class too. But the finances can be meaningful, so maybe the top dogs in the regular season get nervous.
Each round scores a team a higher amount of prize money. The Round One teams who advance get $20,000 to split. But it ramps up, with the Conference Semifinals ($47,500), the Conference Finals ($100,000) and the MLS Cup winner ($2,000,000).
Playing longer and longer into the playoffs also means more home matches, better broadcast and sponsorship potential, and a berth in the CONCACAF Champions Cup.
All that can amount to coaches and players gripping a little too hard come playoff time.
The smart money says that fading the favorites from the regular season is the move, with that 7 out of 27 track record.
The public will tend to overvalue them, betting chalk without looking deeper into the team’s actual chances.
Lucky Rebel players know that the moves the masses make in soccer betting are rarely the way to play it. Alternative betting – say on a 2nd or 3rd place team with solid + odds next to their name – stands as good of a shot at lifting the cup as the frontrunners do.
One-Game Format Breeds Upsets
The switch in 2019 to single-game knockouts made the MLS Cup into a bit of the Wild West.
Then they moved to a hybrid format in 2023, with a best-of-three series in Round One and then single elimination games in the Conference Semis and Finals.
Underdogs – we’ll get into whether they’re true ‘dogs in a minute – have won 38% of games outright, and covered more than that, in the 55-60% range.
Sending more than 1/3 of the favorites home early means each round in the MLS Cup is more of a coin flip than the previous one.
What gives? A few theories…
The pressure is all on the favorites, while the underdogs can play a looser style.
Under pressure, mistakes happen. In games that end 1-0, 2-1, or 3-2, a single missed header or a lazy corner given up can spell disaster.
Possession dominance and strong strikers will help either side, but the favorite is just as vulnerable with that one single gaffe.
Form Beats Seeding
Momentum is huge in the MLS Cup Playoffs. More than any other factor, given the parity across the league, it’s what sends teams to the finals.
We don’t generally like to base our bets on squishy things like “momentum” though.
Sharps prefer solid data to back up their moves, removing as much of the emotion or vibes from the equation.
Here’s one number to look at – and it falls between data and feels: MLS clubs with at least a four-game unbeaten streak before the playoffs have a higher postseason winning percentage than other top seeds without that momentum.
Forget hot streaks to start the year that might have put a club on top record-wise by the end of the season.
It’s the current momentum, before Round One and through the knockout rounds, that counts.
There’s too much parity in the league to have any true conviction on the favorites in the playoffs. Too much can go wrong, especially against a hot team.
Case in point: the New York Red Bulls rode red-hot momentum all the way into December and the MLS Cup Final against the LA Galaxy.
The Bulls started the playoffs by shocking the Columbus Crew.
The Crew had a 19-point over New York in the regular season when the final whistle blew. They were second in the Supporters’ Shield. New York? Way down in 16th place.
It came down to penalty kicks, which sharps know is a total coin toss. Going with
But momentum took the Red Bulls past the Crew and then straight through two more higher-seeded teams before coming to a halt in the finals.
More indication of the fickle MLS playoffs?
Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami team went down to Atlanta United in the first round last season as well.
No biggie. Except that Miami was coming off a 74-point season, the best in MLS history. And they had Messi, the greatest soccer player ever (come at us, Ronaldo fans).
Atlanta had a 3-game winning streak the previous month, and they had the right midfield and defense to slow down Messi as best they could (he still scored).
Smart money might have not seen those big upsets coming 100%, but knowing the track record of Supporters’ Shield winners in the playoffs and seeing the momentum plays, you can bet many were in position to fade the favorites and go with the hot hands. Or feet.