The International Swimming League (ISL) announced a 24-match schedule for its fourth season of competition, set to kick off in June 2022.
The Season 4 schedule consists of 15 regular season matches, six playoff matches and one final, plus one wild card match in both the regular season and playoffs.
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The regular season will get underway on June 3rd and run through October 2nd, with the wild card match scheduled shortly thereafter.
While exact locations have yet to be determined, the ISL release does note that the season will open in North America, and that the 10 clubs will compete in both North America and Europe over the course of the regular season.
Just like last season, the Season 4 playoffs will consist of the top eight clubs from the regular season battling across six matches, though one new facet will be the playoff wild card match. In that match, the third through sixth-ranked clubs will battle to determine the final two spots for the final.
The playoff matches will take place in North America and the Asia Pacific Region from Oct. 22-Dec. 3, the release says, while the finale is slated for the end of December at a location TBD.
The regular season schedule will break for nearly eight weeks from July 3 until August 25.
ISL Season 4 Breakdown
- 15 regular season matches (June 3 – October 2)
- Regular season wild card match (October 6-7)
- Six playoff matches (October 22- November 27)
- Playoff wild card match (December 3-4)
- League Final (End of December)
ISL founder Konstantin Grigorishin said the league will implement some changes to the format for the upcoming season that will make the matches “even more unpredictable.”
“Last year we introduced ISL’s, and swimming’s, first-ever Draft,” Grigorishin said. “This season we are preparing some very exciting innovations to our format, which will make ISL’s matches even more unpredictable. We also plan to expand our geographic reach and bring the ISL competitions to Asia for the first time. Our fans should stay tuned!”
Season 4 ISL Schedule (Subject to change):
Season 4 marks the first time the ISL has been able to run out the expanded schedule it had previously planned for before the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to change on the fly.
In Season 2, the ISL initially planned to run a 27-match schedule beginning in September 2020, shortly after the Tokyo Olympics, before things changed due to the pandemic. The second season ended up being a 10-match regular season with two semi-final matches and a league final in a condensed period of time, October/November 2020, in a bubble in Budapest.
In Season 3, the ISL ran a total of 18 matches, with 11 in the regular season (including the wild card “Play-In” match), six playoff matches, and the final.
They should add the 4×5
What do you think each team needs out of the draft
It’s disappointing to see LCM get so little in 2022. This very well could have been the year when Dressel would’ve taken down more records, specifically those ancient, super suit era 50 & 100 free LCM records.
Don’t worry, most athletes are preparing for CGs, Europeans, US nationals and the Mare nostrum tour. Those are their taper meets.
Moreover, FINA is actually trying to organize a World Cup series during May and June to replace Worlds (according to some federations)
Why in the world would we swim scm during LCM season??
I prefer to see more swimmers in Mare Nostrum in June. LCM > SCM.
Just give Energy Standard the trophy already .. done
Gibson already established a plan with Grigorishin.
PLEASE, CHANGE THE NARRATORS. The only reason I did not subscribe is them. If there’s and English or Australian sportscaster (or Hungarian, Spanish, Italian, etc, who know their sport), please, add them to the roaster.
The probably use American commentators to try and appeal to the large American market. Surely in a country as large as the US they have some better commentators?
We fast forward whatever we can because of the substandard commentary. Hard to describe how annoying it is. They need Kurt Hanson, who does the commentary on site, to be looped into the TV commentary. So they can save money that way. Just pay Kurt.
800 scm free gonna be added??
Seems unlikely. The problem isn’t willpower, it’s keeping the meet in a 2x2hour format. Not really any room to add an extra 20 minutes of racing
But, we don’t know for sure.
It sounds like they are going to add 800m and take out something else in order to keep it 2 hrs from what I gathered from lezak
They’d have to take out a few something elses to keep it under 2 hrs.
Maybe they could start the 800m at the end of one session and finish it at the start of the second.
Just throwin’ out ideas here, people.
Eh, most college dual meets can get completed in under 2 hours with at least two heats of 1,000s in there. Just do a soccer-style advertising where there’s essentially an ad on the tv at all times, while you power through all of the races to get inside the 2-hour block. Seems pretty straight forward and already precedent in the USA with that.
College meets don’t have a skins race. I don’t remember the exact timeline for them, but I imagine those take up the same amount of time. No way those get cut for 800s
Hopefully in future they add at least two more teams it’d be great to see Australia get one then the other could be either South America (most likely Brazil) or even another Asian based team