Source: U.S. Open Cup gets go-ahead for 2024 under proposed new format - ESPN

Preliminary plans for the 2024 edition of the U.S. Open Cup have been approved by a subcommittee of the U.S. Soccer Federation board of directors, though the tournament likely won't look like recent editions, a source close to the USSF told ESPN.

The source indicated that complete details are still being ironed out, but the decision to have a tournament in 2024 has been made and what will likely gain final approval is a hybrid type of tournament with not every MLS team participating. The precise level of team participation from MLS and USL clubs is still to be determined.

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The source added that the plan calls for the federation to make its largest financial investment ever to ease the cost of travel and assist with promotion, especially for lower-division teams.

The source also indicated this format would be for 2024 only, and there are ongoing discussions with all stakeholders about working collaboratively to find a permanent long-term format for the tournament.

The future of the tournament, the first edition of which was completed in 1914, has been in doubt ever since MLS announced in December that its first teams wouldn't participate in the competition, and that teams from MLS Next Pro would take their place.

In an interview with ESPN late last week, MLS commissioner Don Garber said about the Open Cup, «Everybody in the soccer business [needs] to rethink how competitions have been organized to ensure that we can continue to evolve and manage what is the single biggest issue for all professional soccer, and that's the management of our schedule.»

While the MLS schedule has become more crowded in recent years, some of that is the league's own doing with its creation of