SEATTLE — Arms folded and faces stern, most of the Seattle Sounders players stood in solidarity to address an issue that has been known for at least a couple of months but has become unavoidable more recently.
The Club World Cup is just two weeks away, but players say a letter they sent weeks ago to the league asking to discuss their share of the prize pool has been ignored and that negotiations through the MLSPA have mostly gone nowhere. To call attention to their concerns, the players wore shirts during Sunday’s pregame that read “Club World Ca$h Grab” on the front and “Fair Share Now” on the back.
The pregame display did not sit well with Sounders majority owner Adrian Hanauer, who upbraided the team in a profanity-laced postgame address, according to numerous sources who witnessed it.
Perhaps somewhat chastened by those comments and possibly humbled by the 3-2 loss to Minnesota United, the players remained resolute in their underlying message that they deserve a bigger portion of the prize pool than they're getting when they addressed the media collectively after the match.
“It’s a shame that we’re two weeks away and we have absolutely no clue,” Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei said. “We tried avenues that were private, respectful. I think what we’re asking for is something that’s fair. We’re not asking to make more than what I think FIFA thought would be fair to the players.”
When FIFA first unveiled the idea of an expanded Club World Cup, it came with a tacit acknowledgement that players were being asked to do something extraordinary. Especially in Europe, top players often log 50-60 games. The Club World Cup would require them to play up to seven more games and was scheduled to take place just a few weeks after most European seasons ended.
To entice teams — and presumably players — to treat the tournament like something more than a preseason exhibition tour, FIFA unveiled a prize pool that totals $1 billion, with the winning team likely collecting around $125 million. That's competitive with the world's most lucrative competitions, with Paris Saint-Germain likely collecting about $100 million for winning the recently concluded UEFA Champions League.
The Sounders will receive no less than $9.5 million simply for competing. If they can secure points, they’d get $1 million for each tie, $2 million for each win and an additional $7.5 million if they were to get out of their group.
There are tens of millions more in additional prizes the further a team advances. Add it all up, and a miracle run to the title would net the Sounders something like $100 million. It would be the rough equivalent of a full year of revenue secured during a one-month competition. More realistically, getting out of the group would earn them about $20 million. MLS rules only dictate that the money must be spent on soccer operations, with owners having tons of discretion how to use it otherwise.
Such a windfall was virtually unimaginable when the current CBA that governs playing conditions and compensation was signed in 2021. The Club World Cup is not even addressed directly in the 106-page document.
At the time, no MLS team had ever even participated in what then had traditionally been a seven-team tournament in which no one played more than four and the biggest teams played no more than two games.
The prize pool in those previous tournaments had usually been less than $20 million total and the winning club would get less than $10 million. When the Sounders became the first MLS team to actually compete in the Club World Cup in 2023, they were guaranteed $500,000. Not bad money to show up in foreign country, stay in fancy hotels, be treated to lavish meals and play a few games at most, but nothing like what FIFA is now offering.
Still, MLS is pointing to a clause in the CBA that says teams will receive “fifty percent (50%) of such prize money up to a maximum payment to the Players (collectively) of $1,000,000 per tournament” as part of the section that relates to “Compulsory Tournament/Non-Compulsory Tournament.”
That’s less than what players on the winning team can potentially make from the Leagues Cup. A perfect run would net a team at least $925,000, but that is technically an uncapped figure as MLS players are guaranteed to get no less than whatever their Liga MX counterparts are receiving.
Performance incentives are a recurring theme throughout the CBA, in fact. Teams get bonuses for everything from regular-season wins to making the playoffs. There are different structures for the U.S. Open Cup, Concacaf Champions League and even Campeones Cup, but they all follow the same broad structure of incentivizing players to advance. As it is, the Club World Cup is the only tournament in which MLS teams will compete where they aren’t given a similar incentive.
While acknowledging that an MLS team is very unlikely to win the tournament, Frei pointed out that the players would get less than 1% of that prize. At most, the players will get about 10.5% of the Sounders' prize. Historically, MLS players have been paid about 30% of league revenues.
“The fact that the players are capped at $1 million seems ludicrous, honestly,” he said. “We’re fighting for ourselves, but I think it’s very, very important that we also fight for future generations, if you will, because you see MLS is growing.
“Teams are making strides. This is an ancient clause that needs to needs to shift.”
As you’d imagine, players want to be excited about the opportunity ahead of them. For most, this will be their only chance to face off against top talent from around the world in a real competition. But players currently feel as though they are effectively being taken advantage of.
They’ve been given vague assurances that an offer is on the way, but they’ve now run out of patience.
“The cream of the crop meeting all together and getting to play against each other, this is what dreams are made of,” Frei said. “But this was announced two years ago. That’s a long time. I think we were hoping that we could engage a long time ago.
“It’s just been in silence. It’s very frustrating. You want to be looking forward to these games. You want to be making sure that you can focus on your league. We just played against a team that’s right with us, and we would love to have that been the only thing we have to focus on and the rest is good. But the reality is it’s not so.”
This is clearly not the ideal time for any of this to be happening.
The Minnesota match was the Sounders’ second of three consecutive matches against the Western Conference’s top teams and losing it was an obvious missed opportunity to move up the table. They’ve got another massive match against the Vancouver Whitecaps next Sunday.
Head coach Brian Schmetzer didn’t question his players’ effort — and again asserted he can sympathize to a degree — but he did wonder aloud if their concentration was as sharp as it could have been. The margins in MLS are already thin and something like this obviously doesn’t help.
“The statement the players tried to make today, they have to back it up,” Schmetzer said.
Hanauer reportedly used much more direct language and insinuated that players had disrespected both him and the organization.
At least part of Hanauer's frustration was the players never brought their concerns directly to him. The players said their target was more the league's larger decision-making apparatus.
Regardless of where their ire was aimed directly, they admitted it's having some impact on how well they can do their jobs.
“It is a huge distraction for us to have to deal with this on a daily basis,” Roldan said. “We’re having to focus on MLS play with this in the back of our minds. The reality is we need to get this sorted.”
It’s entirely possible that the players’ actions get them no closer to a resolution, that there were more back channels to explore before going public. The MLSPA must shoulder some blame for allowing that cap to be placed on earnings, as well. It can be credibly argued that the time to address this is during the next CBA negotiations, and would likely be in effect during the next Club World Cup.
But it’s also not hard to sympathize with players who see a big pot of money to which they have limited access. The Sounders remain the only MLS team to have earned their qualification and plenty of those players remain on the roster. The league is on solid legal footing with the CBA, so the players are playing the cards they have at their disposal, imperfect as they may be.
This leaves us with clearly dissatisfied parties on both sides, not exactly the ideal way to head into what should be seen as a positive experience for everyone. There's still time and room for compromise, though. A commonsense approach would seem to be to create a clear incentive for players to perform to the best of their ability. Capping their winnings before they've even played runs counter to virtually everything else in the CBA. Any additional winnings are effectively found money and sharing it would have virtually no budgetary cost. Surely, there's a way to give everyone at least part of what they want.
