As Club World Cup begins, MLS player bonus dispute remains as protests, allegations of retaliation cause chaos

MLS and the MLS Players Association are still at odds as it pertains to player bonuses regarding the Club World Cup, hours before Inter Miami play Al Ahly in the opening match of the newly expanded competition on Saturday.

The source of the dispute is a section in the current collective bargaining agreement, which only allows players to collect 50% of prize money from outside tournaments and caps their earnings at $1 million. FIFA’s new competition, which was expanded from eight teams to 32, comes with an overall prize pot of $1 billion and has raised questions about what portion of those earnings will go to the players themselves, especially in MLS. The league has three teams participating in the competition – Inter Miami, the Seattle Sounders and LAFC – though the league and the Players Association are unlikely to reach an agreement before kickoff at Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium for the opening match.

At this point, both sides have agreed to amend the section in the current CBA for the Club World Cup, though they remain far apart on the issue. North American teams are guaranteed $9.55 million just for participating, meaning MLS players would already be maxed out on their earnings before a ball is kicked. Should an MLS team win all of their group stage games and go on to win the whole competition, they would pocket more than $127 million.

CBS Sports has learned that each side only shared one proposal each, both last weekend, though they are very different – MLS’ proposal is that players would receive 20% of the performance-related earnings in addition to the $1 million guarantee, while the Players Association has pitched 40%. In a scenario where a team would make a perfect run to the final, the difference between earnings that the players would split would be $24,525,000 under the MLS proposal and $50,870,000 in the Players Association’s pitch.

“We’re still sitting in what is a very disappointing place on our side,” Bob Foose, the executive director of the Players Association, told CBS Sports.

Limited communication from the start

Both sides had understood the prize money section of the CBA could become an issue for the Club World Cup, informally discussing it in the months leading up to the tournament. When FIFA announced the mechanics for the $1 billion prize pot in late March, though, both MLS and the Players Association were waiting for the other side to formally begin conversations.

“MLS had no obligation within the CBA to provide any changes,” Todd Durbin, MLS’ executive vice president of player strategy and relations, argued in an interview with CBS Sports. 

By that point, the league had already made certain salary adjustments to account for the Club World Cup – participating teams would receive another $750,000 in allocation money and another $1.25 million that would have to be paid back over two years. All three teams maxed out on the $750,000 figure, according to a source, though that still did not address the issue of the sizable earnings players could earn at the tournament this summer.

Foose said the Players Association had tried to engage MLS “privately” in the months after FIFA announced the specifications of the earnings, likening it to the way the league had reached out to the union to make modifications to the CBA in the past around roster rules. He said the Players Association “just didn’t have luck in getting them to engage” and so they sent a formal letter to commissioner Don Garber in the weeks before LAFC’s Club World Cup play-in match against Mexico’s Club America on May 31 “asking to engage and get them to actually produce a proposal.”

Because the letter came before LAFC booked their spot in the competition, every player from both the Sounders and Miami – including stars like Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez – signed that letter, per Foose. He said all LAFC players later became signatories on that letter.

The impact of the Sounders’ protest

Things took a turn on June 1, when the Sounders players wore t-shirts that read “Club World Ca$h Grab” around a picture of Mr. Monopoly ahead of their MLS match against the Vancouver Whitecaps. Naturally, the protest drew more attention to the MLS players’ complaints while also raising the temperature around the issue internally.

Durbin said MLS communicated to the Players Association on May 31 that a proposal was coming, but “at no time did that proposal change or go backwards” because of the Sounders’ protest.

The Players Association, though, alleges that MLS owners spent the days after the Sounders’ protest “making threats and promising retaliation against the MLSPA and players.” GIVEMESPORT reported that Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer “angrily addressed” the team in the locker room after their June 1 match, and Foose himself said he received one of those.

“There’s no question that retaliation has been in front of mind for them since that protest,” Foose claimed. “My conversation with Don Garber shortly after that, he explicitly communicated that their proposal was going to be lower because of the protest, which is pretty much the definition of retaliation.”

MLS’ 20% proposal finally came on June 6, a Friday afternoon “when players had already shifted into sort of game mode,” as Foose described it. The Players Association sent their first – and only, as of Saturday morning – proposal of 40% the following day.

One thing that has not been a feature in the week since the two sides exchanged proposals is a frequent line of communication, leading to a lot of uncertainty about when this issue will be resolved. It feels increasingly unlikely, though, that things will reach a conclusion before Saturday’s Club World Cup opener.

“On this subject, there has not been a lot of dialogue,” Foose said. “There was a communication [Wednesday], but no, there has not been a lot of that afterwards … I’m not expecting it to be settled, no, but it certainly could be.”