Seattle Sounders Players Protest For Fair Share Of Lucrative Club World Cup Bonuses

By sheer power of will, determination, and lots and lots and lots of money, FIFA is looking to turn the previously irrelevant Club World Cup into a quadrennial summertime blockbuster. Traditionally, the event has been a global supercup of sorts, each year pitting the seven winners of FIFA's seven federations' continental tournaments against each other in a brief, midseason contest that virtually nobody really cared about. This month will bring the inaugural edition of the new-look CWC, a 32-team behemoth that will cram an already overstuffed soccer calendar with yet another competition that nobody asked for.

It will take a lot of work to make this tournament into something fans care about. For the players and clubs involved, however, there are hundreds of millions of reasons why they're willing to cut into their already vanishingly small rest and recovery time to try their damnedest to win. In its effort to make this whole thing matter, FIFA has filled the prize pool with ungodly sums of money, enticing participants with lucrative payouts that can rise up to $125 million for the winners. That's almost one Florian Wirtz, if reports are to be believed, which should ensure that clubs like Real Madrid—who just paid Liverpool €10 million to sign Trent Alexander-Arnold early enough for him to play in the group stage of the CWC—and freshly crowned Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain will provide a good showing.

For the smaller clubs in the competition, the outlandish prize pool is even more of an incentive to dive in headfirst, as making it to the round of 16 could be worth upwards of $20 million total. For clubs, this financial windfall could prove invaluable in filling the coffers and helping improve rosters and facilities. For players, getting a cut of the prize money could make for their biggest paychecks of the whole year.

But lo, what misshapen beast looms on the horizon, hobbling over to mess up the rest of our soccer fun? Why, MLS, of course! Seattle Sounders players are in the midst of a public battle with the league over the split of the CWC prize pool that players would receive, thanks to old collective bargaining agreement terms that date back before the newfangled CWC took shape.

While the MLS CBA has specific carveouts for the established non-league tournaments—such as the U.S. Open Cup, the Champions Cup, and the Leagues Cup—the CWC, as Sounder at Heart points out, would fall into a narrowly capped catch-all clause:

(v) Compulsory Tournament/Non-Compulsory Tournament: If an MLS Team or MLS receives prize money by virtue of the Team’s performance and/or participation in a Compulsory Tournament or Non-Compulsory Tournament (other than the tournaments set forth above i.e., USOC, Canadian Championship, CCL, Campeones Cup, Leagues Cup), Players competing in that tournament will receive the following:

(a) If the Team or MLS receives prize money, fifty percent (50%) of such prize money up to a maximum payment to the Players (collectively) of $1,000,000 per tournament.

This likely would not be an issue in previous iterations of the Club World Cup, but with the money FIFA is throwing at this new format, the $1 million cap on player earnings becomes more egregious, since entry into the tournament itself comes with almost $10 million. Even if the Sounders crash out with three straight losses, earning no additional prize money, the players could only receive roughly 10 percent of that initial bonus. This, as one can imagine, has not gone over well with the players.

Ahead a league match against Minnesota on Sunday, Sounders players took to the pitch wearing T-shirts that read "Club World Cash Grab," while fans in the stands, already among the most vocal in MLS, chanted "You dirty greedy bastards." Yikes! The MLS Players Association has also come out in support. In a statement released on Sunday, the MLSPA accused the league of not bringing forward a "reasonable proposal" in response to player demands, adding that MLS often asks the MLSPA to "deviate" from the CBA when it suits the league but has proven unwilling to show the same kind of good faith when its the players who stand to gain.

The player complaints makes even more sense when considering what a good performance could mean financially. Despite drawing a tough group featuring PSG and Atlético Madrid, the Sounders could earn up to $13.5 million just from that stage of the tournament (the team stands to earn $2 million per win, $1 million per draw, and $7.5 million if it advances into the round of 16). Capping the players' collective cut of that at a maximum of $1 million is a spit in the face.

MLS players have an extra consideration when it comes to the Club World Cup. Unlike, say, PSG players, who have no other games besides CWC games until the domestic season starts back up in France in August, the CWC is taking place right in the middle of the MLS season. It's possible that participation in the CWC will hurt these teams in the back half of the MLS season and therefore hurt the players' earning potential; even if it doesn't, the tournament will put added stress on the players' bodies. In a league that constantly twists itself and its rules into knots looking to get what it wants, it's no surprise to see MLS suddenly turn rigid when players come asking for what's fair.