More transparency is a good thing.
It’s important we start there.
On Thursday, Major League Soccer made public for the first time the amount of general allocation money each team has in their respective coffers. It is another push toward the type of transparency that has long been available for every other major men’s professional sports league in the U.S.
In the NFL, NBA, MLB and so on, fans have access to salary cap numbers at the click of a button. The publication of these general allocation money numbers are designed to get MLS fans closer to that level of access so that they have a better picture of how much money and flexibility teams have to spend above the cap, and how they might be able to spend it.
This is a step in the right direction for MLS. It’s not all the way there, yet, however. As such, it’s important to understand how much we can use these new data points when we discuss MLS teams, roster building and salary cap dynamics. If we think of MLS rosters as a Wheel of Fortune answer, we’ve just filled in R, S, T, L, N and E. For some teams, if we buy the right vowel or guess the right letter, that might be enough to solve the puzzle. For others, we’ll still be a bit off from being able to solve.
This explainer will attempt to break down all the important information you need to understand the numbers MLS released this morning. For newbies to the world of MLS roster rules, we’ll start at the basics of understanding what general allocation money (GAM) is and what it can be used for in MLS. For those who already have their PhD in the GAM/TAM universe, you can skip ahead to where we dive into what we can really learn from this information — and what slices we are still missing to be able to see the whole picture.
What is general allocation money?
Extra cap space. That’s the best, simplest and most direct way to think about it.
The league hands out a specific amount of GAM every year — for 2025 it is $2.93 million — and teams also receive bonus GAM for missing the playoffs or qualifying for CONCACAF Champions Cup. Teams can also convert up to $3 million per season from transfer revenue into GAM.
The main purpose of GAM is to buy down cap charges. So, if a player counts for $1 million against the cap, a team could use $700,000 in GAM to “buy down” the charge to $300,000.
Teams can also use GAM in trades, which is the public-facing function of allocation money. It is the most common ways players are traded in MLS. (Notably, however, GiveMeSport reported that the league is set to allow internal cash trades/transfers for the first time in its history, which could reset the trade market internally and start to put real cash value onto players.)
Below are the conference-by-conference figures of every team’s available GAM for 2025. All graphics in the article are by The Athletic’s Jeff Rueter.
What do these numbers tell us about each team’s cap flexibility?
A lot … and not enough.
Getting a peek into each team’s bank vault of GAM is a good thing. We certainly know now that Atlanta United has more wiggle room than the Houston Dynamo, for example. But we’re going to need some time to start to get a more comprehensive picture of how teams utilize GAM and how long these numbers last. How much GAM do teams spend on average across one season? We’ll find out.
In an ideal world, MLS would release updated numbers every day in some sort of automated fashion. Realistically, we need to hope that they drop regular updates of these figures at key points in the season: roster compliance, close of the primary window, close of the secondary window and at the end of the season. Once we’ve had a chance to observe a full year cycle of GAM, we’ll get a much better idea of how teams use GAM and how much they use year to year.
In addition, without knowing what each player’s salary budget charge is, we’re still left to do a good amount of guesswork if we want to talk about what teams can do, what players they can target and what teams make good trade partners. We can piece some of it together by combining the MLS Players’ Association salary numbers and reported transfer fees, but that still involves some guesswork. Without knowing exactly how each team is using that GAM and which players it is applying it to, we’re left without a clear picture of if teams are using the allocation effectively and how different strategies might work (or not work).
It’s also a bit tougher to gauge player trade value without knowing their full cap hit. How can we know, for example, whether a team with $2.5 million in GAM should trade for Leo Campana if we don’t know if his budget charge is $600,000 or $1 million? That’s a much different calculation, and right now we have to guess on players like Campana.
So how do we move forward with this information?
We do the best we can to get as clear of a picture as possible. The picture is less fuzzy thanks to the efforts of some within MLS headquarters and around the league to bring more transparency to the league. Just this last year, we’ve seen these GAM figures made public, as well as roster profiles the league started to compile and release last year.
Now, at least, we have player classifications (TAM, DP, U22, homegrown); number of guaranteed years in a contract (which helps with budget calculations and also factors into trade value) and option years; and we also know how much GAM each team has to play with.
We can at least start to play around with what roster flexibility teams might have.
Let’s take Miami as an example. Using the MLSPA numbers and MLS cap rules and trying to use a bit of guesswork (and, eventually, reporting and sourcing), we can give a best guess at what Lionel Messi and Co. have to work with in building out their roster next year, and will discuss below.
While a TAM player like Campana is a question mark in terms of cap hit, we know where the DPs and U22s hit, we have an idea of salary for the rest of the team and we can be fairly confident in max TAM numbers for Jordi Alba and Luis Suarez. One X factor is what Jordi Alba’s option year looks like. Does he remain TAM? Does that number move up to a DP configuration?
The Diego Gomez sale was crucial, because if they recoup all of their out-of-pocket spending, Miami can convert up to $3 million of GAM to their coffers in January.
If we assume Alba stays as a TAM player, it should give Miami somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.7 million to play with before they choose a roster construction method. If Miami sticks at the “two DP-four U22” configuration, they’d get another $2 million in GAM to use. If they move to a “three DP-three U22” format, that $5.7 million figure would be their cap flexibility.
We should be able to make similar educated guesses around the league. The hope is that it starts to generate new and substantive conversations about rosters, front offices, trade markets and transfer windows.
MLS might not be all the way there — yet — but we can enjoy the progress we’ve made this year.
(Top photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Imagn Images)
