MLS: How well did clubs spend their cash?

Salaries vary widely among MLS teams, as do their results. Here, I examine the relationship between money spent on salary and the results that they yield.

According to figures released recently by the Major League Soccer Players Association (MLSPA), your MLS team spent somewhere between $5.89M (Houston Dynamo) and $26.5M (Toronto FC) on player compensation in 2018. You can see the full report here for a more detailed breakdown.

Obviously, there is a wide discrepancy between those high and low figures.

The old adage says ‘you have to spend money to make money.’ But did the teams spending the most money generate comparable success on the field? If you measure that success by how much each team spent to generate points this season, then the answer is a definite ‘no’.

Most Efficient Team

Did your team spend wisely? If you support the New York Red Bulls, congratulations! With total player compensation totaling just north of $8M, and with the Red Bulls breaking the MLS points record with 71, the team spent an average of less than $114,000 per point, by far the lowest cost per point in MLS.

On the other hand, with their very high compensation figure, and very low points generated (36), Toronto FC spent nearly $740,000 per point, or over six times more than the Red Bulls! And they are not the only club to have wasted investments that have not yielded points this season.

Here are the top five clubs in Salary per Point spent in MLS:

Key:

• a = Made Playoffs
• b = Supporters’ Shield Champions

Team — $ spent per point
1. NYRB — $113,591 (a.b)
2. Vancouver — $142,171
3. Columbus — $151,293 (a)
4. Houston — $155,173
5. Dallas — $163,764 (a)
And here are the five worst clubs in Salary per Point spent in MLS:

Team — $ spent per point

19. Orlando City — $316,925
20. LA Galaxy — $364,729
21. San Jose — $395,635
22. Chicago — $485,360
23. Toronto — $737,756

You might expect teams who didn’t earn a lot of points to be on the bottom-five list. But three of the teams that spent the least on points per game also made the playoffs, proving that you don’t necessarily have to spend big in MLS in order to be successful.

Here is what the rest of the teams spent on per point basis, in order from least to most:

Team — $ spent per point

6. Real Salt Lake — $165,968 (a)
7. Atlanta — $168,208 (a)
8. Philadelphia — $178,292 (a)
9. New England — $182,236
10. Sporting KC — $186,358 (a)
11. DC United — $189,991 (a)
12. Seattle — $199,621 (a)
13. Portland — $203,607 (a)
14. Minnesota — $237,281
15. LAFC — $254,687 (a)
16. NYCFC — $264,721 (a)
17. Montreal — $274,827
18. Colorado — $314,244

Conclusion

Given that MLS is a league with a salary cap, even with all its idiosyncrasies and exceptions, teams cannot spend unlimited funds to buy quality players. Those teams that can buy players that are good value are the teams who are generally most successful in the league.

It is not necessarily how much money you spend. It is how you spend the money that you do spend that matters. The Red Bulls and Toronto FC are proof of that this season. In MLS, it is often the smartest team that wins.