Comparing MLS Salaries To NFL, NBA & NHL Based On Revenue & Team Value

Forbes

4 hours ago

By now, most who want to see Major League Soccer continue its growth trajectory are ready to drop the league's idiosyncratic roster and salary rules and replace them with something simpler to allow owners to spend more freely.
What that might actually look like in practice is a lot more difficult to say.
The idea MLS would completely scrap any sort of salary structure is a fantasy, considering that all four major North American men's sports leagues have some sort of salary cap or luxury tax system, and that even European club soccer has moved toward Financial Fair Play regulations in recent years.
Given that MLS is still governed by U.S. laws, and negotiates its collective bargaining agreement with the MLS Players Union in a manner similar to other North American leagues, the best projection of what more appropriate spending rules may look like may come from applying the rationale behind NFL, NBA and NHL to MLS data.
Of course MLS isn't going to suddenly leap to NFL levels in terms of payroll. But Forbes has produced enough data on the four leagues, both in terms of how teams are valued and the revenue they earn, to guide projections of what a similarly structured salary cap could look like.
To start, here's some of the numbers from those other leagues. 'Revenue share' means what share of total team and league revenues is used to set the salary cap number:
National Football League
Average franchise value per Forbes (2024): $6.25 billion
Salary cap (2024): $255.4 million
Cap revenue share: 48-50%
Cap as percentage of team values: 4.1%
National Basketball Association
Average franchise value per Forbes (2024): $4.4 billion
Salary cap (2024-25): $144.58 million
Cap revenue share: 49-51%
Cap as percentage of team values: 3.3%
National Hockey League
Average franchise value per Forbes (2024): $1.9 billion
Salary cap (2024-25): $88 million
Cap revenue share: Approx. 50%
Cap as percentage of team values: 4.6%
Now to pivot to MLS: Forbes has already released its 2025 valuations of all 29 returning MLS clubs (San Diego was not included because it is in its expansion season). Those valuations also included revenues from the previous season, but because they did not include payments distributed from the league, the better revenue figure to use when setting a hypothetical salary cap is the $2.2 billion in overall league revenue cited by Sportico in a January report, divided across 30 teams.
Using those figures, here's a hypothetical look of what a 2025 MLS salary cap might look like if it followed models from the three other leagues cited above, and how it compares to actual MLS wages:
Major League Soccer
Average franchise value per Forbes (2025): $690 million
Hypothetical 2025 salary cap: $36.7 million
Average 2025 MLS payroll: $19,4 million
Payroll share of 2024 revenue: 26.4%
Payroll as percentage of team values: 2.8%
As you can see, there's a considerable gap between MLS' current compensation and that of the three other leagues discussed. Only one team – Inter Miami – exceeds the hypothetical cap, according to salary data from the MLS Players' Union. But it's not so simple raising the salary restrictions to nearly double the average roster spend.
To some extent, leagues with less total revenue have to spend a lesser share on athletic talent because their other costs are more fixed. For example, the marketing director of an MLS team might expect to make considerably less than the marketing director of an NFL team. But if MLS teams only paid that position 10% of what an NFL team pays, they would never fill the job opening because candidates would simply take roles outside of the sports realm. The same is true across all other non-sporting departments, where the competition for labor is against the total labor market, and not just athletes with a unique skillset.
That those non-sports costs are less elastic is likely one reason Forbes found that 16 of 29 MLS clubs operated at a loss last season, even despite payrolls that constituted a lesser share of overall revenue.
But interestingly, most of those clubs running a loss are also the ones skimping on player wages. Of the five highest payrolls in MLS, only Toronto FC was found to operate at a loss. Of the five lowest, only Real Salt Lake was found to break even.
Perhaps that's the clearest sign of all that it's a lack of risk taking among MLS ownership that is most likely to slow sustainable growth.