The 2025 FIFA Club World Cup kicks off in less than two weeks. The players and ownership of the Seattle Sounders are still fighting over their pieces of the pie.
Amid a stand-off over the upcoming FIFA prize pool, the Sounders players took the field Sunday wearing warm-up shirts reading “Club World Ca$h Grab.” The shirts received considerable attention on social media, and even more attention from the owner’s box.
According to Sounder at Heart and GiveMeSport, Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer angrily addressed the team in a profanity-laced postgame address. The exact comments aren’t reported, but the players felt pushed enough that they discussed the issue with reporters in a joint address on Monday.
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At the center of the fight is a tournament where players are only guaranteed to receive less than 1% of the prize money if they pull off a miracle run.
Why are the Sounders players angry about the FIFA Club World Cup?
While the idea of the expanded Club World Cup, in which 32 teams from across the world will compete in the United States this summer, is exciting, it comes with on major issue. Those teams’ players already play a full, taxing schedule, and the Club World Cup adds between three and seven games to that docket.
FIFA addressed this concern the way soccer governing bodies usually do: with enormous amounts of cash. The tournament has a prize pool of $1 billion, up from the $16 million offered in the previous tournament.
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By simply showing up to their own Lumen Field in Seattle and playing three group play games, the Sounders organization is guaranteed to receive $9.55 million in participation money, For every game they draw, they get $1 million. For every win, $2 million. If they get out of group play? $7.5 million.
If they win the tournament, which no one expects them to do, the Sounders will walk away with more than $120 million.
And it is now at this point we will tell you the players’ cut of all that money, no matter what happens, is capped at $1 million. Not each. To split.
The Sounders players have some issues with their Club World Cup compensation. (Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images)
(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / Reuters)
As Sounder at Heart broke down, the reason for this is a provision in the MLS CBA — signed in 2021, back when the Club World Cup was a minor, seven-club competition — that says players can receive a total of no more than $1 million per tournament.
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So basically, the Sounders organization is on track for the deal of a lifetime, and the Sounders players want payment that reflects three games of elite soccer. And now they are publicly fighting over it less than two weeks before their tournament opener.
Where does MLS stand on the Club World Cup prize money fight?
Soon after the Sounders took the field in shirts that infuriated their team owner, the MLS Players Association released a statement saying the union and its players stand united with the team and demand “a fair share” of the Club World Cup prize money.
The union claimed it had “respectfully” invited the league to the table for months and had not received a reasonable proposal. It specifically called the $1 million clause out of date and ignorant of longstanding international standards for player payment in global competitions.
Per GiveMeSport, one MLS source claimed the league office had regular discussions with the MLSPA over the past few weeks, with no official proposal from the union, argued that the $1 million clause is not out of date.
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It’s also worth noting the MLSPA did agree to this CBA, but without the foresight that FIFA would be springing a multi-million cash cow on the league’s better clubs.
The Sounders are one of three MLS squads that made the tournament, alongside LAFC and Inter Miami. Seattle was placed in Group B, alongside France’s Paris Saint-Germain, Spain’s Atlético Madrid and Brazil’s Botafogo.
Neither of the other American teams have aired out their grievances like the Sounders have, but it’s hard to imagine either of those groups of players being happy with what the league is currently arguing.
