Tuesday, November 4, 2014

2014 Canadian MLS Team Total Salaries Compared to CFL Salaries, Toronto FC Way on Top

Roger Pielke Jr has an excellent article looking at MLS team total salaries.

Probably the most interesting thing, especially if you're Canadian, is that Toronto FC's total salary is way higher than any other MLS team at $16.7 million (all figures in US dollars), with the next team, LA Galaxy at $13.2 million. Whether the $16.7 million for TFC includes transfer fees (which were enormous this year to land Jermaine Dafoe) seems unlikely. Obviously we know now that Toronto FC still managed to miss the playoffs, even with this massive expenditure relative to other teams.

I'm not a soccer guy at all, but I did predict spending a lot of money to bring in a crotchety striker like Dafoe wasn't a good idea, and what was hyped with endless ads as a "Bloody Big Deal" has basically turned out to be a debacle.

TFC's salary bill is also way more than the other two Canadian teams. The Montreal Impact's salary bill was $6.6 million, while the Vancouver Whitecaps was only $5.2 million. Amusingly, only the Whitecaps made the playoffs.

Note that all three MLS Canadian teams had salaries above the salary cap in the CFL this year, which was $5 million Canadian. Which is only around $4.4 million now in US dollar terms.

Obviously TFC had to lose money this year, the only question is how much.

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