In an obvious positive step toward better transparency, MLS released on Thursday the amount of General Allocation Money (GAM) that each team has available. The figures aren’t fully transparent — I’ve been told they are already a bit off — but they do at least give us a decent starting point in figuring out how much GAM is both in the system and available to each team.
As of Dec. 10, 2024, for instance, the Sounders have about $4.2 million of GAM available. That’s actually about $700,000 more than I had previously estimated, and the ninth most in the entire league.
Once you combine that with the CBA-mandated Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) and each team’s salary budget, you get a much fuller idea of how much each team has to spend against the cap. Here’s how it looks:
While this is meant to be helpful, I realize a lot of folks’ eyes will sort of gloss over when they’re seeing all these terms and figures. I’ll do my best to provide some more explanation here:
