MLS Salaries

This is an analysis of MLS Salary data from the MLS Players Association. They have published the data since 2007, but formats vary widely. There are other cleaning challenges tackled as well.

Important

This analysis is current through the Spring 2025 data release by the MLSPA.

The main notebooks are Cleaning and Analysis. There are some other exploratory notebooks that are not yet included in findings below.

The code is public on Github. The notebooks are published on Quarto Pub and Github Pages.

Questions to answer

  • Players that were paid the most over time and recently
  • Teams that spent the most over time and recently
  • Top spending teams over the past several years

Future considerations

  • Is it possible to compare club spending to season results? This will require more data and perhaps other packages.

Summary of findings

Inter Miami was already spending before Messi

Upon his signing on July 2023, Lionel Messi became the highest paid player in the history of the Major League Soccer with a total compensation over $20 million. However, investing in players was not a new concept for Inter Miami CF, as they had been among the top spending teams since 2020, according to an analysis of player salaries.

The analysis was based on 2007-2024 player salary released by the Major League Soccer Player’s Association. It was not adjusted for inflation.

Other facts

  • Lorenzo Insigne of Toronto started the 2023 season as the highest paid player at $15.5 million before Messi was signed that July. They were the only players earning more than $10 million within a year, and that still holds true in 2025. (Insigne was later released by Toronto on July 1, 2025, after the spring salary release.)
  • It is no surprise that Inter Miami have had the highest team salary since 2023. Toronto has continued to rank second, with Lorenzo Insigne being a huge part of their salary spend.
  • In 2025, Inter Miami had three of the top 10 MLS earners on their roster. Toronto FC had two.
  • In 2025, 21 teams spent less on their total roster than Miami spent on Messi.
  • Looking at the most expensive rosters in the MLS over time, Toronto FC has been the top-spending team seven times.

Notes to self

  • To publish to Quarto Pub, remove the output-dir designation from the _quarto.yml file.
  • This research from 2017 may prove interesting, but I haven’t done anything with it yet.