The Major League Soccer Players Association and MLS announced on Friday that they had reached an interim agreement on a revision of the collective bargaining agreement.
The CBA was approved by the executive board and the union’s negotiating committee by a 24-11 vote, according to a source. The deal will now be sent to players’ union members for a vote, which could be held as early as Saturday. A simple majority is all that is needed to ratify the agreement.
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The deal would then need to be approved by the league’s board of governors. This is expected to happen and will pave the way for the opening of the training camps on February 22 and the beginning of the MLS season on April 3. It also avoids the closure of the CBA and the blocking of players, who were previously threatened by the MLS if an agreement could not be reached.
MLS announced that the proposal on the table would extend the CBA for two years until 2027, a clause the league has fought for since the beginning of the negotiations and something that had been an obstacle in the negotiations.
The extension has the effect of delaying the jump in compensation that normally comes with a new CBA. Most importantly, such an extension provides the league with a considerable distance from the 2026 World Cup – co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico – and takes advantage of the MLSPA to negotiate better terms in preparation for the tournament and the years to come. .
Sources told ESPN that among the benefits of the players contained in the proposal there are no cuts in wages in 2021, along with better free agency terms in 2026 and 2027, in which players aged 24 and four years of service would qualify. The old agreement required five years of service.
Players would also receive an overall salary increase of 10% in 2027 and improved salaries for players rated as senior minimum. In terms of the revenue sharing agreement for the next media rights agreement, players will receive a percentage of the difference between the new agreement (plus $ 100 million). In 2023 and 2024, this percentage will be 12.5% (decrease in 2024 by 12.5 percentage points), and from 2025 to 2027, this percentage will be 25%.
Negotiations on the revised CBA were reopened after MLS invoked a force majeure clause on December 29 because of the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the slower-than-expected launch of the COVID-19 vaccine, MLS expects to be looking at another year with few or no fans in the stands. Given its reliance on game-day revenues, MLS says that its finances will be severely affected and that players should bear some of the sacrifices.
The union contested that the MLS approach was not made out of financial necessity, but out of financial opportunism. MLSPA made $ 150 million in grants over the life of the business when it signed the previous CBA last June.
The invocation of the force majeure clause opened a 30-day window for both parties to negotiate a revised CBA. As an agreement was not reached within that window, either side could have terminated the CBA. But the MLS was the only side that threatened such a move, saying that if a deal was not struck, it would not only end the CBA, but would also block players.
The threat of a stoppage gave the league the biggest advantage, and MLS used it with good results, extracting the main concessions it sought at the beginning of the negotiations.
This marks the third time last year that the two sides have negotiated a CBA. The two sides reached an agreement in principle last February, but neither side has formally ratified the agreement. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the MLS reopened negotiations, with both sides agreeing on a revised agreement last June. In this deal, the league managed to insert the aforementioned force majeure clause.
Sources told ESPN that the force majeure clause will not take effect until December 1, 2021, but can be invoked after that period.