Prize money for all comps
With all the discussion about how much we should value the US Open Cup, I was wondering how much financial incentive is attached to each competition. Maybe the players as well as the coaches emphasize tournaments that have a big prize pot?
Caveats: I don't know how much of the prize money is distributed among the players, nor do I know how common it is for players to have additional financial incentives in their contracts for tournament performance. This is just the listed amounts from the organizations who run these tournaments. The following list is the information I could easily find, so please post corrections if you have more recent data.
2022 MLS Cup $1.1 M total
1st 300K
2nd 150K
3rd + 4th 100K
5-8 47.5K
1st round losers 20K
2022 US Open Cup no total listed
1st 300K
2nd 100K
furthest advancing club from each lower division 25K
2023 Leagues Cup
No prize listed aside from the CCL berths for the top 3
2022 CCL 2.5M total
1st 500K
2nd 300K
3rd + 4th 200K
all teams receive prize money but I couldn't find the amounts beyond the semifinalists
** In addition there is a 655K bonus for winning MLS Cup or Supporter's Shield in the same year you win CCL
2023 Club World Cup 15M total
1st 5M
2nd 4M
3rd 2.5M
4th 2M
5th + 6th 1M (what the Sounders got this year)
7th 0.5M
I expected the Open Cup to have a significantly smaller prize pool, which wasn't the case for the finalists. But nothing is listed for teams who don't make the finals. If the lower placing teams get little or nothing, there would be little incentive to advance unless you thought you had a good chance of making the finals.