Look at any European table and the biggest wage bills are usually sitting near the top. In MLS, however, the link between money and results is much looser, and some of the league’s most expensively assembled squads are also some of the most lackluster.

Wages are only half of how you defined spending, though, and once transfer fees come in, the picture changes. Toronto FC’s transfer outlay in 2026 was about $29.3 million, third in MLS, while Atlanta United spent about $28.8 million. Austin spent big too as well, about $14 million in the winter window alone, fourth in the league. That spending spree from Austin came just a couple of years after they spent an additional $28 million on three players alone.

Bring in the wages, roughly, and Atlanta is around $56 million, Toronto around $51 million, and Austin $34 million or more. That’s a loose sum, since fees are one-off payments while wages recur every year, and the fee numbers are reported figures rather than official disclosures. Still, all three are heavy investors, and none of them have a long history of being cheap. Austin’s guaranteed payroll was the third highest in the league in 2023, and Toronto’s $31.4 million payroll led MLS in 2024.

The results have not followed, though. Through 29 games each this season, Toronto sit 23rd in the league, with 33 points, Austin are 27th with 31 points, and Atlanta are 28th with 30 points, having won just 8 of their last 29 matches. The pattern shows up across the rest of the league too. The five biggest wage bills this spring belonged to Inter Miami, LAFC, Atlanta, the LA Galaxy and Vancouver, and those clubs currently sit 3rd, 12th, 28th, 14th and 2nd — some competitive, some not. Meanwhile Nashville, whose payroll is only eighth-highest at about $23 million, are running away with Supporters Shield and are on pace to break the league’s all-time points record.

So why does MLS break the trend seen throughout most of global football that money wins? The biggest reason is the structure of the league itself. MLS is a salary-capped league with just six premium roster spots that allow discretionary spending. A club can’t spread its money across a deep, high-quality squad the way a Premier League side can, so it ends up pouring most of its budget into a handful of players. That makes the league extremely top-heavy: Messi’s $28.3 million salary alone is bigger than the full payrolls of 28 other clubs. When your whole plan rests on one or two stars, you’re only as good as they can carry you on a weekly basis.

Atlanta paid a then-club-record $22 million for Emmanuel Latte Lath back in 2025, who has since been written off as a flop and replaced by Breel Embolo at $18 million. Toronto’s Insigne and Bernardeschi cost a combined $21.7 million in salary before both left in July of last year off the back of a truly putrid spell, and the team finished near the bottom anyway. In Europe a big club can absorb a miss like that because there’s a deep squad behind it. In MLS the star is often the whole plan, so when a star signing, or two flops, it sinks the entire ship.

Transfer fees make it harder to see what clubs are really spending. Guaranteed compensation doesn’t include them, and some teams pay massive fees. A club can look ordinary on the wage chart while having sunk $20 million or more into one player. Toronto are the clearest case as their wage bill looks middling, but they paid upwards of $22 million for Josh Sargent this season, the highest mark among the 13 clubs that set club-record signings or sales this year. That kind of money doesn’t register in a payroll comparison, but it’s a big part of why Toronto belongs in this conversation.

The league also squeezes the middle. The median salary was only about $308,750 in 2024, and a large share of players earn close to the minimum. With most rosters built on similar budgets outside the premium spots, scouting, coaching and fit end up mattering more than the size of the checkbook. That’s how Nashville, Vancouver and St. Louis can sit near the top without outspending anyone. Add in the fact that there’s no relegation to force a correction, and a big spender can keep making the same kind of mistake for years. Spending records have now been broken four years running, and clubs spent a record $370 million on acquisitions in 2026, but a lot of that money is chasing the same few targets in a market the league is still learning to navigate. Sporting Kansas City spent about $35.7 million on new players this year and are still on course for a historically bad finish.

None of this means spending is pointless. Inter Miami has by far the biggest payroll and they are the reigning champions, which suggests money can propel you upwards. Atlanta, Toronto and Austin look more like the opposite: big bets on individuals, with too little around them to make those bets pay off.

This conversation could swing massively in the coming years, however. With reports suggesting that the league could loosen restrictions on spending by introducing a harder salary cap that allows teams to more strategically spend their war-chests across the roster, the big-money teams could start to break away. Though they will still need to spend wisely.

Plenty of clubs may be willing to pay upwards of eight or nine players more than $1 million per season, but under current guidelines they can only hit that mark with four or five players. There is absolutely a world in which the league’s true big-money clubs create disparity on and off the pitch in the coming years as spending restrictions become less stringent, but only time will tell.