Several weeks ago, when Austin FC head coach Josh Wolff said that the team needed a center back and the club “didn’t have a lot of money,” it wasn’t an indictment of Austin FC CEO Anthony Precourt or president Andy Loughnane.
Loughnane helms the business side of the good ship Austin FC. As evinced by the club’s robust sponsorships, by getting a recently-announced 95 percent season ticket re-up rate (despite raising prices by as much as 14 percent over last year), and through their just-announced skate gear partnership with No Comply, Austin FC is really, really good at generating revenue.
Rather, Wolff was referring to what Austin FC is allowed to spend per the web of MLS roster rules and salary thresholds. He was also likely referring to the league-to-club and club-to-club distribution of an MLS currency know as General Allocation Money (better known by its GAM acronym, and sometimes perjoratively as Garberbucks, for longtime MLS commissioner Don Garber).
As you know if you’ve been following the summer transfer window proceedings, Austin FC did indeed get Toronto FC center back Matt Hedges and assumed payments on his $776,250 annual salary.
(Players sign contracts with MLS itself, not individual clubs, thanks to the single-entity structure of MLS that’s way too sticky to get into here.)
But this gap between games led me to wonder, among several different roster questions I’m looking to get into as we ease back into league play and think about the coming 2024 rebuild … how much is it actually costing Austin FC to field a team and pay player salaries in 2023?
I made a delightfully nerdy Google Sheet and have an answer. (It’s behind the paywall. Kids gotta eat, bills gotta be paid.)
