MLS owners are looking at scrapping two of the mechanisms that have shaped roster building in the league for years. According to reports in The Athletic from late July 2026, the MLS is said to be reviewing a proposal that would eliminate both General Allocation Money and Targeted Allocation Money, which are better known as GAM and TAM respectively, or at least that’s how they’re known to anyone who has spent any time around MLS forums. It might sound like it’s just accounting, but it really isn’t.
Get rid of GAM and TAM and you get rid of the tools that nearly every club in the league has used to build a roster within a hard salary cap. So what would replace them and why is the league considering doing it now?
What GAM and TAM Actually Do
If you’ve arrived at Major League Soccer from Europe, this is the bit that will almost certainly trip you up. Unlike in the Premier League or La Liga, the MLS runs a hard salary cap. That means that clubs can’t just outspend each other on transfer fees and wages the way that they can back home, with the theory being that it will stop anyone from being able to dominate the league in the way that Manchester City did in the wake of the club’s takeover by a nation state, intent on sportswashing its reputation on a global scale.
GAM and TAM are the workarounds that clubs can turn to in order to do what they can to avoid that spending cap. Both things allow a club to spend above the cap on individual contracts, either by signing a player outright or by ‘buying down’ an existing deal so it fits inside the budget. Every club gets an annual base allotment, which is $3.28 million in GAM for 2026, though the real totals vary hugely once trades and bonuses are added. Chicago Fire currently hold just over $5 million, for example, whilst Minnesota United top the league on $7.26 million and Austin FC have the least on $2.55 million.
Seattle never signed Daryl Dike. Never developed him. Never played him.
Yet Orlando had to pay Seattle up to $150,000 because of MLS’ “discovery rights”.@ussoccer is supposed to govern the sport in the public interest, protect players from abusive ownership practices, and… pic.twitter.com/IVQUtUXKWy
— United Soccer America (@reformussoccer) July 23, 2026
None of this explains the Designated Player rule, which is the mechanism that allows clubs to sign the likes of Lionel Messi outside of the cap altogether and has been in place since 2007. It is GAM and TAM specifically that are under threat from the current train of thought. Although the MLS hasn’t confirmed any of this and, by all accounts, no changes have been finalised yet, the direction of travel does make sense. The reported plan would raise the salary cap floor and let clubs spend more freely across the whole roster, rather than funnelling everything through allocation mechanisms.
If MLS does go through with it, this would be the biggest change to how the league pays for players since the Designated Player rule arrived in 2007. Whether the owners actually vote it through is a different question altogether.