USA TODAY International Edition

MLS, players union finalize plan to resume season

- The Columbus Dispatch Jacob Myers

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The 2020 Major League Soccer season will resume after all following the league and the MLS Players Associatio­n ratifying a collective bargaining agreement that will run through 2025.

MLS and MLSPA also finalized a plan to resume the 2020 season, which would have all 26 teams in Orlando at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex for two weeks of training. Then teams would play three games in a group stage before a knockout round, which would conclude six weeks after teams arrive June 24.

After the players’ union submitted its counterpro­posal to the league’s proposal on amendments to the CBA that was agreed to in February but never ratified, the league threatened to lock out players if they did not agree to its proposal by Tuesday at noon.

After public response to the league’s stance, MLS pushed back its deadline to Wednesday at noon. The union announced late Wednesday morning that the two sides had come to an agreement and ratified it.

The two sticking points in the negotiatio­ns revolved around how much money teams would get from media rights after the league strikes a new deal following the 2022 season, and a clause that would have allowed the league to back out of the deal if attendance dropped a certain percentage.

When the CBA was agreed to in February before the start of the season, the two sides agreed that 25% of the revenue generated from the new media rights that exceeded a $ 100 million increase of the league’s media rights income in 2022 would be dispersed to teams for player spending in 2023 and 2024.

In its initial proposal, the league scaled the 2023 percentage back to 10% due to financial impacts of the global pandemic. The players’ union countered with 17% in 2023 and 25% in 2024.

A source with knowledge of the final agreement said the league and the union agreed on 12% of the net increase over $ 100 million of the new media rights deal in 2023 and 25% in 2024.

The source also said the league dropped its force majeure clause that it was trying to tie to attendance.

In the February agreement before the pandemic, the league and players’ union agreed on a force majeure clause that allowed either side of the agreement to back out if MLS couldn’t operate due to unforeseen catastroph­ic events, like a pandemic.

MLS then tried to tie that clause to attendance by saying if five teams had a 25% decrease in attendance from the previous year, then the league could back out of the CBA.

In the final ratified version, MLS dropped that language and went back to the original language of the clause.

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