2025 Sporting KC Salaries Released

It’s that time of the year again. The first of two Major League Soccer (MLS) salary data sets was released by the MLS Players Association (MLSPA). Before looking at the new 2025 data (which is at the bottom if you want to jump straight to that), it’s useful to look at prior data points for Sporting Kansas City. Here are the last two seasons:

• Fall 2024
• Spring 2024
• Fall 2023
• Spring 2023

Some Caveats

The salary data always brings a lot of scrutiny, but there are a couple things worth noting. First, this does not include transfer fees. If a fee is paid for a player, it won’t show up in these numbers. Sporting Kansas City paid $4 million for Dejan Joveljic as the first cash transfer in MLS history. There is also a rumored combined $5 million fee for Manu Garcia and Shapi Suleymanov, but how much is allocated to each player is unknown.

Second, there are two salary numbers: base salary and guaranteed compensation. The guaranteed number feels more accurate because it includes any pro-rated signing bonuses spread out over the life of the contract. We’ll use that number going forward.

Without getting too deep into the weeds, there are a couple roster designations that add some context to these salaries. The team has two Designated Players (DPs) and two U-22 Initiative Players. In 2025, the DPs only count for $743,750 against the cap (no matter their salary or transfer fee) and the U-22 players only count for $200,000 (no matter their salary or transfer fee). Some U-22 players count for $150,000, but Sporting KC don’t have any of those. In 2026, that number for DPs will climb, as it’s always 12.5 percent of the salary budget, which also raises annually.

New Signings

Sporting KC had a much busier offseason than they did last season. Most notably they added two Designated Players to the roster at significant cost. Those DPs also come in with the highest salaries. Dejan Joveljic has a guaranteed compensation of $3,306,250, making him the highest paid player on the team. That salary represents a nice bump from his U-22 pay last year with the LA Galaxy that capped him at $683,750. With 10 goals through 18 games, the investment has seemed worth it so far.

Garcia is the second highest paid player behind Joveljic, clocking in at $2,325,313. So far, he also seems worthy of that number as he pulls the strings in the midfield and makes this team go.

The next highest paid newcomer is Shapi Suleymanov who is making a hefty $915,028. Before the season, Mike Burns told us Shapi is a Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) player, and his salary alone pushes him into that territory. All we know is his transfer fee can’t be too high, or he’d be a DP, so the portion paid to his former club for he and Manu mostly was assigned to Manu.

A pair of Center Forwards are next on the list with newcomer Mason Toye earning $392,500 and loanee Santiago Munoz coming in at $335,026. Both of them are below the man they replaced, William Agada ($546,785). Andrew Brody is just behind Toye and Munoz at $300,678, but Real Salt Lake are on the hook for most of that salary and he should only be hitting SKC’s cap at the league minimum.

Speaking of the league minimum, that is about where Ian James, Jacob Bartlett and Jansen Miller are coming in, which we knew based on their Supplemental Roster designation. James technically isn’t new as he showed up as a surprise on the 2024 Fall MLSPA release, but he saw a slight increase year-over-year.

“Raises” and “Pay Cuts”

Salaries inevitably go up and down each season but calling it a raise or a cut can be a little misleading. Often the salaries are pre-agreed to at the signing of the contract, or escalators could exist that cause the numbers to climb based on performance.

The biggest climber is Erik Thommy who saw a $500,000 bump in compensation from his 2024 number. That makes him the third highest paid player on the team. It’s also possible some funky math is simply happening here with the MLSPA. While it’s $500k higher than last year, his salary is back to his 2023 level when he was classified as a DP. According to the earlier MLS roster designation releases, Thommy is not a DP in 2025, meaning the team is likely using TAM or General Allocation Money (GAM) to buy down his salary.

The second largest bump came for Tim Leibold, who often is a backup on this team. He’s up $325,000 to $926,050 for 2025. It’s the final year of his deal, as it also is for the aforementioned Thommy.

Another big pay increase came for Jake Davis. He signed an extension, and it appears to have kicked in with his salary climbing to $412,500 which is a $292,500 increase.

There are no other massive increases, though Logan Ndenbe is up $125,000, Robert Voloder is up $100,000 and John Pulskamp jumped $50,000.

The only number that went down was Nemanja Radoja, who fell $140,000 to $1,390,000. His salary has pinged up and down each year he’s been on the team so it’s unclear if it’s really changing or MLSPA is just reporting it differently than MLS has it hits the team’s books.

Full Salary Data

Here is everyone’s pay, including the pay raises or decreases from the players that were on Sporting KC in 2024.

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