Earlier this week, Major League Soccer revealed that the Chicago Fire have $5,077,349 in available General Allocation Money (GAM) as part of a broader of the sums available to each of the league’s 30 clubs. GAM is an accounting tool that allows teams to spend above the league’s nominal salary cap, which counts both player wages as well as acquisition costs like transfer fees.

The GAM snapshot peels back the curtain – if only so far – on the financial flexibility of each team to add additional players. In 2026, the nominal cap is $6,425,000, an increase of $475,000 over last year. In reality, however, all teams will spend significantly above that amount due to MLS’s various roster categories and designations.

GAM, along with Targeted Allocation Money its sibling, Targeted Allocation Money (TAM), effectively add to this amount. Combining those to along with MLS’s special roster designations, for Designated Players (DP) and Under-22 Initiative (U22) players, which allow limit the cap hit of expensive talent to much smaller amounts (as low as $150,000 in some cases) and it becomes clear how teams can fit in eight-figure cap fees (and salaries, in the case of Lionel Messi and Son Heung-Min) along with multiple players on seven-figure salaries, all with fitting in a salary cap of just over $6.4 million.

Each team is granted a certain amount of GAM at the beginning of each season – that figure is $3.28 million in 2026. GAM is created (yes, out of thin air, since this is an accounting fiction) when teams earn transfer fees from player sales, up to a total of $3 million per season, and it can be traded between teams. 

In addition, teams have a choice: They can have three DPs and along with three U22 players, or they can choose two DPs and 4 U22 players – and receive an extra $2 million in GAM (which, in this case, expires at the end of the season).

Teams also get an additional (albeit small) stipend for qualifying for continental competition, and another for failing to make the playoffs, sending the clear message that MLS awards excellence. And futility, 21 of 30 teams between the two of them this season. In 2026, the Fire are in the neither: Neither one of the nine teams to make CONCACAF Champions Cup, nor one of the 12 teams to miss the postseason. 

What is included in the current GAM release?

The information released by MLS yesterday includes the $3.28 million each team is granted at the beginning of the season, and competition stipends (for making it to CONCACAF Champions Cup or missing the playoffs). It also includes any GAM the team has received or sent via trade, along with money from sales that teams converted to GAM.

For the Fire, that includes proceeds from the sale of Brian Gutiérrez to Chivas last month, as well as the Carlos Terán’s move to Brazilian side Athletico Paranaense last year (teams have flexibility with what year transfer fees affect their cap based on when a move happens and when the fees are paid). 

What isn’t included in the GAM release?

The GAM release does not include the $2 million in GAM a team could receive for moving to a two DP/four U22 model, as teams have until February 20th to make that declaration, and can shift again in the summer window.

Last year, the Fire chose to take $1 million in the $2 million in discretionary GAM available in the winter, a move that made it clear the team was considering switching to a three DP model in the summer window. Ultimately, however, the Fire stuck with the model for all of 2025 and later received an additional $1 million in GAM – which helped pave the way for new deals for a number of Fire players. (Somewhat confusingly, a team could also elect to take the $2 million in  GAM at once and switch midseason by returning half.)

The total notably does not include TAM, whose use is more heavily restricted (it cannot be traded nor can it be used on all players), which totals $2,125,000 per team in 2026. 

The most significant thing not included, however, is the other side of the ledger: Because teams have not declared to the league how their allocation money is being applied, none of the transfer fees or wages for players on the Fire roster are accounted for.

A rough (and greatly simplified) way of looking at it is this: Take the (just over) $6.4 million in the base salary cap. Add the (just under) $5.1 of GAM, and the $2.1 million in TAM. That roughly $13.6 million is the Fire’s available budget.

Within that budget, the Fire must account for player wages and signing bonuses for the 20 players on the senior roster (there are significant restrictions on the wages 10 supplemental slots, but they do not count against the cap), along with all of the transfer fees for those players. Teams have some flexibility with how they spread the cap hit of transfer fees across the years of a contract as a rule of thumb, the fees are split across the years of the deal: If a player arrives on a $1.5 million fee and signs a three year deal, the player’s cap hit will be their wages plus roughly $500,000 per year for the transfer fee).

Designated Players like Jonathan Bamba hit the cap at a fixed $803,125 (which can be further reduced with allocation money), while the wages and transfer fees for U22 Initiative Players like Mbekezeli Mbokazi hit the cap at $200,000 for players. 

Don’t totals seem bigger this year?

Yes. Last year, when MLS released the total of available GAM ahead of the 2025 season, the 30 teams in MLS had a combined total of just under $113 million between them. This year, that sum is just over $145 million.

Put another way, the Fire’s total of just under $5.1 million in available GAM is the 14th highest total in MLS this season – putting them middle of the pack –but would have been fifth in last year’s release, just behind San Diego FC. Last year, only four teams had more than $5 million in available GAM and only Atlanta United topped $6 million (with just over $6.5). 

In 2026, 14 teams – just under half the league – have over $5 million and seven teams top $6 million, led by Minnesota United with $7.3, while Real Salt Lake is near the $7 million mark.

Some of the difference is due to the gradual increase in the salary cap. The base allocation of GAM to each team is $350,000 higher than last year. But that accounts for just $10.5 million of the difference. Another part of the difference can also be explained by date: The equivalent release last year was in December, before the transfer window in Europe was open and thus before many outgoing deals – which generate GAM – occurred.

Still, MLS rule changes together account for much of the GAM inflation, explained very well by Arman Kafai in this post.

Until last year, the amount that teams could recoup from selling a player was capped, and although the total varied, it hovered around $1 million in recent years. MLS has now moved from a per-player cap to a $3 million per-team annual cap for GAM from outgoing transfers. While in theory, this is a lower ceiling, in practice, teams seldom sell three or more players abroad in a single year.

At the same time, MLS introduced an internal cash market, convertible to GAM, for player trades. While previously, trades within the league came from a fixed leaguewide pool of GAM, now, intraleague trades can generate new allocation money, just as external sales can.

Most significant, however, was a subtle shift not directly caught by any one move: Previously, GAM did not generally roll over from one year to another. This meant that although the MLS Players Association knew, in aggregate, what all their members (excluding uncapped DPs) would be paid. Starting last year, however, it does. Now teams can spend under the cap in some years to accumulate a pool to spend later.

Taken together, these forces have greatly increased the total of allocation money available around the league. Just as in the real economy the effects of that inflation are likely to be uneven. We have started to see intraleague trades involving amounts of GAM that would have been eyewatering not long ago become more common.

The most immediate impact for the Fire may be for another use of GAM: Teams often trade the cap space for international slots, something that the Fire are likely to need to do this offseason as the team presently has 13 international players and just eight slots available.