2015 MLS Team Income Inequality

Yesterday's I examined income inequality in Major League Soccer for the current season in terms of all players listed on the Major League Soccer Players Union salary release and I noted that income inequality has been increasing during the past three seasons.  Today, I want to look at the level of income inequality at the team level.

So looking at each MLS club here are the measures of income inequality for the 2015 season using the data from the MLSPU in the table below.

Team		Base Salary Gini		Guaranteed. Compensation Gini
CHI		0.564		0.560
CLB		0.342		0.371
COL		0.459		0.463
DAL		0.346		0.337
DC		0.377		0.394
HOU		0.436		0.448
KC		0.460		0.450
LA		0.777		0.774
MTL		0.367		0.368
NE		0.619		0.625
NY		0.419		0.450
NYCFC		0.777		0.772
ORL		0.740		0.739
PHI		0.422		0.420
POR		0.495		0.485
RSL		0.409		0.414
SEA		0.713		0.732
SJ		0.476		0.483
TOR		0.784		0.790
VAN		0.509		0.503

From the table above notice that TOR (Toronto) has the most amount of salary inequality followed closely by LA, NYCFC, ORL and SEA.  In terms of income equality, CLB (Columbus) is the most equal followed by DAL, MTL and DC.

Over the last few seasons here are two charts of team Gini coefficients (excluding NYCFC).  The first chart is team by team Gini coefficients for Base Salary.

The second is team by team Gini coefficients for Guaranteed Compensation.

While there has been some variation in how equal (or unequal) salaries are distributed among MLS clubs, overall many teams have similar levels of Gini coefficients; most likely due to long term contracts for relatively high paid MLS players.