Club World Cup off to rocky start with player protest, slow ticket sales

You've heard of the Club World Cup, right? A soccer tournament with the top professional teams in the world starting Saturday

Judging by ticket sales, not enough people have, and that is disappointing for FIFA, soccer's worldwide governing body

The 32-team event could be considered a warm-up for next summer's World Cup, but it's been plagued by problems

Initially, ticket prices were too high for many fans. In the last week, a dynamic pricing model has brought prices down significantly as demand continues to wane

In Seattle, fans are being offered free tickets. For Saturday's match featuring Lionel Messi's Inter Miami, most seats on Ticketmaster were around $75 at last check, down from nearly $400 two weeks ago

Poor ticket sales aren't the only issue. A $1 billion prize pool FIFA put up for the tournament drew a lot of attention

So did the t-shirts the Seattle Sounders wore during warm-ups before their June 1st MLS game with Minnesota

Stenciled on the front with Mr. Monopoly, the shirt reads, Club World Cash Grab. On the back, Fair Share Now

At issue is the portion of the prize money allocated to the three MLS teams in the tournament

Inter-Miami, Seattle Sounders, and LAFC. They've already earned almost $10 million each just for qualifying

Every win a team has in the tournament is worth an additional $2 million

and every draw worth an additional $1 million. The players are upset their share is capped at $1 million total for each roster

The rest of the money goes to team owners In essence a 10 to 1 ratio before the tournament even begins Sounders captain Stefan Fry and forward Christian Roldan say the shirts were necessary

You know, our message on the weekend was to try to get a point across that, hey, we want to sit down and talk

I think we made that point and I think it was received

I think the league knows that this is this money, this amount of money that's being granted for playing in this tournament

needs to be distributed in a fair way. The league responded a week later with a proposal

that gives 20% of the prize money earned for a win or a draw

but has said nothing since. The players say that's still too low

and they're now caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, excited to have the opportunity to compete with the best teams in the world

but dealing with the distraction of what they perceive as unfair pay

You practice good faith. negotiation in good faith. And I'm not sure if I'm seeing that from the MLS side, right

We came up with an offer back to them after they stalled for a week

and we gave them an offer within 24 hours, and we haven't heard back

There are also complaints from other top players around the world about FIFA crowding the soccer calendar with more matches

The expansion of the Club World Cup from seven teams to 32 this year

comes during what players say is their much-needed break between the regular season schedules of several European leagues

Will MLS teams refuse to take the field if they don't receive more money? It is an option, but Sounders head coach Brian Smetzer said Thursday it's unlikely

His players feel they owe it to their fans to compete. For Straight Arrow News, I'm Chris Francis