Massive payout at stake when LAFC, Club America play for Club World Cup berth

The Club World Cup bracket, featuring 32 teams from all six of FIFA's continental confederations, looked settled a few months ago. But Club Leon — one of several Mexican teams that qualified, alongside Pachuca and Monterrey — was unceremoniously dropped from the competition this spring after breaking FIFA's ownership rules. Club Leon is owned by the same group as Pachuca; for reasons of fairness, FIFA insisted that only one of the two clubs could compete in the tournament. The group selected Pachuca as its representative and left Club Leon's spot vacant.

That opened up a window for another North American team, and FIFA soon announced that LAFC (a former Concacaf Champions Cup finalist and regular trophy winner in the U.S.) and Club America (Mexico's biggest and winningest team) would contend for the spot. With no precedent available to determine which would receive it, FIFA settled on simplicity: a one-off play-in match at a venue (BMO Stadium in Los Angeles) that would offer equal fan support for both teams.

The FIFA Club World Cup began its life as a small, flimsy tournament featuring eight teams and precious little prize money, and for many years it existed as more annoyance than opportunity for big-name clubs around the world. FIFA president Gianni Infantino is determined to make the Club World Cup a global phenomenon and has invested billions of dollars into its expansion. The tournament now features 32 teams and a prize pool that exceeds $1B. Entrants receive nearly $10M just for showing up; winning matches and advancing will net them tens of millions more.

For fans, the Club World Cup's prize money looks like an ungainly stunt to get clubs to care. But for LAFC and Club America, the payouts are truly trajectory-changing figures. Just showing up at the Club World Cup is worth double the prize of winning North America's biggest club championship. For that reason, this play-in match between LAFC and Club America is rightly billed as the most expensive soccer match in the history of North America. It's not just the bragging rights or the tournament access at stake here. It's the biggest well of external investment either of these teams will access for years.

Club America enters this game as the clear favorite. It went all the way to the Liga MX final this season and is coming off a full week of rest and preparation. LAFC, meanwhile, is sixth in the Western Conference in the middle of its 2025 season. Club America is a finished product; LAFC is very much still a team in development.

Club America and Leon last faced off in the semifinals of the 2020 Concacaf Champions Cup. Club America entered that one as favorites, too, but LAFC pulled off an unprecedented upset. It was Club America's first time losing to a Major League Soccer club in the knockout stages of the competition.

The teams will battle for their Club World Cup spot Saturday (May 31) at 10:30 p.m. ET. The winner of the match will join a Club World Cup group featuring England's Chelsea FC, Tunisia's ES Tunis and Brazil's Flamengo, and begin its tournament play June 16 against Chelsea in Atlanta.