I have a function that's tagged as load. It runs the following bossbar commands:
bossbar create allthings:progress "All the Things"
bossbar set allthings:progress max 636
bossbar set allthings:progress color green
bossbar set allthings:progress visible true
bossbar set allthings:progress players @a
However, when I reload the world, I need to re-add my player for the bossbar to appear. I've tried this with @p as well as @a in the set players command. As well, I've toyed with the ordering of the bossbar commands in the load function.
Based on your description, I'm going to assume this is covered in MC-124424. Please let me know if this was in error 🙂