Salary Caps: Needed?

[nsno-chris]

Yes, it’s beyond despicable that any player can earn that amount of money.

It’s vile

 

[mmmmsnouts]

Baseball doesn't but the rest do.

NFL - hard cap. I think its around 160M, there is also a salary floor meaning you have to spend a certain amount of money.
NHL - hard cap, I think they have a salary floor.
Baseball - no salary cap, but if you go over a certain payroll you have to pay a luxury tax. Salaries are also depressed for players in the league for less than 5-6? years. A tax which gets funneled to smaller clubs.
NBA - soft cap w/ very stiff luxury tax and max salaries - you can spend as much as you want but you can't trade for or sign players if you are over the cap. The team that drafted you, or you are currently playing for can offer you a higher max salary. NBA has a salary floor.
MLS - hard cap except for DPs.

Only baseball really has the have/have nots. The Yankees/Dodgers/Red Sox have the local TV contracts which allow them to spend hundreds of millons. Plus w/o a salary floor it incentivises losing for the smaller clubs. Many smaller clubs (OH HAI PIRATES!) gut their clubs and pay a large majority of their salaries with revenue sharing so even if no one shows up they are still highly profitable.

Also most sports clubs here play in taxpayer funded stadiums and pay no tax or rent whatsoever. In many of these deals the club owns the stadium and the parking lots but the city is also on the hook for millions of improvements to said stadiums.

Both the NHL and NFL have salary floors. I think the NBA does too.

MLB doesn’t have a cap, but they do charge a revenue sharing tax over a certain threshold. The tax money is then shared by teams who don’t have the local market money available to them the way the Yankees and Dodgers do. It keeps the window open a bit longer for smaller clubs (hence how Kansas City was able to win a World Series) although it doesn’t exactly level the playing field.

 

[canuckblue]

A salary cap would only allow the already-richer clubs to outbid the rest even more frequently for the better players. Basically, it wouldn't change the status quo one iota.

 

[ilikecheese]

Yes, it’s beyond despicable that any player can earn that amount of money.

It’s vile

Why? They are only making what teams are willing to pay. Would you rather see the money they make be used to line the already deep pockets of the owners?

For me a salary cap is anti-labor.

As I stated earlier the better way to police this is by making a squad cap. It's a joke that Chelsea have either 37 or 38 players on loan. There is no need to have 70+ contracted players in a sport with 11 on field players.

 

[nsno-chris]

Why? They are only making what teams are willing to pay. Would you rather see the money they make be used to line the already deep pockets of the owners?

For me a salary cap is anti-labor.

As I stated earlier the better way to police this is by making a squad cap. It's a joke that Chelsea have either 37 or 38 players on loan. There is no need to have 70+ contracted players in a sport with 11 on field players.

I think it’s morally wrong that any player earns more than £50k a week.

And I’d rather see the money out into grass roots football and supporting local communities, even more so nowadays with the austerity measures.

 

[Old Blue 2]

It's a joke that Chelsea have either 37 or 38 players on loan. There is no need to have 70+ contracted players in a sport with 11 on field players.

This. I think clubs should be limited to loaning ot a maximum of 5 players a season. The loan system appears to be out of control. If the original intention was to give a young player more 'on-the-pitch' time while they imiproved their game, fine. But I think thatnow, it is simply being abused.

The same club has ruined some players careers also. Bought Wright-Phillips and Sinclair. Hardly played them - they were on the bench or not in the squad most of the time. Then moved them on, after which their careers basically tanked.

 

[ilikecheese]

This. I think clubs should be limited to loaning ot a maximum of 5 players a season. The loan system appears to be out of control. If the original intention was to give a young player more 'on-the-pitch' time while they imiproved their game, fine. But I think thatnow, it is simply being abused.

The same club has ruined some players careers also. Bought Wright-Phillips and Sinclair. Hardly played them - they were on the bench or not in the squad most of the time. Then moved them on, after which their careers basically tanked.

I think that also exposes a flaw in the homegrown rule.

 

[messymascot]

To stop hoarding of players they should just bring in a rule if you buy a player you can't loan them out for the 1st 2 years of their contract. It would stop teams like Chelsea buying players then using other teams to assess whether they are good enough. They could not risk buying a player for millions and sitting him in the reserves where all sharpness and motivation is lost. A salary cap would be too hard to implement as players are already on long contracts that would be way above the ceiling plus you would have to get all the self serving clubs at the top to agree as they seem to hold all the aces!

 

[Lapeno77]

Wouldn't go with a salary cap, it could probably be appealed but instead a flat budget cap.

Each team in the league has x amount to spend on players transfers and wages. That way the players finances would become more relative to that amount x.

 

[peteblue]

I think the amount players get paid is obscene.

Fixed, they certainly do not earn it......

 

[.....!]

Irrelevant of how much money a team makes they should have a season budget for all players. Spend it as you will. Pay some more and pay some less. Save some for January buying etcs etcs.

 

[ClausThomsen]

Yes, it’s beyond despicable that any player can earn that amount of money.

It’s vile

They can only earn that because idiots are willing to pay so much money for the product they create. The way to limit earnings is to stop pushing so much money at the game. Sky, BT, match tickets, merchandise....it's all obscenely overpriced and it's "fans" who are doing everything they can to push those prices up further by continuing to pay.

 

[WA Toffee]

I don't like salary caps but I'm all for a much much lower basic and bigger win bonuses, they may look like they care then.

If you think the amoint of cheating going on now is bad, think how much worse it will be if players are are desparate for a win bonus

 

[evilwebby]

Not in favour of a wage cap on principle, but I would like to see more mechanisms for more money to make it down to smaller and lower league clubs. The biggest clubs are an effective oligopoly, and no one else can compete. Key to this would be to challenge the Premier League's broadcasting rights.

 

[nsno-chris]

They can only earn that because idiots are willing to pay so much money for the product they create. The way to limit earnings is to stop pushing so much money at the game. Sky, BT, match tickets, merchandise....it's all obscenely overpriced and it's "fans" who are doing everything they can to push those prices up further by continuing to pay.

Oh i agree, my concern is that it is also causing a bubble. All the cash is fan generated (gates & sports subscriptions), if the latter goes then you'll see a lot of clubs fold. Its not a sustainable model because sooner or later the bigger clubs will either a) push for a european superleague, or b) want to negotitate their own TV deals.

The other people in this mess are the agents. I've always been of the opinion that it should be centralised with negotiations being handled by the relevant Authorities (i.e. a mediator who works for the FA), rather than a thiord party who, in most cases, is working for themselves rather than their clients. This is a pipe dream of course, but i'd love to get rid of the scummy agents from the game