Why would a wage cap in football bridge the gaps between haves and have nots? By all means have a wage cap, but it must apply to other sports and occupations. Otherwise it's surely just an unworkable suggestion in order to appeal to idiots.
I wonder if the same parlimentarians that produced the report would suggest a wage cap on MPs (who often have second and third jobs) in order to further bridge the gap.
What a great idea for a new thread ;-) It would curb the excesses, might lead to more players playing for their club and not their paypacket and may make the football leagues more competitive. Plus if Man U city and Chelsea toddle off to Europe, so much the better. The NFL is seen as fairer, more exciting and way more competitive than the PL since it created a wage cap back in the 90's. I cant see any reason why not.
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Sorry dont understand the relevance. Please educate this good ole boy
They have very few teams, and no new teams can come in. It's an entirely protected market, whereas in English football, there are many more clubs (meaning that the maximum wage the bottom club could afford is significantly below the maximum the top club could afford, and any new club can get into the top group - Doncaster were in the Conference a few years ago). America is around 6 times the size of England with a a quarter the number of professional teams, so the maximum wage will be very comfortable. If you gave Wayne Rooney the maximum wage Morecambe could afford, you'd be distorting the market hugely. Basically, in order to achieve what NFL has, you'd have to eliminate the principle of competition that's there - along with most of the clubs, because you'd have to get rid of promotion/relegation too.
A wage expenditure cap that is related to revenue would be possible (for example, a club can't pay more than 75% of its revenue in wages), but I'm not sure what exactly that could achieve or whether it'd work in practice. Chelsea could sell a club pen to Abramovic for £30m and that'd be that.
Agree with McLovin. MPs are well paid. They should probably sort out their own excessive wages before moving on to other spheres/
Also, my suggestion about a 75% cap would mean that the big clubs would look to get even more of the TV money and prize money for themselves. More money for the Premier League and Champions' League and less for the lower divisions
Most businesses use debt to fund their activities and pay it back over time. Different businesses take up different levels of debt. Why should football clubs be any different?
Aside from that, I might as well mention the first thing that came into my head when you mentioned a debt cap - how could a club build a new ground or improve their facilities? It was this debt that did it for Southampton (if memory serves), but if they all stay in their existing grounds, the revenue will never rise and eventually the fans will decide to stay away.
So we are stuck with the interminably boring and predictable Premier league, and a host of other debt laden clubs going into administration? Crikey, is there no solution? The current set up will surely drive fans away, wont it?
'Interminably boring' is going a bit far. As I said on another thread, it's not that long ago that Leeds and Newcastle were big teams qualifying for Europe year on year, so it's not set in stone that the current top 4 will be anywhere near the top in four or five years' time. The actual Premier League can be interesting if you ignore the names (I don't know why you would ignore the names, but then I don't know why you would really care which teams finish up at the top of a league Charlton aren't in).
I've been toying with a few ideas for a while. The first is spreading the TV revenue more across the divisions, which seems like a no-brainer until you remember that most of the money is made from Premier League matches and, no matter how you do it, you'll always hurt some group of clubs (where Portsmouth get a huge amount compared to Newcastle, you might end up changing it by giving Darlington a huge amount compared to Stevenage or Oxford).
The second is changing the regulations on selling youth players in a way that would give lower league clubs a big incentive to develop academies and would help them out financially. Haven't thought of an obvious way yet, when I do, I'll let you know
Sure it's workable, but would require some significant tweaking from the North American model. The biggest impediment, I would think, is the promotion/relegation model, but I'm sure clever people could figure out a way around that. The other issue is that the players in North America, for the most part, are unionised, and as such, there are minimum salaries as well...I doubt that exists in the UK, but don't know.
To address the valid point that the smaller clubs couldn't afford to even pay the cap, one would have to do what (I believe) the NHL did, and put in a minimum salary for each club as well.
The other issue that is being heavily discussed, and is presently before the US Supreme Court, is the extent to which professional sports leagues in the US enjoy exemptions from anti-trust legislation (which I believe are premised upon the fallacy that each league is considered to be a single commercial enterprise, rather than each individual team representing one). There's no issue that baseball has one (I believe, granted by Congress), but the NFL was before the court to try to wrangle that sort of status, I believe, yesterday.
It's a difficult issue, but one that if successfully enacted, certainly seems to bear fruit in terms of enhanced competitiveness (although the NFL takes that to an extreme). I don't claim to have a clue about EU law, but given the common player market in Europe, I would think that that is also a significant challenge...
Comments
I wonder if the same parlimentarians that produced the report would suggest a wage cap on MPs (who often have second and third jobs) in order to further bridge the gap.
It would curb the excesses, might lead to more players playing for their club and not their paypacket and may make the football leagues more competitive.
Plus if Man U city and Chelsea toddle off to Europe, so much the better.
The NFL is seen as fairer, more exciting and way more competitive than the PL since it created a wage cap back in the 90's.
I cant see any reason why not.
Nice one MOG!
Sorry dont understand the relevance. Please educate this good ole boy
They have very few teams, and no new teams can come in. It's an entirely protected market, whereas in English football, there are many more clubs (meaning that the maximum wage the bottom club could afford is significantly below the maximum the top club could afford, and any new club can get into the top group - Doncaster were in the Conference a few years ago). America is around 6 times the size of England with a a quarter the number of professional teams, so the maximum wage will be very comfortable. If you gave Wayne Rooney the maximum wage Morecambe could afford, you'd be distorting the market hugely. Basically, in order to achieve what NFL has, you'd have to eliminate the principle of competition that's there - along with most of the clubs, because you'd have to get rid of promotion/relegation too.
A wage expenditure cap that is related to revenue would be possible (for example, a club can't pay more than 75% of its revenue in wages), but I'm not sure what exactly that could achieve or whether it'd work in practice. Chelsea could sell a club pen to Abramovic for £30m and that'd be that.
Agree with McLovin. MPs are well paid. They should probably sort out their own excessive wages before moving on to other spheres/
So its unworkable for the English game,id there an alternative
Perhaps a debt cap would help?
Aside from that, I might as well mention the first thing that came into my head when you mentioned a debt cap - how could a club build a new ground or improve their facilities? It was this debt that did it for Southampton (if memory serves), but if they all stay in their existing grounds, the revenue will never rise and eventually the fans will decide to stay away.
Crikey, is there no solution?
The current set up will surely drive fans away, wont it?
I've been toying with a few ideas for a while. The first is spreading the TV revenue more across the divisions, which seems like a no-brainer until you remember that most of the money is made from Premier League matches and, no matter how you do it, you'll always hurt some group of clubs (where Portsmouth get a huge amount compared to Newcastle, you might end up changing it by giving Darlington a huge amount compared to Stevenage or Oxford).
The second is changing the regulations on selling youth players in a way that would give lower league clubs a big incentive to develop academies and would help them out financially. Haven't thought of an obvious way yet, when I do, I'll let you know
To address the valid point that the smaller clubs couldn't afford to even pay the cap, one would have to do what (I believe) the NHL did, and put in a minimum salary for each club as well.
The other issue that is being heavily discussed, and is presently before the US Supreme Court, is the extent to which professional sports leagues in the US enjoy exemptions from anti-trust legislation (which I believe are premised upon the fallacy that each league is considered to be a single commercial enterprise, rather than each individual team representing one). There's no issue that baseball has one (I believe, granted by Congress), but the NFL was before the court to try to wrangle that sort of status, I believe, yesterday.
It's a difficult issue, but one that if successfully enacted, certainly seems to bear fruit in terms of enhanced competitiveness (although the NFL takes that to an extreme). I don't claim to have a clue about EU law, but given the common player market in Europe, I would think that that is also a significant challenge...