It works in american sports bc there is no promotion or relegation. Can’t work in a sport with it. I know the big bash has no more teams than the few that participate and cricket economic model is even worse.
American sports play under one federation. Who do you want enforcing the rules? Uefa? Fifa? The national fa? The national league? Other national sporting authorities? Other European sporting authorities? Other global sporting authorities?
Who’s laws do they follow? National? Continental? International? Regional? How do you create an even field when some teams are getting UCL money and dominating local leagues?
Do you make man city give their UCL winnings tk Southampton? How do you account for the Italian tax system?
Again its not possible in football. Not that no financial law is possible, just that the salary cap won’t work. Bc the revenue of teams can never be the same.
Barca can spend 40% of their revenue on sporting expenses and so can Cadiz. They just have different revenues.
How do Cadiz get the big revenue? Either outside investment like psg etc or long term European football (nearly impossible and only viable for a couple of clubs in every league).
So the uneven nature will exist so long as:
Teams play in more than one competition.
Promotion and relegation exist.
For the old money thing. All profit and the money of capitalists is exploited and the surplus value of labour of the workers. All investors are the same. They can’t have money now if they aren’t exploiting someone now.
But let’s drop this argument, it never goesnto a natural conclusion.
It works in american sports bc there is no promotion or relegation. Can’t work in a sport with it. I know the big bash has no more teams than the few that participate and cricket economic model is even worse.
That’s certainly part of it. It is also relevant that American leagues are a legal cartels that can control player movement subject only to collective bargaining with the players unions, as this removes the unbalancing effect of external compensation. They are also generally the highest level of their sport (though sometimes by default because only Americans care), meaning the threat of losing players to outside entities is minimal, though until they accepted significant revenue sharing (generally runs close to 50% of revenues), the emergence of competitors was always possible.
The weird outlier in the US is MLS, which must compete in the global market. They benefit from (1) having a squishy-AF salary caps, and (2) playing in the middle depths of the global market for professional footballers, meaning that skillful organizations can replace talent more or less like-for-like. As an aside, MLS franchises are much better at doing this than they used to be, and there are as many players passing through on their way up as down.
Yeah I don’t know enough about american sports to talk as in depth as I have about other matters here.
But yes thats the point I was trying to make too. I agree with basically all you said.
Now i know a lil about the mls. And I tried to understand their player registration rules and its all a mind fuck. Absolute mind fuck. So many ridiculous rules that need to be fulfilled making squad building an absolute headache. Still a lotta money in the mls which makes them valuable. And the college system helps too.
Fair enough. Pro-Rel has certain direct consequences that make a salary cap untenable, but I can see how it’s the whole system of a pyramid that includes pro-rel that you were getting at. I am actually fairly protective of the American system as a completely alternative system of professionalization that emerged fairly organically here and actually has some advantages to go with its disadvantages, but you can’t just pick and choose pieces of them to insert into the other. A salary cap in UEFA is laughable. FFP is already eye-rollingly abused.
Absolute mind fuck.
Yeah, it’s absolutely byzantine. The legal structure of MLS is bizarre as well. Technically, it’s still a single entity, though de facto the “investor operators” now work almost as independently as traditional American franchise owners, but the roster rules absolutely reflect their legal origin as intracompany transfers and “funny money” credits, all filtered through a traditional US-sports collective bargaining agreement, and goosed whenever a sufficiently big star wants to play out a few years here.
And the college system helps too.
The number of players coming up to MLS through college has shrunk quite a bit over the years, and the number of impactful players doing so has cratered in the men’s game. It’s basically now a place to fill out a few spots on the bottom of the roster and the reserve team, and as an occasional pleasant surprise among the late developers whose pro prospects at 18 were bleak enough that a college degree seemed the prudent choice. Once MLS realized they could make player development pay for itself with academies sitting on top of the already lucrative American youth setups college soccer was doomed to be an also-ran. Really only American football and men’s and women’s basketball depend heavily on the College system, where those sports are financially self-sustaining, so in exchange for not getting players brought up in your own style of play, the pro leagues get 100% free player development, including bearing the risk for injuries. Baseball too, though to a lesser extent and “minor league baseball” as a development path for teenaged players from across baseball-playing countries is still perfectly viable. I am less well-versed in Ice Hockey, but it seems like a hybrid system of independent youth clubs, some college, and European clubs.
Yeah I can’t imagine a world where financial rules can make anyone happy in Europe.
Imn notncaught up on the history of the mls as a structure. Will check that sometime.
Again not very caught up on american sports enough to make a comment here. But that is insightful. I know the Spanish system inside and out but this is interesting (in a bad way)
The EPL would enforce it for the EPL. La Liga would enforce it for La Liga, etc.
The unusual stratification of soccer leagues lends itself some difficulty in obtaining consistency, but that is not a good enough reason not to try. Especially for EPL, which really is professional (non-international) soccer for most of the world. People in Vietnam or Namibia know about and often pick a side in the Liverpool–ManU feud. Far fewer could tell you about Bundesliga teams.
Relegation also causes difficulty, but again, shouldn’t be insurmountable. A sort of “grandfather” clause to allow players in teams that get relegated to not have to immediately take a big pay cut (assuming lower leagues would have a lower salary cap), similar to how BBL allows international players exemptions and A-league already allows each team one player who can simply ignore the salary cap entirely.
I’m not pretending it’s simple. Just that the problems a salary cap is designed to fix are huge problems with the integrity of the sport, and the difficulty of implementing it is far outweighed by the benefit that would be obtained.
It works in american sports bc there is no promotion or relegation. Can’t work in a sport with it. I know the big bash has no more teams than the few that participate and cricket economic model is even worse.
American sports play under one federation. Who do you want enforcing the rules? Uefa? Fifa? The national fa? The national league? Other national sporting authorities? Other European sporting authorities? Other global sporting authorities?
Who’s laws do they follow? National? Continental? International? Regional? How do you create an even field when some teams are getting UCL money and dominating local leagues?
Do you make man city give their UCL winnings tk Southampton? How do you account for the Italian tax system?
Again its not possible in football. Not that no financial law is possible, just that the salary cap won’t work. Bc the revenue of teams can never be the same.
Barca can spend 40% of their revenue on sporting expenses and so can Cadiz. They just have different revenues.
How do Cadiz get the big revenue? Either outside investment like psg etc or long term European football (nearly impossible and only viable for a couple of clubs in every league).
So the uneven nature will exist so long as:
For the old money thing. All profit and the money of capitalists is exploited and the surplus value of labour of the workers. All investors are the same. They can’t have money now if they aren’t exploiting someone now.
But let’s drop this argument, it never goesnto a natural conclusion.
That’s certainly part of it. It is also relevant that American leagues are a legal cartels that can control player movement subject only to collective bargaining with the players unions, as this removes the unbalancing effect of external compensation. They are also generally the highest level of their sport (though sometimes by default because only Americans care), meaning the threat of losing players to outside entities is minimal, though until they accepted significant revenue sharing (generally runs close to 50% of revenues), the emergence of competitors was always possible.
The weird outlier in the US is MLS, which must compete in the global market. They benefit from (1) having a squishy-AF salary caps, and (2) playing in the middle depths of the global market for professional footballers, meaning that skillful organizations can replace talent more or less like-for-like. As an aside, MLS franchises are much better at doing this than they used to be, and there are as many players passing through on their way up as down.
Yeah I don’t know enough about american sports to talk as in depth as I have about other matters here.
But yes thats the point I was trying to make too. I agree with basically all you said.
Now i know a lil about the mls. And I tried to understand their player registration rules and its all a mind fuck. Absolute mind fuck. So many ridiculous rules that need to be fulfilled making squad building an absolute headache. Still a lotta money in the mls which makes them valuable. And the college system helps too.
Fair enough. Pro-Rel has certain direct consequences that make a salary cap untenable, but I can see how it’s the whole system of a pyramid that includes pro-rel that you were getting at. I am actually fairly protective of the American system as a completely alternative system of professionalization that emerged fairly organically here and actually has some advantages to go with its disadvantages, but you can’t just pick and choose pieces of them to insert into the other. A salary cap in UEFA is laughable. FFP is already eye-rollingly abused.
Yeah, it’s absolutely byzantine. The legal structure of MLS is bizarre as well. Technically, it’s still a single entity, though de facto the “investor operators” now work almost as independently as traditional American franchise owners, but the roster rules absolutely reflect their legal origin as intracompany transfers and “funny money” credits, all filtered through a traditional US-sports collective bargaining agreement, and goosed whenever a sufficiently big star wants to play out a few years here.
The number of players coming up to MLS through college has shrunk quite a bit over the years, and the number of impactful players doing so has cratered in the men’s game. It’s basically now a place to fill out a few spots on the bottom of the roster and the reserve team, and as an occasional pleasant surprise among the late developers whose pro prospects at 18 were bleak enough that a college degree seemed the prudent choice. Once MLS realized they could make player development pay for itself with academies sitting on top of the already lucrative American youth setups college soccer was doomed to be an also-ran. Really only American football and men’s and women’s basketball depend heavily on the College system, where those sports are financially self-sustaining, so in exchange for not getting players brought up in your own style of play, the pro leagues get 100% free player development, including bearing the risk for injuries. Baseball too, though to a lesser extent and “minor league baseball” as a development path for teenaged players from across baseball-playing countries is still perfectly viable. I am less well-versed in Ice Hockey, but it seems like a hybrid system of independent youth clubs, some college, and European clubs.
Yeah I can’t imagine a world where financial rules can make anyone happy in Europe.
Imn notncaught up on the history of the mls as a structure. Will check that sometime.
Again not very caught up on american sports enough to make a comment here. But that is insightful. I know the Spanish system inside and out but this is interesting (in a bad way)
The EPL would enforce it for the EPL. La Liga would enforce it for La Liga, etc.
The unusual stratification of soccer leagues lends itself some difficulty in obtaining consistency, but that is not a good enough reason not to try. Especially for EPL, which really is professional (non-international) soccer for most of the world. People in Vietnam or Namibia know about and often pick a side in the Liverpool–ManU feud. Far fewer could tell you about Bundesliga teams.
Relegation also causes difficulty, but again, shouldn’t be insurmountable. A sort of “grandfather” clause to allow players in teams that get relegated to not have to immediately take a big pay cut (assuming lower leagues would have a lower salary cap), similar to how BBL allows international players exemptions and A-league already allows each team one player who can simply ignore the salary cap entirely.
I’m not pretending it’s simple. Just that the problems a salary cap is designed to fix are huge problems with the integrity of the sport, and the difficulty of implementing it is far outweighed by the benefit that would be obtained.
Currently salary caps are based on percentage of revenue and the way to enforce em varies.
I think its as good as it gets. An objective cap is just a way of making sure players leave your league for another.