O/T...whats wrong with a wage and salary cap

[africanspurs]

I like the idea of a luxury tax though...sounds good. spend what you want but penalise the fudge out of the teams that do..let that income go to the people ...Lord knows the country could do with some added income from richer teams

 

[africanspurs]

I was about to mention this - considerations have to made for the nature of how association football is run worldwide. I think the best way is to have a TOTAL salary cap which is a % of revenue or turnover, then you can structure player's wages within that how you like as long as it falls below. Of course there is the issue of sign-on fees etc which need to be negotiated.

I just feel with so many different leagues across Europe (and the world), it would take years to implement such a decision - whereas in the NBA, NFL etc the teams have to comply with the league themselves. The problem arises when you have an organisation like the Premier League trying to compete with other leagues. They wouldn't want to reduce wages as that would mean that less high-quality players would be attracted to our shores, and as such their commercial value would go down.

agree with this post entirely. makes sense

and even agree with the last line.

but the fACT then remains is that in the same way as how we had the fortune of taking with us a 15000 dedicated fan base to northumberland park.......some teams are having the fotune of being owned by a sugar daddy.

if people are willing to go oevr the oodds to attract the good players to this league then you cant moan when cash rish clubs do the same WITHIN the league cause these players have to go somewhere; right?

 

[Charlie]

As pointed out by various people, a wage cap will be against EU competition law. In the USA, the NFL, NBA, MLS and etc are exempted from prosecution because those leagues are granted special exemptions by the United States Congress.

 

[SteveAWOL]

...
I don't even want a salary cap, I want a luxury tax like you see in basketball. The FA sets a salary, say £80m/year. For every £1 over that you spend on salaries, you have to pay the league £1, so if a team had a £100m/year wage bill, they would have to pay the league a further £20m. This money is then shared out equally to all the clubs under the tax.

It could be done so the money filters down the leagues, to Premiership teams get 85%, Championship 10%, League 1 3% and League 2 2%.

As an example, lets say the amount of tax paid by City and Chelsea is £30m in a single year. That means £25.5m get split between the remaining 18 Premier League clubs (about £1.4m each), £3m gets split between the 24 Championship clubs etc...

Big clubs get to spend what they want, but the whole of English football benefits. Win/win I say.

I wasn't aware of that system but it does sound like a reasonable way of sharing the wealth and appears to have prevented any one team from completely dominating the NBA in the same predictable manner that ManUre did to the EPL in the 1990s.

If an £80million salary threshold was introduced for the 2011/12 season then the Luxury Tax Bills in the Premier League would be:

Chelsea = £110m
Emirates Marketing Project = £94m
Manchester United = £73m
Liverpool = £55m
ARSEnal = £44m
Tottenham = £11m
Aston Villa = £3m

Although such a system would only be remotely possible if implemented across Europe by UEFA but perhaps if they got a cut of the tax revenue for themselves to use for their own projects (similar to the system used in MLB) then Platini and co might consider it...

Barcelona = £142m
Real Madrid = £114m
AC Milan = £91m
Bayern Munich = £51m

 

[southstand1882]

Brilliant idea

 

[africanspurs]

isnt the EU law supposed to STOP lack of competition, so that the customers and people that pay for services or compete for customers can have a fair shake and not have to worry about big entities running the show?

i think i have this wrong then

 

[africanspurs]

As pointed out by various people, a wage cap will be against EU competition law. In the USA, the NFL, NBA, MLS and etc are exempted from prosecution because those leagues are granted special exemptions by the United States Congress.

do you mind explaining what this law is ?

actually scratch that. can you just explain how it violates the law

 

[africanspurs]

EU would never allow it.

i think i can appreciate this might be the case even though i am not certain how in detail. i would greatly appreciate it if you could explain

 

[jts1882]

isnt the EU law supposed to STOP lack of competition, so that the consumers can have a fair shake at decent prices and not have to worry about big entities setting and fixing hard prices?

The EU law protects competition on wages, so they can't have a maximum wage for an individual. There isn't a reason why you can't have a wage cap on a team, which they allow in rugby.

The wage cap for a club/franchise works in the US, but it can't work the same way in Europe. American teams all play a similar schedule up to the playoff and the latter mean a few teams end their season early. They can all operate with the same squad size. In European football, the clubs may or may not play in Europe, which can be up to 19 extra games. It would penalise clubs that qualified for Europe. That wouldn't be fair, although would add variety.

Most proposals talk about capping wages as a percentage of revenue, but such cap just protects the established clubs. That's not fair and it would be interesting to see how the EU handled it.

The luxury tax does seem an interesting idea. I wonder if this also falls foul of the EU as its providing a disincentive to pay an individual a high wage. Hopefully it wouldn't.