jloome
09-04-2008, 02:37 AM
I read a post on one of the other boards earlier tonight suggesting the lack of profit in MLS (something like an average of $7M-10M per season in revenue per team) is the principle reason we won't see a major salary cap increase.
But it occured to me that when you factor in the $900,000 to $6.5 million teams are already paying for a DP, some teams already have payrolls (cough...cough...LA) in excess of $8 million. Chicago has more than $6 million on its payroll, with Blanco getting $2.7 million.
They just don't register it becasue fo the DP rule. And when you factor in the wanker nature of American sports owners and their capacity for using their sports ownings as tax writeoffs for losses against other holdings, we can't even trust their base revenue projections to start with.
So, prospectively, teams are willing to top $5 million per season in salaries. I suggest MLS would benefit more from getting rid of the 2 DP rule -- limiting it to one per team, instead of one plus one traded -- and using the extra money to add depth to rosters and stability to lineups.
Let's say the team grandfathered the current DPs but under the new CBA agreed to a clause where teams would be limited to:
-- one player above the cap. (the dp)
-- 25 Roster players
-- An 18-man senior roster cap of $3 million
-- A Development roster cap for U-23 players of $1 million.
That amounts to a $4 milllion salary cap that is weighted towards promoting development, with an additional star player. A team could legitimately sign 16-18 players to compete for starting roles, with an average salary of $166,000 per year, plus seven youth players with an average salary of $142,000.
It doesn't take much -- a $1.3 million increase, in all -- to take MLS salaries from unbearably crappy to liveable. Let's assume you want the top 10 of those players to average $250,000 a year. That's $2.5 million, leaving you $500,000 to spend on your remaining senior players.
So let's say you sign five more senior players at an average of $100,000 each (still numbers well above the norm for the bench players right now) leaving you three bench spots and seven dev spots that will have to go to U-23 players, because your senior cap of $3 million is gone. But with a $1 million dev cap, that's still an average of $100,000 per player for those U-23 players, real incentive to play here.
I think MLSE and most of the other owners in the league would be willing to cough up that kind of extra money, and it would satisfy the need to raise the salaries in the bottom half. Plus, if you get rid of the $400,000 max cap for one player and move it to, say, $600,000, you suddenly can afford significantly more Euro players and have many new options for team development.
They could even write in a rule suggesting that U-23 development cap money left after salaries are accounted for can be used on a prorated monthly basis to help fund the youth academy, allowing for a scholarship/full-time instruction environment to be established over time through an education fund.
If you consider the likelihood that Columbus isn't the only team the league is allowing to 'fudge attendance' and that MLS is probably more in the 12-13,000 per game category, I'd suggest the idea of one star per team attracting a huge new ongoing viewership is a little ridiculous. It would be better to offer a competitive product on the field through roster strengthening and allow fan bases to grow naturally through appreciation for the increasing quality of the performances over time.
But it occured to me that when you factor in the $900,000 to $6.5 million teams are already paying for a DP, some teams already have payrolls (cough...cough...LA) in excess of $8 million. Chicago has more than $6 million on its payroll, with Blanco getting $2.7 million.
They just don't register it becasue fo the DP rule. And when you factor in the wanker nature of American sports owners and their capacity for using their sports ownings as tax writeoffs for losses against other holdings, we can't even trust their base revenue projections to start with.
So, prospectively, teams are willing to top $5 million per season in salaries. I suggest MLS would benefit more from getting rid of the 2 DP rule -- limiting it to one per team, instead of one plus one traded -- and using the extra money to add depth to rosters and stability to lineups.
Let's say the team grandfathered the current DPs but under the new CBA agreed to a clause where teams would be limited to:
-- one player above the cap. (the dp)
-- 25 Roster players
-- An 18-man senior roster cap of $3 million
-- A Development roster cap for U-23 players of $1 million.
That amounts to a $4 milllion salary cap that is weighted towards promoting development, with an additional star player. A team could legitimately sign 16-18 players to compete for starting roles, with an average salary of $166,000 per year, plus seven youth players with an average salary of $142,000.
It doesn't take much -- a $1.3 million increase, in all -- to take MLS salaries from unbearably crappy to liveable. Let's assume you want the top 10 of those players to average $250,000 a year. That's $2.5 million, leaving you $500,000 to spend on your remaining senior players.
So let's say you sign five more senior players at an average of $100,000 each (still numbers well above the norm for the bench players right now) leaving you three bench spots and seven dev spots that will have to go to U-23 players, because your senior cap of $3 million is gone. But with a $1 million dev cap, that's still an average of $100,000 per player for those U-23 players, real incentive to play here.
I think MLSE and most of the other owners in the league would be willing to cough up that kind of extra money, and it would satisfy the need to raise the salaries in the bottom half. Plus, if you get rid of the $400,000 max cap for one player and move it to, say, $600,000, you suddenly can afford significantly more Euro players and have many new options for team development.
They could even write in a rule suggesting that U-23 development cap money left after salaries are accounted for can be used on a prorated monthly basis to help fund the youth academy, allowing for a scholarship/full-time instruction environment to be established over time through an education fund.
If you consider the likelihood that Columbus isn't the only team the league is allowing to 'fudge attendance' and that MLS is probably more in the 12-13,000 per game category, I'd suggest the idea of one star per team attracting a huge new ongoing viewership is a little ridiculous. It would be better to offer a competitive product on the field through roster strengthening and allow fan bases to grow naturally through appreciation for the increasing quality of the performances over time.