is that cap to $3.5M or an increase of $3.5M; I wouldn't call a 400k increase significant when it's been going up about 200k a yearOriginally Posted by jloome
is that cap to $3.5M or an increase of $3.5M; I wouldn't call a 400k increase significant when it's been going up about 200k a year
That's actually a really good point. All the power is in the unions hands to be honest, MLS just backed themselves into a corner in this negotiation by having these teams and players coming all at once.
That TV deal rumor does sound intriguing if its also true.
"The league" is the owners.
There has been a dilution of ownership for sure as richer newbies have come in, but is it enough to offset the traditionalists (Hunts, Krafts, Anschutz) that run this league historically? I doubt it.
Don't forget, there has been a backlash against the spending. TFC didn't exactly prove the case that it's a good idea. Even in preseason, there were a lot of unhappy campers.
http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/articl...wicz-questions
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
HAHAHA i wondered the same thing
It's double the prescribed rate and means an average possible salary across the roster of more than $100,000, so it's a positive step. They're not going to get free agency, unless it's with a heavy years of service caveat (like, at the end of a four year contract) and they don't have a restraint argument because it's the only div. 1 league in North America.
Not many owner hawks left around.
Hunts only have 1 team now, AEG has 2. Kraft has 1.
That's 4 out of 19.
Who else is a hawk? Kronke? RSL?
Nah......$ talks and the $ coming into this league is not interested in losing out a season. Free agency won't happen but the cap goes up a lot.
Last edited by OgtheDim; 11-29-2014 at 04:40 PM.
Does anybody know if players get more money for being in the playoffs, or is that just part of their contracts?
Cause they are thinking of adding 2 teams.
http://www.si.com/soccer/planet-futb...t-2015-changes
Upon reflection, I'd rephrase. I think there are a lot of teams that just don't have the revenue potential to pay more for players, DPs or otherwise, that is the real split amongst the owners.
This chart shows what I mean:
http://www.stathunting.com/2014/04/1...es-visualized/
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
While it's true that in the short term all you would be doing is paying the same quality of domestic talent more money; in the long term more talented athletes will pursue a career in soccer rather than something that pays better. Though the average salary of soccer players here would have to go up a lot for it to compete with the other major sports for talented athletes
My view is that the Union will do everything short of going the anti-trust route to gain ground for the players.
I see free agency as the issue they agree to leave off the table in exchange for financial gains for the domestic player. Higher salaries and guaranteed contracts for younger players will likely be earned in exchange for dropping free agency demands... this time around.
I actually think that the players would lose. Plus, they have little to gain from an antitrust lawsuit and blowing up the league. Incremental change works for everyone when you are talking about MLS, whether it is in TV deals, sponsorships, extending the DP rules, or players' rights. If you look how players have it now compared to 2002, it's way, way better. Killing the proverbial "golden goose" benefits no one, neither would a protracted strike.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
I think the league realizes that the player salaries need to go up. And really, raising the minimum salaries to $50K/$65K with about a $16K increase to all non-DP players will only add about $500K to the cap. If the reports are correct and the Salary Cap is raised to $4 million, then that still leaves an additional $400K for teams to play around with to get better talent. Personally, I'd like to see a $5 million cap, but don't know if that's in the cards. I think it should at least be $4.5 million and raise the salaries and cap by 5% per year through to the end of the CBA. By 2020, I expect the gloves to be off and serious player salaries being offered.
grazie. Figured as much re salaries etc.
This league is still anchored to its lean years. It needs to change it's mentality if it's ever going to reach it's potential. I'm way more likely to be annoyed by yet another semi-pro RB earning 40k a year than I am impressed by whatever it is that we "had" to spend our money on for a fourth DP.
Maybe it has.
What's the incentive for owners to band together to increase their costs (ie. player salaries)? I'm sure one of the attractions of MLS for owners is that its players costs are well below almost anything else out there.
I am sure that most of the owners realize that in order to make the league as profitable as possible, they need in increase their costs (at least to a certain point).
MLS doesn't want to turn into the second-coming of the original NASL (where costs went too high to sustain the league).
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To a certain point, yeah, but I think it's going to be very gradual. The model is pretty good right now if you are an owner. Where in professional sports, especially in soccer, can you pay a whole team $4-5 million?
2002 and 2014 players arent the same guys
this lot is negotating for this term and for a lot of guys it is their last or near last term.
Fair point.
And while this goes against my original assertion, I have to say on some grounds they really have abandoned things that worked so well earlier. SSS was a big push, but now largely irrelevant.
The current expansion looks NHL sunbelt esque in some ways. The markets are good but the business plans are all out of whack; looks like it's motivated by expansion dollars.
North American big cities are trained on having world class players playing their sports.
The cap negotiation minutiae obscures the reality of just how far this league is from even being middling.
I look at MLS TV ratings, and I don't see how this league can ever afford to have the $20-25M payroll it would take just to have a Mexican or Dutch level team.
MLS becoming a big league is not possible.
Last edited by ensco; 12-01-2014 at 06:55 PM.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Yeah, I'm not happy about it but that's what it looks like. It seems that too many of the owners have taken the MLSE approach, that is; soccer is the most popular sport in the world here fore it will be popular here. Inevitably. But, or course, North America is an incredibly competitive market for team sports and the other leagues don't just roll over and die.
I don't think MLS really had many options but they never really seemed to decide if they were going after existing North American sports fans - so they structured the league like every other league with divisions and playoffs and a draft and so on - or if they felt there were enough soccer fans already here just waiting for a league to support and it's ended up somewhere in between with no real identity.
I don't think it's quite as extreme in terms of how far off reality they are; I think you're assuming they expect to be top dog some day, when in reality, MLS would be quite happy to double its current fanbase by roping in people from the diaspora melting pot who won't support anyone but a team from the old country. They'd be happy to be pushing out NHL for an overall fanbase in the long run.
ANd it's possible; to me, the bigger issue is how that vision will affect the U.S. and Canadian player base; there's simply no way that American technical development at the youth level is keeping pace with the growth of the league; the further the divide, the more any growth will rely on bringing in foreigners, increasing the cap and risking losing the benefit a large write-off machine like an MLS club provides.
I think it's important to frame any discussion of MLS and expansion and the cap with the reality: this is a write-down project for most of the companies involved. Most are in the U.S. where a losing proposition hold long-term benefits to other parts of their business. But if they actually have to start competing, and taking on risk that doesn't benefit other holdings, that goes out the window. Will they go to a $5 mill cap and four DPs? Maybe. They let Toronto blow $100M in long-term spending this year; but much beyond that, it's difficult to see in the current market.
I think we all have to remember that we are talking about a single entity here where salary expenses are generally not the responsibility of the individual teams.
If Columbus was on its own and paying out of its own pocket surely they would want to keep costs low. They would argue for strict caps in order to keep costs low to allow them to be competitive.
But outside of DPs, and those special "league funds" that can be used to get DPs, salaries are paid by the league.
If the league wants to assign everyone a set budget, and inflate the budget of certain teams to fit more expensive players into it.. which it does via allocation money... it can.
There may not be an incentive to increase expenses across the board but clearly there may be a business incentive for certain large markets to be competitive. Ticket sales, TV rights, etc all contribute to league profitability. All franchise operators have a share in MLS and arguably an interest in seeing the league do well financially. So there is an incentive it would appear for the collective investors to at least consider increasing expenses in some markets.
Rich people funded academies are by and large what are creating NBA players now (that and genetics); turns out that playing on an asphalt court doesn't do the job anymore if you want to be good enough. Same thing is developing in soccer.
Forget the old country, MLS isn't able to sustain ratings that match the USMNT or EPL currently. Clearly they haven't been able to sell everyone on the quality of the product.
Wage restraint is a negotiating tactic more than a long term strategy like it was in the past. For most of these new owners, they may follow the direction of the league management in maintaining the status quo for now but that won't last long. Maybe not this CBA but by the next one, it may be a different mix of people calling the shots. Also, Don Garber isn't that old but he's been in place since 1999, he's not going to stay forever. At some point he leaves and that will bring some of these underlying strategic differences among the owners to the top.
Well, that is no surprise, the quality is poor compared to alternatives. And it will continue to be as long as the roster and salary restrictions are where they are.
It's always going to be a risk, though. No matter how high the quality gets in MLS the best it can be is "one of the top leagues in the world," which may always be a marketing issue in the USA competing against "the top league in the world" in every other sport.
If you build it they will come may not always be true.
I don't disagree, but I think the fundamental problem right now is that bar is too low. And it will continue to be as long as teams a fielding journeymen at fullback, or are one or two key injuries away from having a massive drop in quality.
There will always be people that will only watch a top product. But there are also a lot of folks turned off by how fundamentally bad a lot of the games are. Watching the MLS - you miss a lot of basic stuff that is done at lower levels overseas. Specific to TFC - I know a lot of people personally that would have stuck with TFC if the quality had been better. And don't mean top quality - I mean stuff like - "why the hell are the players following the ball around like a bunch of kids" or "why are the players passing the ball and not moving into space".
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