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Elstone talks TV deal, Private Equity and next season (ish)


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1 minute ago, dealwithit said:

So should clubs be able to spend a % of revenue on players, rather than a cap?

A salary cap based on an financial fair play-style model would be significantly better than the system the game has now. 

If clubs want to compete for playing talent under an FFP system, the onus is on them to grow the business to allow them to do that. 

The current system is simply designed to limit the cost of competing and, in turn, lower the personal cost to a small number of individuals - but it arguably comes at great expense to many others. 

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5 minutes ago, Smudger06 said:

They don't want to spend £5m to ensure they hammer Wakey, they want to spend £10m to hammer everyone and win trophies at OT & Wembley. Which would leave even the richest RL Clubs vastly underspending in other vital areas after the 25+ 1st team players have been paid.  

They don't. There is no point. Who are they going to spend it on?

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1 minute ago, fighting irish said:

Surely if we want to achieve some kind of parity then the SC needs to be combined with some kind of draft system, where the bottom clubs get first pick of the players becoming available.

Which is probably possible but not in a world of P+R and definitely not in a world where the vast majority of youth development is funded by a small minority of clubs.

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2 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

A salary cap based on an financial fair play-style model would be significantly better than the system the game has now. 

If clubs want to compete for playing talent under an FFP system, the onus is on them to grow the business to allow them to do that. 

The current system is simply designed to limit the cost of competing and, in turn, lower the personal cost to a small number of individuals - but it arguably comes at great expense to many others. 

But this would stop an ambitious smaller club investing in growing by competing at the top end. 

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4 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

The current system is simply designed to limit the cost of competing and, in turn, lower the personal cost to a small number of individuals - but it arguably comes at great expense to many others. 

And this for me is the biggest issue I have with it. The current salary cap exists in its present form for all the wrong reasons.

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13 minutes ago, Dave T said:

This links with the other point you made about portakabins and training facilities. And this so where the cap has been successful in my eyes, that clubs have had to improve the other areas to make themselves attractive. However there may be an argument that we now have great facilities across the vast majority of SL and some of the shackles could be loosened and those who haven't strengthened will find their place. 

I do think any loosening needs to be done carefully though, and we have seen decent increases in the cap over the last 3 years or so. It'll be interesting to see what the next moves are. 

I think naturally your view relates best to Warrington, and applies less further down until you get to the likes of Salford with little to no assets and no academy.

I think one of the caps major problems was that for 15 years or so it didn't change (from being relatively low to start with anyway). Even before the recent raisings to 1.9 and eventually 2.1 iirc, a group of clubs were not able to pay the full cap and surprise surprise they are also the one's with the weakest off field aspects too.

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8 minutes ago, Damien said:

I think talk of spending 5 times more is exaggerating somewhat to paint an extreme picture. I highly doubt that was the case even when Wigan were dominant and clubs were getting a few thousand each in TV funding. I don't think Wigan or Leeds are suddenly going to start paying players £1 million plus which is 5 times what their top players are getting now.

Now I am on the fence about a salary cap and if it stays. I am completely against the salary cap in its current form and think that major reform is overdue. A race to the bottom is not levelling, it is making the competition worse. No new winners of SL is not levelling.

We can still have a salary cap that allows for players to be paid fairly, increases the quality of player in Super League, stops clubs hoarding players and allows for rich owners to plough money into the game so they desire. The current implementation is an unimaginative crude instrument that achieves nothing.

I'm not so sure, my example may be extreme but I dont think it is so extreme that it should be ignored. We saw TWP spend around £4.5m this year (based on media reports - and not taking this down a TWP thread :kolobok_biggrin:), and that was under current restrictions. They would have spent more if they could - they actively campaigned to spend more.

I don't think it would be long before we saw £1m players coming from the NRL, maybe Union, and all it takes is 3 or 4 rich backers who are happy to write off £4m or £5m a year (plenty of sports people spend more than this annually) and we could see the likes of Wigan, Leeds, Saints and Wire spend up to £10m as they bid to become top dog. The bigger question about my scenario is probably around whether the lower clubs would stay disciplined at that £2m mark or "speculate to accumulate" and increase that spend and go bust. 

I think we have had 20 years of sustainability which maybe leads us to believe we are more sensible than we really are, I think it would become quite silly within 5 years. Some of the RU numbers are crazy, with very substantial losses annually. 

Probably the sensible position is finding a level that allows ambition, but caps crazy spend, but that is ultimately still a cap and open to the same criticisms that we see here. 

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5 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I think naturally your view relates best to Warrington, and applies less further down until you get to the likes of Salford with little to no assets and no academy.

I think one of the caps major problems was that for 15 years or so it didn't change (from being relatively low to start with anyway). Even before the recent raisings to 1.9 and eventually 2.1 iirc, a group of clubs were not able to pay the full cap and surprise surprise they are also the one's with the weakest off field aspects too.

I think Salford are an example of one that may look good due to a shiny ground, but they haven't necessarily got the benefits of a strong infrastructure to go with that. Warrington have invested in the full thing, but their youth system and historic town RL presence still puts them behind some other clubs. 

Yes, there is clearly a discussion to be had about the level of cap, but many of the criticisms can still be made whatever the level. Even if it was set at £10m that stops Simon Morgan spending £15m to become champions. We'd probably still lose in the GF anyway. 

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2 minutes ago, Scotchy1 said:

But this would stop an ambitious smaller club investing in growing by competing at the top end. 

Would it? 

What we're looking for, surely, is sustainable growth throughout the league? If a club can grow by increasing its audience, its revenue streams, its appeal to commerical partners, its matchday revenue, etc, then surely that is the ideal situation for everyone? 

What we have at the moment is effectively a baseline "cost for competing" in Super League, which is reducing in real-terms year after year. This might benefit certain individuals, but comes at significant cost to the players and, arguably, the wider value of the sport. That might suit some clubs as they can determine how much it costs to "keep the lights on" and be satisfied with that, but having that low baseline cost arguably reduces investment, discourages innovation and limits ambition.

If it were me in charge, I would allow an FFP system to consider "directors loans" as part of the calculation, but with some sort of mechanism to limit their impact. What we don't want is another David Argyle-type situation (which are probably more common than people want to admit). The aim of any salary cap system should be to encourage sustainable growth, not a race to the bottom. 

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16 minutes ago, MEXICO WILL PAY said:

What does that even mean? 

Positive feedback loops are essentially "success drives success". You win, you get more prize money, better people want to join you, bigger businesses want to be associated with you, you win, you get more prize money, better people want to join you and on and on etc. Negative feedback loops are the same but in reverse, "stuck in a rut" is a common way it is phrased. Its a popular way of looking at business, psychology and relevant to here, sport. There's a lot of excellent videos on Youtube about the subject across a range of fields if you're interested.

Sports are in a unique position of being able to institute competition wide "breakers" of these feedback loops. The NFL has the draft system where lower ranked teams get first picks. Formula 1 is instituting a form of spending cap, equalising funding rewards and giving teams more time using wind tunnel development if they finish lower in the constructors championship. The aim is to pick up the lower performers whilst not handicapping the leaders too much.

HTH

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3 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I'm not so sure, my example may be extreme but I dont think it is so extreme that it should be ignored. We saw TWP spend around £4.5m this year (based on media reports - and not taking this down a TWP thread :kolobok_biggrin:), and that was under current restrictions. They would have spent more if they could - they actively campaigned to spend more.

I don't think it would be long before we saw £1m players coming from the NRL, maybe Union, and all it takes is 3 or 4 rich backers who are happy to write off £4m or £5m a year (plenty of sports people spend more than this annually) and we could see the likes of Wigan, Leeds, Saints and Wire spend up to £10m as they bid to become top dog. The bigger question about my scenario is probably around whether the lower clubs would stay disciplined at that £2m mark or "speculate to accumulate" and increase that spend and go bust. 

I think we have had 20 years of sustainability which maybe leads us to believe we are more sensible than we really are, I think it would become quite silly within 5 years. Some of the RU numbers are crazy, with very substantial losses annually. 

Probably the sensible position is finding a level that allows ambition, but caps crazy spend, but that is ultimately still a cap and open to the same criticisms that we see here. 

£10m would be twice to the NRL salary cap for their top 30 players. 

The highest paid NRL players are only getting paid around £750k a season. 

There would be no need to spend anywhere near £10m. 

The NRL is still at the stage where $1m is massive for a player, there would be no need to go to £1m.

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5 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I think Salford are an example of one that may look good due to a shiny ground, but they haven't necessarily got the benefits of a strong infrastructure to go with that. Warrington have invested in the full thing, but their youth system and historic town RL presence still puts them behind some other clubs. 

Yes, there is clearly a discussion to be had about the level of cap, but many of the criticisms can still be made whatever the level. Even if it was set at £10m that stops Simon Morgan spending £15m to become champions. We'd probably still lose in the GF anyway. 

Tbf Dave that's why I put them last.

To me the principal of the cap should be that it should always be interrogated. Is it doing what we want it to do at the present arrangements?

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33 minutes ago, Scotchy1 said:

They can't do that because, chances are, in that 'development phase' they will be at a pretty high risk of relegation. 

And the big clubs will just pick off the best of those young players. 

The question of competitiveness goes much wider than wages, to the structure of the game, to how we develop players, it touches an pretty much all aspects and the game has chosen in pretty much all aspects to not answer those questions. 

The only reason an SC could ever be agreed is because the players are the ones generally hit with the consequences. 

I don't think that is too far off either.

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1 minute ago, Scotchy1 said:

£10m would be twice to the NRL salary cap for their top 30 players. 

The highest paid NRL players are only getting paid around £750k a season. 

There would be no need to spend anywhere near £10m. 

The NRL is still at the stage where $1m is massive for a player, there would be no need to go to £1m.

To sign the best NRL players to SL there is a good chance you would need to push to the £1m. Certainly the case for RU. 

I mean, we have the SBW example to see what crazy stuff is likely to happen. 

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4 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

Would it? 

What we're looking for, surely, is sustainable growth throughout the league? If a club can grow by increasing its audience, its revenue streams, its appeal to commerical partners, its matchday revenue, etc, then surely that is the ideal situation for everyone? 

What we have at the moment is effectively a baseline "cost for competing" in Super League, which is reducing in real-terms year after year. This might benefit certain individuals, but comes at significant cost to the players and, arguably, the wider value of the sport. That might suit some clubs as they can determine how much it costs to "keep the lights on" and be satisfied with that, but having that low baseline cost arguably reduces investment, discourages innovation and limits ambition.

If it were me in charge, I would allow an FFP system to consider "directors loans" as part of the calculation, but with some sort of mechanism to limit their impact. What we don't want is another David Argyle-type situation (which are probably more common than people want to admit). The aim of any salary cap system should be to encourage sustainable growth, not a race to the bottom. 

Yes. It would.

Firstly we arent taking a 'league first' approach of building the value of the league and as such its constituent clubs. So no structure for the league is going to see sustainable growth throughout the league. Not least because those constituent clubs can drop out and be replaced. 

An FFP style system would see a club like Salford, asked to compete with a club like Leeds whilst only being able to spend a fraction of what Leeds spent on wages. It would be very very very hard to grow your audience, revenue stream, commercial partners etc and match day revenue whilst losing by 40pts every week. 

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6 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I'm not so sure, my example may be extreme but I dont think it is so extreme that it should be ignored. We saw TWP spend around £4.5m this year (based on media reports - and not taking this down a TWP thread :kolobok_biggrin:), and that was under current restrictions. They would have spent more if they could - they actively campaigned to spend more.

I don't think it would be long before we saw £1m players coming from the NRL, maybe Union, and all it takes is 3 or 4 rich backers who are happy to write off £4m or £5m a year (plenty of sports people spend more than this annually) and we could see the likes of Wigan, Leeds, Saints and Wire spend up to £10m as they bid to become top dog. The bigger question about my scenario is probably around whether the lower clubs would stay disciplined at that £2m mark or "speculate to accumulate" and increase that spend and go bust. 

I think we have had 20 years of sustainability which maybe leads us to believe we are more sensible than we really are, I think it would become quite silly within 5 years. Some of the RU numbers are crazy, with very substantial losses annually. 

Probably the sensible position is finding a level that allows ambition, but caps crazy spend, but that is ultimately still a cap and open to the same criticisms that we see here. 

I understand the concern regarding extreme figures, I don't think anyone really wants to see that.

I think even some crude measure like having a cap linked to the double the central funding prevents crazy extremes.

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Just now, Damien said:

I understand the concern regarding extreme figures, I don't think anyone really wants to see that.

I think even some crude measure like having a cap linked to the double the central funding prevents crazy extremes.

As I say, I am all for a cap that is higher to allow for ambition, but the claims that it limits some clubs will still be there irrespective of the level. 

I think a cap linked to total league revenues or similar may be a decent starting point. 

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1 minute ago, Dave T said:

To sign the best NRL players to SL there is a good chance you would need to push to the £1m. Certainly the case for RU. 

I mean, we have the SBW example to see what crazy stuff is likely to happen. 

The size of the SBW deal was one of its selling points, and i wouldnt be surprised to see it somewhat over-egged. 

I think the issue that would stop such inflation is that you could put out a competitive squad, one that would win trophies. Without ever needing to get close to those numbers.

There arent many players getting $1m and the difference between a very good NRL player and a top level one isnt massive. So yeah it might cost you £700k to get an Addo-Carr, maybe a bit more for a Cherry-Evans.

But is the team who pays £700k for Addo-Carr going to smash the one who spends £400k on Maiko Sivo off the park?

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9 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Positive feedback loops are essentially "success drives success". You win, you get more prize money, better people want to join you, bigger businesses want to be associated with you, you win, you get more prize money, better people want to join you and on and on etc. Negative feedback loops are the same but in reverse, "stuck in a rut" is a common way it is phrased. Its a popular way of looking at business, psychology and relevant to here, sport. There's a lot of excellent videos on Youtube about the subject across a range of fields if you're interested.

Sports are in a unique position of being able to institute competition wide "breakers" of these feedback loops. The NFL has the draft system where lower ranked teams get first picks. Formula 1 is instituting a form of spending cap, equalising funding rewards and giving teams more time using wind tunnel development if they finish lower in the constructors championship. The aim is to pick up the lower performers whilst not handicapping the leaders too much.

HTH

And how does getting rid of the salary cap break feedback loops? The big clu s have more money so they'd be able to spend more on players than the smaller clubs, which puts the smaller clubs in a situation where their money doesn't just buy less than Wigan's money but they can also spend less than Wigan and the other big clubs.

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49 minutes ago, Smudger06 said:

I'm not a massive fan of the cap but outside of Football, the best leagues in the world have caps. If the NRL......NFL, MLS, NHL, MLB all have caps then that really tells us all we need to know. 

All these leagues state the purpose of the cap quite clearly, first and foremost its a tool to assist in maintaining competitive balance and uncertainty of outcome and secondarily its to ensure financial stability and financial sustainability.   

there is something else that all those leagues have in common too... no P&R... Salary Caps and P&R are tough to put together.

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4 minutes ago, Scotchy1 said:

Yes. It would.

Firstly we arent taking a 'league first' approach of building the value of the league and as such its constituent clubs. So no structure for the league is going to see sustainable growth throughout the league. Not least because those constituent clubs can drop out and be replaced. 

An FFP style system would see a club like Salford, asked to compete with a club like Leeds whilst only being able to spend a fraction of what Leeds spent on wages. It would be very very very hard to grow your audience, revenue stream, commercial partners etc and match day revenue whilst losing by 40pts every week. 

I think the first part is a seperate issue. For what it's worth, I don't think P&R does the game any favours either, but I'm not shaking that particular hornets nest today 🙂 .

To me this becomes a question of leadership. The sport can't keep making decisions based on the answer to the question "can Salford afford it"? Doing so comes at a much bigger cost. 

Why would a, for example, Michael Carter consider investing in growth areas when he knows that a figure of approx £1.3m is roughly what it costs to keep his club suckling on the Sky Sports Super League teet for another year? That's the cost of competing, it's the cost of delivering what he sees as success, so what is the return in investing in more? Why invest in youth development when he knows that spending £1.3m on a team of journeymen who can only get one-year contracts elsewhere, along with players fringe players at the big-four will be enough to get what he wants - especially when (as we've discussed on here), any in-demand young player is going to choose training on a state-of-the-art all-weather pitch at Kirkstall over whatever facilities Wakefield are renting from Fev? 

As others have said, I think that the idea of the "big five" suddenly increasing their pay-roll by factors of 10 is a little bit extreme - these clubs might have larger turnovers, but they still run on fairly tight margins as it stands today. 

Would Salford end up getting spanked by 40+ every week? Probably not. Would they get spanked 40+ by some of the bigger clubs? Possibly, but that happens today. It doesn't - or shouldn't - prevent them from developing the business in the right way. 

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Just now, MEXICO WILL PAY said:

And how does getting rid of the salary cap break feedback loops? The big clu s have more money so they'd be able to spend more on players than the smaller clubs, which puts the smaller clubs in a situation where their money doesn't just buy less than Wigan's money but they can also spend less than Wigan and the other big clubs.

I haven't actually suggested that as a solution because as you point out quite obviously it wouldn't work. In RL I'd suggest giving teams who finished lower extra cap dispensation for example

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2 minutes ago, RP London said:

there is something else that all those leagues have in common too... no P&R... Salary Caps and P&R are tough to put together.

And the North American leagues also have draft systems, revenue sharing etc. Parity is achieved in various ways, it is certainly not just by a very crude salary cap implementation like in Super League.

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