Removal of salary cap

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

I am not a basketball fan but have stumbled on this and it relates to us 

https://www.hoopsfix.com/2022/07/bbl-removes-salary-cap-ahead-of-2022-23-season/

For what it's worth I wish we'd scrap it 

[gingerjon]

Needs a trigger warning:

BBL Chairman, Sir Rodney Walker, commented:

[RigbyLuger]

What's the benefit to scrapping the cap? Other than overpaying some players and feeding greedy agents.

[gingerjon]

1 minute ago, RigbyLuger said:

What's the benefit to scrapping the cap? Other than overpaying some players and feeding greedy agents.

In basketball? It means a couple of BBL franchises will likely be more competitive in European competitions.

In rugby league? Well, it's not that so ...

[dkw]

13 minutes ago, RigbyLuger said:

What's the benefit to scrapping the cap? Other than overpaying some players and feeding greedy agents.

Literally nothing would change for the better, the same clubs would still be signing the best players, only for more money and agents fees. Those same clubs would also still be the same ones winning trophies.  

[Damien]

17 minutes ago, RigbyLuger said:

What's the benefit to scrapping the cap? Other than overpaying some players and feeding greedy agents.

So the big clubs can stay and the top while spending less. The salary cap ensures they cannot be usurped.

[The storm]

25 minutes ago, RigbyLuger said:

What's the benefit to scrapping the cap? Other than overpaying some players and feeding greedy agents.

Yes

 

We are all average with the salary cap

[Eddie]

15 minutes ago, dkw said:

Literally nothing would change for the better, the same clubs would still be signing the best players, only for more money and agents fees. Those same clubs would also still be the same ones winning trophies.  

Tho Regan Grace might not be going off to play Yawnion in France. 

[dkw]

2 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Tho Regan Grace might not be going off to play Yawnion in France. 

Losing some players is not an argument to allow 2 or 3 to be way ahead of all the others, and see other teams implode trying to keep up.

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

2 minutes ago, Eddie said:

Tho Regan Grace might not be going off to play Yawnion in France. 

Yes my view too 

Also would investors / rich buyers take more of an interest in pushing a smaller club like Wakey onwards? 

Keeping talent here and getting better quality imports ?

 

 

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

1 minute ago, dkw said:

Losing some players is not an argument to allow 2 or 3 to be way ahead of all the others, and see other teams implode trying to keep up.

They are already are chap. Oft repeated that only 3 of the current SL clubs have ever won it over 27 years....it literally couldn't make it worse

Edited July 8, 2022 by Bedfordshire Bronco

[Eddie]

6 minutes ago, dkw said:

Losing some players is not an argument to allow 2 or 3 to be way ahead of all the others, and see other teams implode trying to keep up.

They already are way ahead. There’ll also be plenty of lads who don’t see RL as a viable career opportunity at the moment, as they can earn more in normal jobs. 

[Eddie]

7 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Yes my view too 

Also would investors / rich buyers take more of an interest in pushing a smaller club like Wakey onwards? 

Keeping talent here and getting better quality imports ?

 

 

Yep would make the game far more attractive to investors. The current situation must be off putting to anyone who’d want to build a successful side, at a club who aren’t even allowed an academy. 

[dkw]

10 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

They are already are chap. Oft repeated that only 3 of the current SL clubs have ever won it over 27 years....it literally couldn't make it worse

It also would have no effect whatsoever. Do you honestly think scrapping it will suddenly see some kind of shift where Wakefield get wo win championships? The only reason clubs like Huddersfield, Cas etc got to finals, or won league leaders shields is because of the distribution of quality.

[RigbyLuger]

14 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Also would investors / rich buyers take more of an interest in pushing a smaller club like Wakey onwards? 

 

Where are these investors? And real ones, not pretend ones like Koukash.

[Davo5]

No we shouldn’t scrap the salary cap,but it should be increased and a condition of Superleague membership is to spend up to the full cap.

[Jughead]

Not sure I would get rid of it entirely but I’d look at other ways of capping teams’ spending, maybe something revenue based. 

I’m sure we’d see an increase in spending from some clubs if the cap was removed, but, most likely, more at the top end of their playing squad rather than across a whole roster. I’m of the opinion that there needs to be something so clubs remain somewhat responsible but I’m not sure what that is.

Are people actually put off investing into a club based upon what they can or can’t spend? I don’t believe being capped at spending x amount is the sole reason that puts anyone off investing into a Hunslet or a Hull FC. I don’t believe that we’d suddenly see an existing club emerge through the divisions to take a Super League and new teams winning the competition year after year. 

We have a period right now where ten of the eleven possible current elite clubs have played in a Challenge Cup Final in the past nine finals and where we have had six different winners in as many years in tight games and have seen Cas, Huddersfield, Salford, Catalans and Warrington (as well as Saints, Wigan and Leeds) either appear in a Grand Final or top the regular season table. 

[Dallas Mead]

Yes please.  ASAP.

[Dallas Mead]

56 minutes ago, RigbyLuger said:

What's the benefit to scrapping the cap? Other than overpaying some players and feeding greedy agents.

(1) Keeping the good players we already have in the sport in this country.

(2) Attracting people from other sports.

(3) Attracting more youngsters to the sport during the teenage years when they see that they can earn a great living from the sport.

 

Apart from that?  Nowt.

[AB90]

5 minutes ago, Davo5 said:

No we shouldn’t scrap the salary cap,but it should be increased and a condition of Superleague membership is to spend up to the full cap.

All teams spending the full is the real game changer. A salary cap only really works when all teams are spending the same amount on players.

In theory, the minimum spend should be the entire cap (or a minimum of at least 95%).

[whatmichaelsays]

31 minutes ago, dkw said:

Losing some players is not an argument to allow 2 or 3 to be way ahead of all the others, and see other teams implode trying to keep up.

The other way to look at it is that "allowing two or three less commercially successful clubs an illusion of keeping up with the rest is not an argument to damage the value of the competition". 

If we're going to have a cap, at least have something more akin to an FFP system. 

[whatmichaelsays]

21 minutes ago, dkw said:

f the distribution of quality.

That distribution being "from SL, to the NRL". 

[whatmichaelsays]

16 minutes ago, Jughead said:

Are people actually put off investing into a club based upon what they can or can’t spend? I don’t believe being capped at spending x amount is the sole reason that puts anyone off investing into a Hunslet or a Hull FC. I don’t believe that we’d suddenly see an existing club emerge through the divisions to take a Super League and new teams winning the competition year after year. 

I think the problem when it comes to "investors" is that we know that the bigger clubs get better value from the cap than the poorer ones. 

If you're Marwan Koukash, taking over a Salford club that was usually towards the bottom end of the table, you've got to offer more to a player to get him to choose you over, for example, a St Helens, Wigan or Leeds, who can offer the chance to play in front of big crowds, train in great facilities and have a realistic chance of honours. That's before you take into account the various exemptions that those clubs have for things like youth development. 

London had a similar problem but moreso due to the cost of housing in the capital. The London weighting in the salary cap regulations was only something like 10%, but you're going to have to pay a lot more than a 10% premium to encourage a player to move to Ealing, where the average weekly rent is about the same as the average monthly rent in most of West Yorkshire (outside Leeds). Again, that's poorer value from the cap due to nothing more than being outside the heartlands. 

Investing in a smaller club, you inherently get less from the cap than the bigger clubs, which makes it difficult to build a squad to overtake those bigger clubs - the cap effectively entrenches the status quo and makes it much more difficult to realise any sort of return (be that in terms of finance or sporting success) on your investment. 

[Jughead]

6 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

I think the problem when it comes to "investors" is that we know that the bigger clubs get better value from the cap than the poorer ones. 

If you're Marwan Koukash, taking over a Salford club that was usually towards the bottom end of the table, you've got to offer more to a player to get him to choose you over, for example, a St Helens, Wigan or Leeds, who can offer the chance to play in front of big crowds, train in great facilities and have a realistic chance of honours. That's before you take into account the various exemptions that those clubs have for things like youth development. 

London had a similar problem but moreso due to the cost of housing in the capital. The London weighting in the salary cap regulations was only something like 10%, but you're going to have to pay a lot more than a 10% premium to encourage a player to move to Ealing, where the average weekly rent is about the same as the average monthly rent in most of West Yorkshire (outside Leeds). Again, that's poorer value from the cap due to nothing more than being outside the heartlands. 

Investing in a smaller club, you inherently get less from the cap than the bigger clubs, which makes it difficult to build a squad to overtake those bigger clubs - the cap effectively entrenches the status quo and makes it much more difficult to realise any sort of return (be that in terms of finance or sporting success) on your investment. 

If you’re taking over Salford today, are you, realistically, competing with Wigan, Saints, Warrington and Leeds for players right away? Ultimately, your goal may be to win trophies but you’ve got to build towards that so you’ve got to look at the pond you’re in and becoming a big fish in that pond before heading into the pond with the even bigger fish. I don’t want to compare to football but you look at the recruitment at Newcastle right now and they’re not trying to sign Lukaku, Tchouameni, Haaland etc but are operating in a different market to initially bridge that gap. 

I think the above is probably where Koukash went wrong, he signed players from those big clubs on their way down rather than the better players of the clubs around or smaller than Salford at that time. 

[M j M]

Who are these Super League clubs who have buckets full of cash that they could throw at an increased salary cap? Maybe one or two of the owners of the Big Four could stomach slightly greater losses but that's it.

(And please don't say it will magically just attract "new investment").