The NRL salary cap is again in the news this week with the entire board of the Parramatta Eels being sacked in an unprecedented move by the state government.
The position we find ourselves in with this saga could have been easily prevented. Don’t have the restrictive salary cap in the first place.
The salary cap in itself lives in a bubble tolerated only in professional sport. Nowhere in any other professional business situation would anyone reading this article accept a cap on their earnings to ensure another company could also perform well, or another employee be paid the same.
A noble and Utopian pursuit of so-called fairness is well-meaning, no doubt, but it doesn’t wash when put to the test of these praising wage restrictions on players. Heads of sports organisations regularly tout the benefits to the fans and the league and point to the lack of dominance of a wealthy set of teams to be of great importance to the survival of sports leagues.
One thing always springs to mind when I hear these arguments. How many of these executives would embrace a cap on their earnings? How many of these people implementing a restriction of wages would accept having to uproot their life to move to another city because a wage restriction didn’t allow them to stay? How many would accept a short career, sometimes only ten years long depending on how brutal the sport is, in which to set themselves up for the rest of their lives happily accept a earnings cap?
The only ones that appear to win from this is a marketing team from the league in which the salary cap is used and the team owners who are able to pay less to top talent while not dropping the prices of seats or merchandise.
Often heard arguments regarding wages follow along the same predictable narrative of “these players are spoilt millionaires,” and “they should be paid less,” or “they should get a real job.”
This speaks often to the naivete and ignorance of those making the statements. Why sneer at these men and women who have performed at the top level? The dedication, the blood, sweat and tears, put in is not something most people are willing to do. So I would argue they should be justifiably rewarded as such.
Athletes alone are responsible for massive TV deals, sponsorship, fan attendance, and back page articles. None of this would exist if the players who have provided many billions of dollars by proxy to governments, television companies and equipment manufacturers. If anyone in any business situation provides to such a large audience no one would deny them their just rewards.
So why are athletes treated with such disdain?
Like rent control or laws that put a ceiling on the price that consumers must pay, sports watchers say salary caps create an artificially low market price for professional athletes compared to the revenue product they provide. In other words, salaries could, in fact, be a lot higher, given the ways individual players contribute to their teams and the intangible benefits they bring to their respective geographic areas. This cannot be ignored.
Let’s look at American sports. In the past 30 years, 19 different teams have won baseball’s World Series. In comparison, only 14 different teams have won the NFL’s Super Bowl, 13 have won the NHL Stanley Cup and only eight have won the NBA championship in that same time frame. Major League Baseball is the only league that does not implement a cap.
As the recent move of NBA superstar Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors proves, an unfair advantage of sorts has still occurred despite the salary cap being in place in the NBA.
While I acknowledge that the implementation of a salary cap was designed to increase the competitiveness in sporting leagues, has it done so at the sake of a dynasty? Shouldn’t teams be rewarded for showing their respective league how to make a successful franchise?
The glory of a Leicester City win in this year’s Premier League or the brilliance of a ‘moneyball’ structure with the Oakland A’s to me would have a permanent asterisk against it had they implemented the salary cap instead of allowing the pure competitiveness and shrewd planing to get them to the top of the mountain.
At times life isn’t fair and winning through adversity is much more romantic, dramatic and worthwhile in this author’s eyes. The whole point of a cap has more to do with expansion. Should we look more into creating a competitive league rather than expansion into every part of the globe?
A promotion-relegation system coupled with a transfer market employed in European football is a much more enjoyable prospect, with the ability of a franchise to create players and build a solid financial structure to then become competitive team organically.
We must respect the players’ lives and careers and think of a better system in which to create competition, rather than be happy with a contrived game of pass the parcel.
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