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Third Party Agreements: Should they be limited or scrapped altogether?

16th January, 2019
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Roar Guru
16th January, 2019
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1278 Reads

I want to discuss this rather interesting topic, a topic which seems to make a fair majority of sporting fans ticked off.

Third Party Agreements are used with the salary cap to ensure high-profile players can play for the club. TPAs allow the club to offer a large amount of money, with some coming from third parties which is not counted under the cap.

The idea is used to beat the system. It’s essentially breaching the salary cap without breaching the salary cap. Much of the penalties handed down for the Storm’s salary cap breaches were later made legal under TPAs.

Think like this, let’s say I was a high profile five-eighth with five years and 47 tries under my belt with a State of Origin, Four Nations and premiership to go with it. A different club wanted to sign me for four years on 750k a year.

Now in the regular salary cap, they only have 500k left but really want me so with the third party businesses they are with – the ones who do their advertising – they get the remaining 250k directly from them.

The money is not guaranteed by the club – it falls upon the third party to pay it.

Now we all know about the infamous Sydney Roosters’ reference about the salary sombrero. Thing is, I believe TPAs are used to manipulate the system. Obviously some clubs have far greater access to wealthy third parties than other clubs.

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To make thins fairer, we could either limit them or scrap them.

Option 1. Limit
The salary cap is roughly $9.4 million and some teams have multiple players on million-dollar contracts to the point you ask “How the hell are they under the cap?”

With said $9.4 million, we should allow them a limit of $1.6 to total $11 million. We also must require them to make mention of who is being used in TPAs and how much.

Should it be over the allowed amount, that’s breaching the cap.

Option 2. Scrap
I personally prefer this one. Why? The salary cap was designed to ensure all clubs have the same chance for having star rep football players come and stay in the team, as opposed to all the rich teams getting the stars and the not so rich teams struggling.

The TPA cash can be used for better reasons within the club.

So Roarers what do you think?

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