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The leader of the opposition Tony Abbott has recently declared that should the Coalition win the next election he will introduce regulations to ban…
Earlier this week journeyman NBA player Jason Collins, who finished this season playing for the Washington Wizards, became the first active professional athlete in…
I think it would work in a similar way to the NBA. You set the cap at whatever amount makes sense, a percentage of revenue/profit or by whatever means they currently use to determine the cap amount. You then allow teams to exceed the cap but impose a tax. You create thresholds which when reached increase the tax rate, for example if you are within 25% of the original cap you get taxed 50 cents on every dollar you are in excess. From 25-50% excess you increase the tax to a dollar for dollar penalty. I’m pulling these numbers and percentages out of the air but you work out where the thresholds are and tax amount, and teams have to make serious calculations whether exceeding the cap to sign a player or keep a championship playing roster together makes sense financially in terms of their revenue.
The money generated from the tax can either be distributed evenly to every team that hasn’t exceed the tax, or the league can distribute with greater discretion, distributing a larger share of the funds to the financially struggling teams. This tax generated can also be funneled partly into grass roots and or player medical and welfare schemes.
Allowing teams to exceed the tax increases the risk some teams will be reckless with their spending, putting their teams under financial strain, but sound management is always a key to success and the tax should be punitive enough to discourage spending that doesn’t have an evident upside.
Allowing teams to exceed the cap will benefit teams in terms of player retention, it should allow player salaries to increase which will make the NRL more competitive vis a vis French rugby and other opportunities. Teams who exceed the cap and are successful in doing so will produce playing rosters that will be highly marketable which in theory will help in the growth of the NRL brand as it continues to fight the AFL for dominance.
Downside would be a reduction in competitiveness, in theory anyway. Teams like the Broncos have larger revenue streams which would allow them to field consistently better teams by exceeding the cap, but they would have to pay extra for it and the other clubs would be compensated in some way.
I also think for a soft cap to work you need more private ownership. You want very rich people who approach owning a sport team as a hobby to pour money into their playing rosters. It increases the prestige of the league by having star studded rosters, which increases its viewership and therefore its TV revenue which is the most important source of income. As long as that club is thoroughly taxed, everyone gets compensated and if the overall pie increase as well, then its win, win and win.
What the NRL can learn from the NBA
I think the difference between wanting to buy an NBA jersey over an NRL one is the advertising that comes with NRL jerseys. NBA jerseys look good, and NRL jerseys simply don’t with the amount of ads they squeeze into them. If they were like soccer jerseys or national jerseys like the wallabies or socceroos with one main sponsor its fine, but no one wants to walk the street as human billboard all day on a regular basis, maybe to the game but not as regular fashion choice. That said I understand why all the adds are there.
Variable ticket pricing makes sense but its kind of hard when you don’t sell out games regularly, NBA games are by and large very well attended and higher priced games are ones that are almost guaranteed to be sell outs anyway, increasing the prices wont turn people away.
Improving the game day experience would be great but tickets are cheap here to games. NBA tickets are expensive compared to NRL,might be hard to justify expense? not sure and there are undoubtedly cheap and creative ways to improve spectator experience.
I think the soft cap you brought up at the end of your article is an interesting idea that Australian sport in general should consider. Pros and cons to it, but its a fair discussion to have in my opinion
What the NRL can learn from the NBA
but he could have stuck around for another year, earned a million bucks and then played for a league or union team for the money he’s getting now the next year. He would still be $400K+ ahead.
He went to GWS for the money, and who can blame him for taking it and giving it a go. Leaving the AFL has nothing to do with the cash, the smart financial decision would have been to stay
Pulver must be firm in signing Folau
I think the big bash on free to air is huge coup. All and all I think this would be a big win
Channel Ten fires $500m bid for cricket rights
It’ll be LA. Dwight will go for the money plain and simple. Otherwise as stated above Houston is the logical choice with a good team, cap space and large market that I think is also something he is after. But money will talk and LA has the advantage that will lead them to ‘win’ this contest
Superman resides in Brooklyn (or Houston, for that matter)
I don’t blame Jason Collins either for making this announcement at the end of his career, but I do think all the attention he has received is due to the fact that he is first ACTIVE player from one of the major US sports. The fact that the active part is very much in doubt I think is worth noting, though maybe he will have more of chance of making a team since he has made his announcement. It would be an interesting twist if the NBA somehow doesn’t want to create the appearance of not having a spot on a team for Jason now that he has come out as gay. Sports fans would understand that he isn’t very good and won’t make a team for that reason, but I don’t think other people would see it that way, they may just see that after he came out, he lost a job.
As for there being 99 reasons for gay pro athletes not to come out, I think you’re right that there are still many reason not to, but at the same time there are a lot more reasons now to feel comfortable to do it. Being able to be yourself shouldn’t be discounted as strongest motivator, but I think given the very positive response to Jason’s announcement and the publicity, there may be marketing opportunities? I think advertisers would love to capitalise on that type of attention
NBA's Jason Collins comes out, but does anyone really care anymore?
Don’t want to sound like a hater but this is horrible idea. It’s gimmicky. Basketball as a product doesn’t need these types of weird inclusions to try and artificially make the game more exciting. Basketball is overall is an incredibly healthy sport in terms of professional leagues world wide and commercial success of those leagues. It is true it doesn’t do so well down here any more but resorting to 4 pointers and bonus points is absurd. We have too many sports down under, its competitive which makes it tough to survive. That doesn’t mean you bastardise the sport to try and turn up the excitement level. I think you lose basketball fans, the league loses its legitimacy. I think a league with Asia is potentially smart, maybe, but don’t change the rules of the game itself…
Why Australia needs Champions League Basketball