If the Premier League adopts a $110 million hard cap (salaries + net transfer fee)

Somebody posted that Manchester City spent about $250,000,000 on salary in a season. What you didn't mention is that EPL clubs (and La Liga, Bundesliga, etc.) are competing with clubs in other leagues to get the best players in the world and have Champions League and Europa League success. Therefore a salary cap would never happen unless multiple leagues agreed to it together.

 

Well the Cap on transfers needs to be done, but it would only work if UEFA got all the top leagues on board. I think it would be smart especially after this year. I mean look at how much folks are paying for transfers, and MAN CITY salaries. Insane.

 

caps won't happen in europe ever. uefa has tried to get around this by introducing the financial fair play system, not that i think that will work either. fact is, clubs have allowed rich business me to bankroll the quest for success, there is no turning back now.

 

Would never happen. Why would we want it to? There's plenty of competition as it is, (Dortmund, Bayern, Schalke, Milan, Juventus, Napoli, PSG, Monaco, Real Madrid, Barca, Athletico, Man-U, Ajax, PSV, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man City) and there's plenty of talent to go around.

 

Even with a Salary cap it would still favor the big clubs. Players get so many sponsors and they will all be pushing, as they already do, for their players to play for the teams with the most fans and the biggest audience(CL football etc.)

 

Dont cap salaries, just transfer fee's.

Say 50 mil is the camp...you go over 50 mil you must pay a 30% luxury tax that isthen divided among all league teams...this way if you over spend you also hand out money to your rivals! Money can trickle down and help smaller clubs.

 

As has been pointed out not going to happen even if UEFA and the clubs agreed to it due to EU labor laws. My understanding is it would be ruled as an unfair restraint on trade.

Having said that I would love it if the premier league instituted it. I couldn't give a rat's A** about best league in the world and all of that. That's not why I follow the league. I follow it because of the Liverpool F.C. and I think most fans are the same, follow the league through a club. So I am looking to see what would help my club. Irealize that Liverpool are financially better off then about 99% of the clubs in England but we still don't have the muscle of Chelsea or City. And I really feel for the supporters of other clubs who have massive histories, traditions and have support worthy of title contenders. Yet don't have a shot because they either don't have the brand name or a sugar daddy. So I would gladly give up some of the big name players for a league where more clubs and supporters could genuinely dream of the title. And while I agree that it would hurt the English league in Europe it wouldn't kill them. The Bundesliga doesn't have nearly the financial muscle of the premier league and German teams seem to be doing decently in Europe. (and isn't hurting the attendance either).

 

Only reason why NA sports can get away with their hard caps is because of the special anti-trust legislation they operate under. I don't believe similar things exist in the EU.

Also remember the teams exist independently of their leagues. They are not franchises. They don't have to operate under FA rules for anything outside of the 38 league games and domestic cups they compete for. Much different from the franchises in NA sports that are under strict control of their league's head offices.

Don't forget the massive handicap that it would place on the EPL teams in the Champions and Europa leagues. Not too mention that equality doesn't help sell the league overseas. They love really only having to market the top clubs. The name recognition for casual teams is a bit easier. Most casual sports fans know of Man Utd., Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool. They would not be so familiar with say Cardiff or Preston North End. So it's best for the league to make sure those familiar teams are the best teams.

 

Bad idea. Wouldn't work unless all of FIFA jumps on board, the players don't rise up against it in protest (which they would), promotion and relegation is abolished and permanent teams are established within leagues, the transfer market gets abolished entirely for a trade-based system, and academies and youth squads are abolished for completely independent junior leagues drafts.

 

I think the disparity in club spending amongst European clubs is a digrace which is why I love to see teams like Man City fall on their faces.

 

I think the real irony (tragedy) is that under the European system of promotion and relegation, a salary cap would benefit the leagues A LOT more. The reason being that clubs that come up would actually have a fighting chance to challenge for a title if they can stay up for a few years.

As it is now 75, 80, or even 90% of clubs in European leagues are total window-dressing and cannon-fodder that will never, ever, ever challenge for a title unless a mega-wealthy owner buys them up and does the City/Chelsea treatment.

That really sucks.

 

I have to disagree with this portion of your statement.

Yes, the teams are separate but the EPL is where the money is. If everyone else is in that league, where the hell is your team going to go and make money and survive? Sure, on paper, the club is free to go do whatever they want but if the club wants to be anything relevant, they'd have to play by the rules.

 

Not sure why it would kill pro/rel? You could either have salary caps through the divisions, even if you didn't you would could enforce a salary cap for the premier league for newly promoted teams.

The cap won't happen for a bunch of reasons but not sure why it would impact pro/rel

 

Because relegated teams would be screwed. These days we see contracts structured to pay players less if a team gets relegated, but the pay decrease would have to be astronomical for it to work in a cap. The Championship cap would be extremely low relative to the EPL, because the EPL would have to keep a high enough cap to ensure top quality players want to play in England. So when a team gets relegated they'd have to have a complete fire sale and build an entire new squad to deal with the lower division cap. That would result in disaster and the teams would fall all the way down to League 1 or even League 2 before finally stabilizing.

I think it's just that those who think pro/rel would work with a cap are dangerously overestimating the cap size in the lower divisions.

 

These are issues relegated teams already have to deal with. Also you are making assumptions about a cap in the lower leagues. This is about lowering the salaries in the premier league which would decrease the disparity between the clubs including the newly promoted ones.

 

Yeah I acknowledge that lower league teams already deal with it, but where we disagree is on the issue of a lower league cap. There would have to be one in the lower leagues and it would have to be significantly smaller than in the EPL.

Without a cap in the Championship, teams like QPR and Leicester could spend more money on players that would usually play for mid table prem sides and as a result they would be better than half of the EPL. And then there's the matter of cup competitions. How would no lower league cap be fair to prem teams when they play each other?

 

Yeh two points. One that's already happening you have teams in the championship way overspending their revenue to chase the premier league (now Financial Fair Play is coming in so we'll see if that happens).

Also they could have a salary cap in the lower leagues. I am not sure it would need to be "significantly" lower, but it would be lower. But you could work around that many ways. One you could give newly relegated clubs a grace period. You already give them balloon payments so there is a built in advantage to the newly relegated sides already, and it hasn't resulted in more yo-yo than you would expect (been a few years since a team came straight back up as a matter of. Or you could just make teams deal with it. Teams would be forced to put in clauses that allowed for drops in wages or canceling of the contracts upon relegation.

Again not going to happen but I still don't see how a salary cap is related to pro/rel

 

If it was even possible, any realistic salary cap for the premier league would still be miles ahead of what any championship team could afford. If you're talking about narrowing the gap then a cap for the championship wouldn't be so much smaller anyway. Relegation is already a financial disaster, wage caps would make it less so.

You're also talking as if all teams could automatically afford to spend up to the cap. They would spend what they can afford, same as now.

In this day and age they could simply split the tv and prize money evenly. Top clubs can probably manage their payroll on marketing and UEFA money alone, so no unfair consequences but it would at least stop encouraging the problem.

It's all the opposite of what the suits want to achieve though. The Asian market doesnt have the hunger to follow 20 different clubs, so make it easy for them. Everton getting Champions League football might be a huge dent in their profits. Like Scudamore finally admitted recently, it's in his interest to see Man United succeed domestically, anything else is bad news.

 

Agree with this 100%. But I don't see it happening. The big clubs will argue they are the reason for the big TV contracts and as a result should continues to get a bigger share. But we can still dream.

And actually for the prize money maybe have two tiers of prize money. Top 10, bottom 10. Everyone gets the same depending on the Tier rather than the position you finish. So you create a another mini competition within the league to try and get into the top 10. Which is a goal that pretty much any club can aim for at the start of the season. So still has competition for mid-table sides while bringing more fairness in the way the money is dispersed.

 

Neither do I whatsoever, just something I believe would be beneficial.

The natural counter argument would be that the clubs mean nothing without the competition and that this is in the interests of the competition. Still, as you say, all pie in the sky because it doesn't benefit the main actors in the short term - a lot of the publicity of the big teams now is in Champions League success, so the league would see that the big clubs need as much funding as possible, which is basically the treatment Barca and Real have had for some time.

 

In the Premier League's defense they are much better about distributing the wealth evenly then other leagues. And with the TV money now such a huge part of all of the teams revenue it might actually make things a little more competitive. Particularly if the situation we have now with 7 teams legimately going for 4 spots in Europe. In that case European money won't be as reliable and you won't have quite the divide between the teams in champs league and out. We shall see.