This is exactly what the owners will argue and have tried to argue in the media. Owners will say SUM is separate and its revenue is separate. Players will say like you that at a minimum, the MLS portion should be in play. Owners will refuse to give it to them. It's funny that you have people lining up and putting up hundreds of millions of dollars to join a league where they have very restrictive salary caps and roster rules and only half the teams are cash flow positive.
In TV deals alone in 2013: http://www.soccerbyives.net/2014/02/continuing-espnfox-soccer.html In 2013, SBD estimated that MLS currently earns around $18 million from their deals with ESPN and NBC, with another $20 million coming from deals with MP & Silva and Univision. TSN’s contract figures with MLS have remained undisclosed. So 2013 - $38 million + TSN deals 2014 - approaching $70 million In essence, the 2014 TV deal should pay the entire base salary cap for every team. That is before you get into stadium revenue streams, concessions, parking, ticket sales, etc.
Players will strike because the union lawyers want to try and bust the single-entity design and run up legal fees. Every sports labor agreement to them is about lawyers winning, like the Northwestern case which if successful (aided by the Democratic NLRB and Obama judges along the way) will end college sports at many schools
Let's not muddle this thread down with politics and Union discussions. But if you want to talk the NCAA: To get back on topic, the league has gone from a position of financial struggles when the last CBA was negotiated to a position of financial strength with a prime TV deal, expansion fees, stadium deals, etc. This has nothing to do with Democrats, the NLRB, Obama judges, or lawyers. It has to do with one thing. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. It's a fight between the rich (the owners) and a collection of players that include the near poverty level (Min salary guys), middle class (most regular starters), and the sometimes rich (highly paid players). How much of the soccer financial pie does Party A get v. Party B. That is all these things are ever about. Single entity has little to do with anything other than free agency and trying to get the individual player as much money as possible when their contracts with the league would expire. Easiest way for them to do that is to have 20 individual teams bidding for its services instead of 1 league on behalf of its teams. It's all about how they split up the cash that comes out of your pocket, my pocket, and everyone else's pocket. I could care less truthfully about their fight to split up my money.
This is what posts look like when you go a whole day without coffee. Damn, I forgot to quote my line from above. I need to get some Red Bull, damn, I mean Monster.
The Northwestern thing slays me. No one put a gun to your head to play whatever sport for the scholarship. You could go to class and play football which can be fun or go to class and work 40 hours a week at Chili's on top of your classes-which would you prefer? But for a smart school-these guys didn't think this through-everything that comes with be a scholarship athlete will be taxed. So instead of graduating as a mortal with 100K in student loans, they will graduate as a DI football player with a Federal Tax lien and wage garnishment. It's like that TV show Extreme Makeover-Home Edition. Let's build a really cool and expensive house for the poor family. We'll give to them for free. But we sure as hell aren't paying their property taxes on it-that's a you problem, not a me problem.
Those are some seriously papered houses for Outlaws games. But since the MLL pays peanuts and since Bowlen gets the stadium revenues at the new Mile High Stadium and uses the Broncos' sales staff and business relationships to sell the Outlaws, it's all good.
Only if you're a player that thinks that he'd do really well in such a scenario. The average player making $80,000 a year ain't about to lose a few paychecks to try to increase the salary cap so that the extra money can go into the pockets of the Thierry Henrys and Clint Dempseys of the league. And middle-class players are the bulk of the league. As long as the MLS ownership keeps ratcheting up the salary cap every year by a few percent, the CBA negotiations will be about more mundane stuff that the players care about, but the fans don't.
You have zero appreciation for how much labor and more specifically sports labor and anti-trust lawyers hate single-entity and see a gold mine of a lawsuit if they break it. Sure, it's about money but I think there is an issue in play not present in the other major leagues except maybe the uncapped baseball system. I guarantee you that the pricey law firms that MLS uses have a list of things they told the league never to give in on.
The irs should tax them on the value but I bet they rig something to exempt them. Most D1 football and basketball players aren't there for the education, even at the academic schools. The effect in the non-revenue sports will be far worse. They already lose money and now you could theoretically have to pay them and cover workers comp, medical, etc.?? Goodbye Olympic sports
I actually think MLL would work in Dallas if Jerry was involved. Think of all the folks from the Metroplex that would like to check out Jerry World but can't afford Cowboys tickets. Dallas is a pretty serious lacrosse city from an actual player point of view. If you followed the Denver model-it could work. I rode in an elevator by at Texas Stadium a few years back with Mr. Jones on the way to his office. He explained that his grandson played lacrosse and was thoroughly intrigued by it.
you see that is bull kaka-I remember Mike Mayweather from Army wanted to give the NFL a try after 3 years on active duty but the Army back then wanted the 5 years before you could put in your separation papers, otherwise you had to pay back the cost of the four year academy education-valued at 125K per year. If I used my company phone or my current employer's phone for personal use and didn't claim it, I would be slammed tax wise or worse. So if they get a break-that's crap. You can't have your cake and eat it too. here's food for thought-what if the NBA and NFL started their own actual farm system (and don't give me the NBADL) of teams in small markets-like double and triple A baseball. Don't even give the allusion of a "student athlete". Actual student athletes would all be non scholarship, for love of the game/school players. Would people still care about FBS football then? I bring that up because it came up on sports talk radio. Interesting question and could solve a lot of problems with the current system.
there should have been an asterisk next to my post-The Outlaws have averaged more than the Rapids certain years but their 4th of July game annually pulls over 30K and last year was around 40K so that skews the average. But they still do have a respectable draw at the gates otherwise, but they only sell the lower bowls on the sidelines for the rest of the games (which if I remember correctly is about 15K). I went to DSP a few years ago and sat behind the goal in the front row and they had a pretty good crowd for a match vs. CLB. I told the guy next to me (STH) I was impressed at crowd for being in the middle of June. They guy laughed and said, the Outlaws on the road or else there would be 5K less. Not sure if he was being serious or smart ass, but it was interesting that he brought that up.
I dunno. Somehow, lacrosse is A Thing in Denver that it isn't anywhere in Texas. It's an NCAA sport at the University of Denver (who is apparently pretty good at it, although I wouldn't know for sure), there is an indoor team (the Mammoth, owned by Kroenke and which plays at the Pepsi Center) and an outdoor team (the Outlaws), and lots of high schools around here have teams. I honestly don't know how this came to be, but it really is a much bigger thing in the Denver area than it is in north Texas, so I'm not sure that it would work at Jerryworld just because it kinda-sorta works at the New Mile High and Pepsi Center. On the other hand, there isn't nearly as much baseball at the youth, high school, and college level here in Colorado as there is in Texas. (For example, the University of Colorado hasn't had a baseball team since the mid '80s. They claim it was because of Title IX, but the college baseball season starts up in March, which is the snowiest month in Colorado.)
DP's have uncapped salaries. How would an increase in the salary cap put any extra money in the pockets of a DP? They have a set salary that hits the cap, but a team can pay a DP whatever they want. On the other hand, an increase in the salary cap allows the teams to pay their $80K players more.
See, this is where you and I disagree. I have a full appreciation of why the unions would want to break single entity. I was a fan of the league back in the Robin Fraser lawsuit days and I read the entire decision as a lawyer who practices labor and employment law (some of the time). I've talked with union representatives for the team during the last strike and am well aware how the last CBA negotiations went down and how that will impact these negotiations. I just think that the conclusion that there is a goldmine if they break single-entity is non-sense. During the Robin Fraser days, the MLS players allowed other leagues unions to influence their decision making. They lost a decent chunk of money as a result. I don't see that happening again. They will work within the single entity system until such time as the bargaining power changes to such a degree that they have significant more control. They aren't there yet, so I don't think we will see a challenge to single entity in this go around.
Two things: 1. Not every highly paid player is a DP. 2. Teams, given more money to spend, almost never spend it on the largely anonymous middle-class players.
Think about all the braniacs that after getting paid to play as a student athlete...then have to do their own taxes. Or at least have someone who can read and count do them for them. "What's a 1099EZ coach?"---Tyrone I've heard that same line since the Big 8 days. In Houston, when it comes to weather and baseball, the sport has been played indoors since the 60's. It appears that playing baseball indoors isn't on the radar up at Boulder CO.
You missed my point. My point was that a DP's salary is set in terms of how it hits the salary cap. If you increase or decrease the salary cap, it will have zero impact on a DP like Henry mentioned above. It will solely increase the salary for the remaining 20 or so non-DP players on the roster. That includes the Brad Davis' of the world and the Brian Ownby's of the world. Now the CBA negotiations may put the DP's full salary on the books for a cap hit or open another DP spot per team or do something else, but if you increased the salary cap and left all other rules in place - the 20 or so non-DP's are the only ones impacted, not the DP's.
The numbers for the new TV deals are tricky. Those are the SUM numbers. What MLS' cut of the new TV deal is (rumored to be ~$1B total over 8 years) is questionable. Assuming you take @triplet1 back-of-the-napkin work on current MLS team finances, assume MLS get's half that money, $500M/8 = 62.5M a year. Divide that by 21 teams next year and 23 by 2017 and 24 by 2018(?).....it's not that much money. Just can't see a huge bump to the cap coming this cycle. The next CBA will probably be much more interesting as many of these stadiums will have a lot of debt taken care of and MLS' overall expenses should be down a lot by then (assuming DC is taken care of....one way or another). So after the Qatar WC, we will probably see a very, very different cap situation.
You're assuming all that money goes towards the cap. All it really does is probably stop the cash-calls to fund MLS.