Will MLS have a $4.5 million salary cap in 5 years time?

current salary cap and its 5% increase will end in 2014

2010: $2.55 mil
2011: $2.677 mil
2012: $2.811 mil
2013: $2.95 mil
2014: $3.10 mil

If MLS increase the salary cap to 10% starting in 2015

2015: $3.41 mil
2016: $3.75 mil
2017: $4.13 mil
2018: $4.54 mil

I want to make a prediction on the exact time of this thread being shut down.

6 AM?

Come on, mods, don't let me down.

No.

Boom you lost.

BS should have an automatic thread merger system looking out for vevo5 opening new threads

Come on Hawaiian mods....

It's a reasonable question. However, most likely no. 5% increase is a good increase so jumping to 10 seems a lot.

No Australian based MLS mods?

What happened to @babytiger2001?

I thought he was a Quakes fan, but, haven't seen a post from him in a long while.

Was last seen on BS - at least under that handle - on May, 2011.

We will know soon enough. the current CBA ends after the 2014 season. After that all the current rules are obsolete.

Considering the progress made since 2009, I would imagine that they'll consider ramping things up.

The question is how much can the richer teams push before the poorer teams push back. The current US TV contact also ends after 2014, so that's a significant factor in how things will look.

In the end, I think the financial state of the poorer teams, combined with the potential 2014+ TV contract will determine how aggressive the next CBA will be.

And don't forget the players. They'll push as hard as they can for an increase.

HEY PC4TH .... WHY DON'T YOU POST THE SAME SHIT OVER AND OVER .... that'd be something new.

It's the latter more than the former. The financial state of the poorer teams will probably play the biggest role in terms of the cap and the DP structure.

The players will push against the increase and the flatter cap (if such is proposed) because, if that passes, a majority of them will be replaced. In other words, a flat $4M cap (with, let's say, one off-the-books DP) will find the majority of the current rosters in NASL.

Only if there is an increase in the number of internationals allowed. I doubt an increase of 1 million in the CAP would mean a flood of American players in Scandinavia coming to MLS (it sure won't bring the big 5 league players back).

Some fringe 2nd team players would drop to NASL; some starters would go to the bench at most.

Now a 10 Million dollar CAP, now we are talking, but I am not even sure there are that many quality American/Canadian players overseas to send over 50% of the current MLS players to NASL/USLPRO.

I mean in teams of 28 players, just to replace 50% you would need 266 new players.

YES....
After this 5% era, the MLS will set a minimum of 5 mil starting the 2015 season and a 10% increase per year after that....TV and cable will increase they participation in futbol "soccer" and therefore will be more revenues to do that and more....

if they only have 4.5 million as a minimum salary cap in 2018 the league will be an embarrassment.

In 5 years the salary cap may mean much less than it does today. And the cap means much less than it did 6 years ago. MLS already went from having no players 'off budget' (not including the grandfather contracts) to having 3 DPs per team and roster spots 21-30 off budget. We also have an unknown allocation system that changes each year and can be increased by player sales and performance.

In 5 years MLS could have a 4M salary budget, but could be allowing 5 or 6 DPs and could be paying roster spots 21-30 75k a year and have a allocation budget of a million a year. Teams could be getting 4M from the 'budget cap' maybe 1-2M from the reserve/allocation budget and they could be paying a half dozen DP guys off budget beyond that. In 5 years you could have clubs with total budget spending between 8-25M and still have our salary budget technically be 4-5M.

We already have mechanisms (DPs, allocations, off budget players) that make the salary budget less of an issue than it was in years past, and in the future I think there is a good chance that these mechanisms will just continue and expand to make the budget even less of an accurate gauge to show how much teams are actually spending on their rosters.

This is well said. I think what people need to do when discussing this topic is not look at the budget number but look at total expenditure for each team. If you want to take the DP salaries out of the equation (above budget hit) to normalize the data because they are outliers, so be it. But the fact is, teams spend BUDGET+ALLOCATION MONEY+ OFF BUDGET ROSTER SPOTS (including HG and GA) then sprinkled with DPs.

Given that it is also important to realize it is a salary budget not a cap. We use those terms synonymously but they are different in implementation. Every team spends above the budget. This would not be true if it were a cap. It is a budget, because MLS wants to control total expenditure. It does not mean they want to limit growth. This is why they have the ridiculous concept of allocation money. They go into each year and say "ok, we have a budget of 3 million per team." That way they have a fixed labor cost. However, they look and say "we project an extra 9.5 million over budget so lets give each team (on average) an additional 500k." What they have actually done, is maintain parity by way of the budget BUT have allowed for some portion of revenue to flow back to salary without being committed to it in any given year by the CBA.

This also means for those that want to look at salaries by way of revenue percentage, you MUST include Budget +allocation money + Off budget + DPs. That is the only way you get a fair comparison to other leagues without those concepts; by comparing total player cost to total player cost as a percentage of revenue. Personally, I find that comparison premature because I think it is difficult to compare a business/league that is forced to spend major R&D money (academy, stadium, etc) to a business/league that is established and does not have start-up costs for additional growth. However, if you wish to do that, at least do it correctly.

Isn't the current number of Youth International + Senior Internationals set at a tradeable "9"?

And, in any case, a fer'ner gets a green card and now he is deemed "local". It's like La Liga's Queen Isabella rule that allows teams to field half of the starters from Brazil and Argentina despite having a 3-player non-EU limit.

There's no need for these players in general.

Now, if MLS becomes more fluid in terms of buying and selling players, it will get more American and foreign players. If it will hold to the NFL'ish "play out your contract" doctrine, then a lot of players will skip the league but it won't necessarily be due to their compensation.

It would be more than "some" under a flat $4M roster. Most of the players 15 on down will be gone.

There are not but a $5M flat-cap squad can be considerably stronger than the current $3M + a DP team.

Good points. Slightly tangential but I wonder if these budgets/numbers will be made more transparent in the future?

currently most of our knowledge is heresay and rumor, plus the union numbers.

Single entity means MLS has no obligation to publicize anything, but i'd like to hope (for my curiosity) that they will be more lenient.

There are two "murky" areas, the allocation money per team - thought to be in the $150K range but also applicable to the DP write-off, which is more than anything what helps LA to keep three highly paid DP's and what forced Seattle to move Fredy Montero after its CCL allocation went that-a-way - and the SUM distribution.

But, even with them, it's quite possible to establish a generic picture of where the league is in terms of finances.

5 or 6 DPs? Many teams don't even have 1 DP right now. Each DP counts 12.5% toward the cap right now. 6 DPs x 12.5% = 75% of the cap. Which mean 6 players will count 75% toward the cap and the other 20 players will count 25%.

As for allocation money being $1-2 million a year per team, that's as likely as MLS scoring a $1 billion a year TV deal. For the average MLS team, how much allocation money do they have per year right now?

10% would be nice and pretty realistic. Its crazy that the cap hasnt even hit 3million yet considering Beckham's effect on the league

Instead of allocation money, clubs have used DP money to purchase young players. Houston, NE and Chivas - clubs with extra DP spots - each bought a player last year (Garcia, Bengston, Minda). With the new young DP rules MLS is actually encouraging the practice. So right now a club can go pay $500k for the transfer fee of a young promising player, pay him $100k. He'll be DP for that first year but with the new rules he only counts as $150k or $200k on the cap. Apparently, I read somewhere that MLS was paying part of the cost for Rafael but that may be referring to allocation money.

Allocation money is a mystery today and we have no idea where it will be in 5 years. So you can not claim in 1 sentence to not even know how much allocation teams have and then claim that there is no way they will have 1M allocation in the future. What we do know is the allocation system has been expanded to include CL teams along with player sales and other mechanisms. MLS could easily allow allow a percentage of shirt sponsorship money to go into the allocation system or a million other things. Allocation has expanded in the past and it is not unrealistic to suggest that it will expand in the future.

My point on spending is that MLS is not going to use DPs as they currently do. If you just follow the trend from 07' before Becks joined to now we've seen:
1. DPs go from 0 to 3
2. A removal of the 3rd DP fee to encourage teams to use it
4. DP cap hit go from 400k to 350-150k (depending on age) as the salary budget goes up meaning that the % of salary budget for DPs have gone down (19% in 2007 to 12% in 2012 and as low as 6% for young DPs)

So I think anyone would say that in 5 years we will have more DPs that will count less against a higher cap, the question will be how far will it go. I said in my previous post that if you look at salary rule changes over the past 5 years it is clear that MLS is moving to a 'on budget' and 'off budget' model. My prediction is that DPs as we know it will go away and will just be replaced with highly paid off budget players. The same way the Adidas contract allows young players off budget to be paid more, I think MLS will just allow clubs to pay highly paid players off budget on their off budget roster 21-30. I think we'll a slow migration where MLS allows clubs to bring players over to their off budget roster and pay them 100% outside the salary cap. You'll see MLS move them one at a time and then eventually start adding more of these spots. So in 5 years you might have 5 highly paid "DP" type players on an MLS off budget roster. And the actual MLS budget (whatever it is) would be used for the rest of the team.

So I agree that we won't have a scenario in 5 years where 5 or 6 DPs exist on a team using todays rules. What I suggest is that MLS will just expand their current off budget roster to accomidate not just young players but star players, and at that point you could see 5 or 6 guys making large salaries that are not paid by the MLS salary budget but paid by the club. Now I also think that a small percentage of that off budget roster will always be paid by MLS in order for them to maintain their single entity status.

I have my doubts about this (but you may be right).

I would argue a 3M team with DPs that do not count against the CAP would be stronger than a 5M flat cap team. (I do believe Australia does this, the marquee player(s) do not count against the CAP).