CBA Thread IV: I Must Break You

+1. this needs to be posted over and over again -- in the hopes that someday some of the guys in these threads will stop acting like their "teams" are somehow independent of the league and that the league is holding them, and their players, back.

 

under the terms of the "expired" CBA that the league is happy to continue with.

But, if Hartman wants to wait it out and a new CBA leads to some improvements or some (perhaps drastic or perhaps simple to meet this need/situation for Hartman) changes to how MLS agrees to do business, then perhaps he's made a wise decision.

(and I can see why, as professional soccer players, the MLSPU members would want to change/improve this portion of the "expired" CBA. to me, the KH example is an issue of fairness, and there could/should be a way for MLS to lessen this "restriction" on him as a player who has completed an MLS contract, likely several of them.)

 

If Google believes it's in the shareholders interest to run competing projects and create such a system, why shouldn't they do this? Where's their responsibility?

What do you call it when two managers get into a battle over an employee and everyone's made happy via some negotiation - that's really all about power?

 

In order to clarify this, so we escape reductionism, let me note that the players are the most obvious part of the product, but there's a ton that goes into the presentation of pro spectator sports that isn't the players.

Your view of the pitch is 'part of the product'. The diamond vision screen is 'part of the product'. The TV production is 'part of the product'. The uniforms, the field condition, the PA announcer, the concessionaires, it goes on an on and on. If any fan has ever complained about it, it is almost by definition part of the product, and indeed a lot goes in that fans wouldn't even think to complain about.

Now, if we were talking about the National Football League, reducing things to the players would be pretty much OK, because the NFL has so much money that anything can be replaced with it, except the players, because alternate players of the same level simply don't exist in the short run at any price.

But of course, we aren't talking about the NFL. We're talking about a league where the PA announcer or the TV play-by-play man or the ticket sales staff or the head groundskeeper may legitimately be as hard or harder to replace without noticing than the players are.

 

But I want to repeat that if you parse both the union and management positions in this, Hartman's situation doesn't actually appear to be the issue in these negotiations, both because the management seems willing to give it up, and the because players want a solution that goes an order of magnitude beyond that particular problem.

 

Thank you for looking at it so others wouldn't have to.

 

kinda, but not really. To use any type of franchise tag in the NFL, the team can only use it once a year. They also have to offer the player a one year contract with the salary being equal to the average of the top 5 paid players at that position.

from the prespective of a non-exclusive franchise player moving to another team, then all MLS players could be considered that...

More info here

 

an excellent point.

although, I'm not sure we can get inside that room to clarify exactly what it is the players "want" and what indeed they'd be willing to settle for.

Hartman's (particular) situation likely was an "issue in these negotiations" -- until such a time that the league presented a workable solution for it (if indeed they have -- without the qualifier that Abbott put with it that they'd likely want to bargain that proposal).

negotiations are fluid items (until a resolution is reached, or until a standstill/work-stoppage is announced).


the thing that caught my attention the most from that blog post and conversation with Abbott was this:

it doesn't? that situation just never comes up for MLS and its players, especially those who have just played out a full contract?

 

MLB has had an interesting labor development. If anyone enjoys reading about these things, MLB provides a ton of good material.

For a long time, MLB operated similar to MLS, with each player offered a one year contract with a team option. The team owned the players rights until they decided to release them. There was no international market, obviously, but you can read how they slowly gained rights from ownership.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/12/3/678134/the-history-of-baseball-s

That's a good link. The free agency links are in the first paragraph.

 

What I get from all the other leagues' negotiations and history is that, nothing is ever settled and things evolve.

Even now it looks like the NFL and NBA are going to go through actions that will have some minor, or major, changes. Englands trying to figure out how to deal with teams that are facing a debt crisis - this has labor implications.

What isn't clear to me is that the evolution of other leagues is a guide for MLS. All leagues seem to evolve and I wonder if it's a certainty that MLS will evolve towards other models or other models will evolve towards MLS's model.

 

It's somewhat similar but not really. MLS certainly gives out multi-year contracts and obvioulsy there is a lot more opportunity for soccer players in 2010 then baseball players in the 50s and 60s.

 

certainly some excellent points.

I suppose that "evolution" will be affected by these types of collective bargaining periods (and any possible strikes or lock-outs during that evolution) and how the owners and players will continue to work with or against or along-side of each other in the years ahead.

 

I agree with Bootsy here and I'll admit I haven't paid attention to the CBA arguments either. SUM is just an octopus with its tentacles everywhere in American soccer, and where one tentacle interacts with another or doesn't is incredibly ambiguous. I've had this argument with others in the past where a team states they're making money, but it's really the stadium making the money, the MLS team was just the crutch toward getting the stadium built, and the only reason for the MLS team's existance apparently is to help fill stadium dates, which is the real crown in the jewel in modern North American sports and real estate development (one nice thing about this recession is commercial real estate is getting hammered and this sh*t will stop for a long time into the future). Some of the owners want to say they're profitable at some times to show soccer is becoming more mainstream in this country because that will boost their franchise values. Yet, when MLS negotiation time comes around, they distinguish their MLS operations away from the rest of the soccer sports empire and are losing money. It just depends on how you look at it once you have access to the books. But none of us and probably none of the players have access to the "real" books and we never will unless anyone here has some bribe money handy or some SUM or MLS employee decides to put the financial statements for the league on Wikileaks.

 

No doubt. Labor peace is always fleeting. MLB has just gotten to a point where they've been able to negotiate without nearly striking. NFL is getting ready for a brutal negotiation. The NHL has just gotten over its own problems.

I didn't mean to point to MLB as a guide. More of a read this if your bored type thing. I wouldn't hazard a guess about what this CBA will look like, let alone one 15 years from now. But it at least feels good to be talking about collective bargaining and not how to keep the league from collapsing.

 

The NHL owners raked the players over the coals and got everything they wanted. Then 2 years into the deal, the owners realized the system they asked for (salary cap tied to revenues) benefitted the players greatly. And now the players want teams that lose lots of money every year to move to areas that can make money because it's better for their own bottom line, which hurts a key Gary Bettman plank from part of his leadership as NHL Commissioner. Unintended consequences and all that.

 

Well, let's back up.

Here's a list of things that seem to me to be reasonable revenue streams for the players to say "that's a revenue source that should be considered when assessing whether an MLS team is making money or losing money, and by how much":

• revenues from actual tickets sold to matches played by the MLS team (including regular season matches, playoff matches, USOC matches, StupidLiga matches, CCL matches, glamour friendlies, and anything else similar I'm forgetting)
• ancillary stadium revenue (e.g. parking and concessions), provided that the team is in a situation where this is under the investor/operators control (so this would apply to Columbus or LA, but not to DC or San Jose)
• revenues from local television deals (e.g. DCU's deal with Comcast SportsNet-MidAtlantic, Columbus' deal with ONN, New England's with NESN, etc.)
• a fraction of the SUM money that goes to the investor/operators, that fraction corresponding to the fraction of total SUM revenues that comes from national TV deals for MLS
• team revenues from merchandise sales
• prize money from competitions, such as the supposed $1M if you win StupidLiga

Do all of those inclusions seem reasonable? What else am I forgetting?

I'm aware that actually conducting negotiations in this fashion would be extremely difficult, because to be concrete about a lot of these numbers would require access to the League's books to a degree that the players aren't going to get. It's just that there've been a number of posts (here and elsewhere) in which people have disputed whether MLS teams make money or lose money; and I'm trying to get a handle for myself on what *I* mean, financially, when I say "an MLS team".

 

I Just don't understand the negotiating practices. The players want more money. They also want some freedom of not being locked to a team when the contracts up. All that is fair. The owners want to maintain the single entity system while keeping costs down. That seems fair as well. I don't understand why you can't do both?

Why not raise the cap a bit, tie future cap increases to tv/ticket rights/revenue (players now have a vested interest in increasing tv and tickets) and then when a players contract is up, the team has xyz period of time to come to contract terms or the players rights go through a waiver system based upon seeding of previous year. Team must give up a draft pick or somesuch to get the negoitating rights to the player. If no team bites, rights revert back the original holder.

Players in the league more than 4 years, have guarenteed contracts once game one of the season starts. In return, for guarenteed contracts after the 4th year, players give up the right to keeping a percentage of the transfer fee's is sold.

 

Nope. Here's why.

Suppose a player is in the middle of a contract. If he wants to play for a different team--well, tough. He's under contract.

In the Premier League, if a guy is out of contract but wants to stay in the league, he has leverage, because he can go either to his old team or to the new team and see who has the better offer.

In MLS, if a guy is out of contract but wants to stay in the league, he can go to MLS HQ, which negotiates contracts for every team in the league. And if MLS HQ doesn't think he's worth it, he's not playing anywhere.

Because you were employed by MLS last year, and you are employed by MLS this year, what you've signed is basically a contract renewal. Which is why it makes sense, from the league point of view, to require a new team that wants you to trade for you, rather than making what team you play for part of the contract negotiation.

 

It depends on if the teams compete against each other for players would cause the league to no longer be recognized as a single entity thus causing a total rework of the foundation of the league.

Some of the teams are still float cause of the single entity structure.

 

But having the players rights decided by a waiver approach based upon standings of previous year, appears to get rid of the bidding problem and maintain the integrity of the league.

 

I think you're spot on. There's room in there to strike a deal. But the only real leverage the players have is striking. It's not like there's a ton of guys who have an option to go to Europe. For most of the players, MLS is their best employment match. Most of the players know this. So my sense is that they'll push this to the limit until the last minute in order to get as many concessions as possible. Probably most will have to do with contact terms. The MLSPU could have agreed to whatever was offered a while back. Purely from a negotiations perspective, they'll likely gain more from the league by showing that they'll actually shut down shop if they don't get what they want. But at the end of the day, most of these players can't really afford to shut it down for any significant period of time.

 

Without a chance to see any numbers, I would say that even guessing as to whether the "teams" are making money isn't that relevant. The thing that IS important is whether the league makes money, they are the ones paying the players. The investor/operator and league chart shows that the league takes 30% of ticket revenue, the national tv money, and the national sponsorships.

Code:

                                  CURRENT
tired of pre-contraction/post-contraction.we all live in post-contraction world
Revenues                  Investor/Operator        MLS
 
Gate Receipts                          70%         30%
Concessions                           100%          0%
Parking                               100%          0%
Local Sponsorships                    100%          0%
National Sponsorships                   0%        100%
Other Stadium Revenue                 100%          0%
National Media                          0%        100%
Local TV & Radio                      100%          0%
 
 
Expenses
 
Player Salaries                         0%        100%
Front Office Expenses                 100%          0%
Team Travel                           100%          0%
Broadcast Expenses                    100%          0%
Rent                                  100%          0%
Game Day Expenses                     100%          0%

I do not know the numbers, but the other stadium revenue doesn't really matter for the players in this case. but neither does rent or travel or other functions of the "team" than salaries. Again, I don't have the numbers but the league does have to spend money to make money. The better product they have the better the national TV deals, national sponsorships, and ticket sales. The I/O can and often do lowball the soccer side of things especially if they make their money in the "Other stadium revenue" category.

 

Argh. You're absolutely right, of course; and that's the way I should have been thinking.

With some work, we can probably estimate some of these figures -- the San Jose article told us paid ticket sales back in, what, 2007? Add on Seattle and Toronto and multiply by a typical ticket price, and then by 0.3. The value of the ESPN deal was quoted; I dunno about TeleFutura. Expenses = salary cap * number of teams, roughly. The national sponsorships is where things get really hazy -- no idea on how to even estimate their value.

 

Sure that would work for me.

My issue i just don't think it should be dropped altogether and go with something that risk the league as a single entity and risk possible collapse of some of the tams. It can be fixed but going to full free agency as the solution is not a good thing for this league.

And with out single entity players can also sue the league for anti-trust.

 

Oh dear lord not the horribly run teams that refuse to run their teams in a competitive way! What would we do without Owners who have teams for tax right offs