Of course, part of that question is where do DPs and TAM/GAM play into that salary cap.. also, is it actually a cap, or is it a budget like MLS has now. The difference being that under a cap, we could see teams spending less than $12million by a hefty amount, while under a budget we'll see the bottom teams spending around $12 million.
Just thoughts............. 1.) increase in the number of Home Grown Player spots, or no limit at all....which would reward those teams that are heavily investing in their academies 2.) Reducing the DP spots from 3 to 2 would make sense if the Salary Budget is significantly increased. Wouldn't rule out eliminating the tag altogether. 3.) Increased roster sizes would go with my first thought 4.) Possible reclassification of Canadian players as domestic? This would help the three teams north of the border combat the CPL. 5.) Elimination of Home Grown Player Territories....goes with thoughts 1 & 3 6.) Eliminating GAM & TAM as they are known now. This money would be added to the Budget. 7.) Increase in Max and Min player salaries Just random thoughts
If you get rid of the DP rules, and making a cap with no exceptions, you are probably decreasing the cap for many teams. No thanks.
Many? Outside of TFC, LAX, & LAG who? Raise the Salary cap to say $12M, and raise the Max player salary to say $4M. Maybe eliminate the designated player label and introduce a Marquee Player spot (like Australia's A-League). That player can be paid anything and doesn't count against the budget. Would THAT make you happy?
1. Triple the budget cap to $13 million. 2. Increase DP's to 4 and they don't count towards the $13 million budget. 3. Keep TAM/GAM going $1.2+ million each year 3. Keep DTAM going $2.8+ million each year So if you sign 4 DP's, you'll have $17 million on hand to pay for the rest of the 16 players, that's an average of 1,062,500 per player.
If they triple the budget, I don't think there would be a need for TAM anymore. I doubt they would do that, though. The main bottleneck in increasing quality of play is the American player pool. If they just triple the salary budget, unless they increase the number of international slots, they're going to end up with mostly the same american players at the bottom end of the roster, but they'll just have to pay them a lot more, so they wouldn't get enough quality bang for their buck. And there aren't enough Americans playing abroad to fill up 30 teams who would both be willing to play in MLS and would also be better than the current players. Not to mention, the obviously bigger problem is that tripling the salary budget likely wouldn't return enough in added revenues to be worth it.
Well of course if everyone wasn't so concerned about kissing Montagliani's ass the whole relationship would be much differentand, I think, more productive for all. It's clear that some kind of accommodation needs to be made regarding Canadian domestics. I said all along that they shouldn't have been allowed in in the first place, but since they're here we should probably tweak a rule of two. Not because it's necessarily right but because it's a topic that keeps coming up and isn't worth the constant whining. As for the ludicrous CPL, as long as they're operating on a shoestring salary budget they're no threat. A big reason why Montagliani tried to force Ottawa out of USL and into the CPL was he wanted all sub-MLS talent playing in the CPL. But USL salaries are so lavish in comparison to the CPL that promising Canadians, many of whom played for Ottawa, didn't want to leave to play in the CPL for much less money. Montagliani lost the fight, Ottawa stayed in the USL, and the Canadian talent stayed there too. And as long as the CPL is paying sub-USL salaries, they're no threat to anybody.
As a Canadian I'd be happy to see Canadians count as domestics on all MLS teams because it would help our NT. I'm aware of the US labour law issues that apparently prevent this. So far as the CPL goes, Canadians already count as domestics for the three Canadian MLS teams so they don't need any rule changes in that regard.
I've looooooooong stated that a 10-15m cap would blow the top off this league, ESPECIALLY if they kept measures like DP/TAM/GAM etc for "over spending" in conjunction with the cap/budget number. 13m, with DPs and TAM/GAM as they are right now would make the rosters ridiculously good (relatively/comparatively of course). Managing those mechanisms to maximize the spending would completely change the face of soccer in this hemisphere within 5yrs.
Where is the money going to come from to pay for the increase? I suppose people would not like a 3-fold increase in ticket prices either.
The league would probably hope they could see a huge impact on play quality, thus increasing broadcast value, etc
Frankly, I'd rather see a nail put in the coffin of single entity before this move happens. Other leagues can still profit share and have rules while not being single entity, what can't we? The time is over. Expand to 30 teams, create MLS 1 and 2 with closed relegation between the two for now, to open up to join the USL relegation circuit in 5-10 years.
Why do any of this though? The single entity factor really has limited impact on the field anymore. Most casual fans wouldn't even know, or care about it. And promotion and relegation is pointless and stupid.
So all the people that just paid $150 and $200 million to get in can be moved down to MLS 2..........hahahahahaahah. Yeah that will happen. DG: "Hello Nashville, you just paid $150 million to enter MLS, but we are going to split into 2 levels and since you are an expansion team you will likely be relegated to the 2nd division after year one" Nash: hangs up. DG: "Hello St. Louis, you are going to pay $200 million to enter MLS, but you are actually getting inserted into MLS second division." STL: hangs up
Plenty of people clamor for pro/Rel and won't watch the league without it. There are far more fans of it than people who feel it pointless. And claiming that single entity doesn't effect anything on the field is silly. Single entity didn't almost lose you your team. Single entity holds this league back in many ways. I can't help it if you don't see that.
you are forgetting a very very important thing. The guys paying $150-200 million + hundreds of millions for stadiums and training facilities and academies would have to voluntarily agree to have their invested shattered by being demoted to second division. It seems MLS is doing just fine. At least half of the teams filling their stadiums and they have billionaires tearing down their doors to pay $150-200 million to get a piece....but yeah lets blow the whole thing up because there are "plenty of people clamoring for pro/rel" MLS has grown from almost collapse in the not so distant past to what it is today.
Single entity didn't make you almost lose your team. You asshole owner did. Sure, the league had a hand in it with the BS about "business metrics," but imagine if this was like any of the other North American sports leagues and the owner was hell-bent on moving. It would have happened. If anything, a strong league presence helped prevent the move. Single entity has its drawbacks where slacker owners like Kraft, Precourt, Hauptmann, etc. can go along for the ride and profit from the work of the ambitious teams, but it had nothing to do with your team almost moving.
Again, as has been said many times, single-entity isn't a flaw in the structure, its a feature. The reason guys like Arthur Blank are buying in is because of it, not to fight against it. Its never going away. You got numbers to back that up? Because, despite what a (VERY) vocal minority like to claim there's no evidence that a lack of pro/rel is what's holding people back from watching. Its just the latest in a line of excuses from a small percentage of soccer fans who will keep coming up with reasons not to watch until the full 20 team EPL is transported to the U.S. And BTW, based on what I learned last week in a Q&A with Blackburn's CEO, I believe the English system is fundamentally broken and will either topple over resulting in a reduction of fully professional teams or end up with a closed breakaway league of the top teams while the rest of the pyramid resets to a new reality. You can't have the 20th team having a 25:1 ration of revenues from TV over the 21st team and expect that system to survive long-term. (Huddersfield: 130M TV revenue, 40M parachute payment, already all but guaranteed to finish last in the EPL Norwich: 7M TV revenue, likely to win the Championship)
Yes. A very TINY segment of US soccer fans. Yet people here continue to act as if they are some hugely significant segment of the US fan base. Far too many threads here are about THEM. Or unnecessarily become about them, like this thread. Yes, they are annoying. But frankly, so are the people that obsess over them.
For no other reason than FYI....... People who refuse to watch MLS because of the lack of pro/rel aren't going to suddenly follow the league if pro/rel is instituted noon tomorrow. They'll only find some other half-assed excuse not to watch. Guaranteed.
I have more respect for the opinions of whale feces (which, given the depths of the oceans, is probably the lowest thing on the face of the earth), than I do for people who insist that the only thing holding MLS back is the fact that Lou-a-ville or Des Moines or El Paso won't replace New England, Colorado or Chicago in "the" MLS next year.
It certainly changes the model, but I wonder if evolves into a de facto breakaway league rather than an official one. Teams in the championship are just playing to get a payday in the EPL for one year. Instead of trying to compete when promoted by buying more expensive players, take the TV money and use it to build up your stadium, or save it for the future, and accept that you're going to spend a year getting your butt kicked. I don't know if the fans would accept that, but it's not far from the reality now.
Pretty much. The former head of C38 is a die-hard Fulham supporter, even flew over on short notice for their promotion final a year ago. I was asking him about it and he told me he'd rather just be in the Championship every year with a chance to win the league then go up for a year, get beat down, then come back down and repeat. As a Blackburn fan I can't say I disagree with him. One thing the Blackburn CEO said that I found interesting is that he would be surprised if Jack Walker could have taken Blackburn to the EPL championship today given the FFP rules and the change in money. There isn't the income base to support a team from a town like Blackburn being able to buy the players they need to compete while saying within the FFP regulations now. To me that's a real good indication that the EPL is turning more and more into a "top 6 and filler" league.