So 13£ is the roughly the equilibrium. If the going rate is fine, there's no point in a minimum wage. The UK minimum actually prevents firms employing more people, they'd rather be paying less.
Off topic though, gawd Chaz.
Well, it's hardly above the equilibrium market rate anyway;p The UK minimum just allows loads of companies to offer jobs at 6.08£ an hour because they're well aware that's what everyone else is offering. In Norway, hardly anyone would take a typical minimum wage job for less than 13£;p
hasnt worked out too well in the MLS, and dont the NBA pay huge wages anyway?
And yes it would be the death of euro football, you think england is the only country with high wages? barcelona is the highest paid team in any team sport in the world. it would be terrible for european football
That's a great ideology to have, apart from it destroying all modern economic theory, it's practically perfect.
All that would happen with a salary cap is there would be hundreds of players on the top, top wage.
Players will move to where they can earn the most money, fact. It happens now, and putting a salary cap in Europe doesn't prevent from the money in football finding it's way to Asia, for instance. The only way it would work if there's a worldwide salary cap, but then that still won't work due to exchange rates and domestic laws. It's exactly the same reason government won't increase taxes even more for the rich, they're afraid of the best people in the land moving away to wear they can maximise their earning potential.
Secondly, your analogy of American sports doesn't work. As I said before, it's a monopsony - If you're an American footballer you have no choice but to play for an American team at the wage rate they give you. If you're a top footballer and are unhappy with your wage rate, there are numerous other countries that will be able to offer you a higher rate. Football (Soccer) is worldwide. American sports are almost completely domestic. This is where the comparison breaks down.
Thirdly, you assume ticket prices will fall. They won't. Football clubs charge that much because they can. The demand for Premier League tickets is highly inelastic, it was when clubs realised this they started charging incredibly high prices. Just because your costs have fallen, doesn't mean you'll drop the pricing. The only way ticket prices would fall is if the best players left for greater wages elsewhere, hence lowering demand for tickets.
A salary cap will cause players to stay in their domestic leagues? So, lets say a Brazilian wants to earn greater wages because he can't earn that much in Brazil. He's perfectly happy to move continents when there's no salary cap. But then you state that when we limit European wages, those players will suddenly all want to stay domestic. Not at all, they'll do as the Brazilian and move to where the money is (You even admitted yourself players already go to the top clubs for wages), so I'm not sure where the logic that a salary cap will domesticate players comes from. If a Brazilian (Who's far more geographically immobile) is willing to move continents for money, a European would be willing to move to say, Asia.
Football wouldn't look like it did decades ago. Money from Sky etc. has changed the way the game is forever. A salary cap isn't going to remove this money, it will just re-distribute it to circulate elsewhere. There would be less good players in Europe because they've moved to a place where no salary cap exists, not because they stay put. Just like the Brazilian league is weak by comparison to La Liga, Serie A, EPL etc. All the players have moved there. Less top players equals less sponsorship, less top players equals less TV revenue. Less top players equals less entertainment value. Lets take the NBA again, lets say hypothetically a massive interest in Basketball developed in England. Sky bought all the rights, there's no salary cap. We offer millions more for the players to join our league - But you'd be perfectly fine that the NBA now has far less talent in it?
This, is why a salary cap would be the death of European football.
You proved this yourself when you mentioned players moving to Europe. It won't happen immediately, but eventually money will make its way to other continents, and the players will follow. A footballer's career is extremely short, how very naive to assume they wouldn't maximise their earnings from their unique talent. Of course they will. I have economic theory and case studies of people migrating away proves the theory. You are just telling me that something will happen, when, in all honesty - it won't.True, but footballers play for more than money. The leagues in the Middle East can and sometimes do pay very good players extremely high wages to play there. The vast majority of players won't go there because the competition is not strong enough. If it does improve drastically and these leagues start stealing lots of foreign players, than they can extend the cap to that area too. And that was what I said originally: a global flat salary cap.
A salary cap would be tough because of exchange rates and the differences in the local economies, and one solution would be to come up with a formula to develop an appropriate salary cap for each country based on per capita income, attendance, etc. but I would recommend that they could simply apply a flat salary cap across the leagues of Europe that would high enough that it would only de facto affect the big clubs in the Big 4 countries. This way those countries' spending would be curbed and the other players would stay in their local leagues. Clubs in Finland spending too much isn't really affecting global football. It's the spending of the Big 4. Curbing their spending is what will make things better. Your argument was that all of the players would go to another country, but this obviously wouldn't happen because none of the leagues outside of the Big 5 have the potential to buy up all of the best players from all over Europe. And even if they did somehow, there would still be that flat salary cap that would eventually catch up to them once they started signing a bunch of good players.
As far as I'm aware, UEFA don't have the power to implement a European cap for every league in Europe. What if one FA decides it doesn't want the cap, the whole thing falls down like a pack of cards. Your whole theory is based on so many assumptions from 'footballers don't care for money' and that a salary cap will a) work and b) easy to implement. All of those are debatable at best, but all leaning towards being wrong.It works fine. If you apply a salary cap across Europe, where else are the players going to go? Only the greediest of the greedy would leave top level football for the MLS or Qatar. The vast majority would simply just stay in their local leagues and you would have much more parity within Europe and around the world.
I'm pretty sure I said that would be the cause of falling demand. But you said players will stay in Europe! I, for one, would consider the EPL a worse league if we were deprived of talent coming through.My point about the tickets was a minor one. If you press me, however, if a salary cap were implemented and foreign players started leaving the Prem to go play in their local leagues, than demand would certainly decrease. A lot of people would stop paying for the games if the product decreased, meaning the price would decrease. I have a feeling more people would start supporting their local clubs rather than just rooting for ManU, Chelsea, and Arsenal, since those teams would no longer be so dominant. Demand would increase in the Championship, League One, etc. while decreasing in the Prem, and of course you have the Prem clubs spending far less on wages and transfers, which should lead to lower prices.
Most of them are greedy. Has been proven time and time again, the ones who stay at a club for a long time are the rarities. So again, I fail to see how you conclude this.But you're assuming that players only move for wages. A few are greedy and do that, but most of them are competitors and will want to play in a good league (which is why the idea that they all will go to Asia or the MLS is wrong, but again, if that started happening, than you extend the cap to those leagues too somehow, perhaps by giving them the same flat salary cap that Europe has). And more importantly, if wages were more equal, most would rather stay home than play abroad.
It won't instantly happen. But it will, over time. Global salary cap simply isn't feasible. A European one is stretching things a **** of a lot in the first place, so can we get rid of that idea, please. As I've said multiple times, a salary cap works for America because it's the sole buyer of American sportsmen. Show me a market where a salary cap has worked for a global brand. Imagine if England had a salary cap on bankers, do you think they wouldn't all migrate to America. But what if England was the only country with banks? Well, then you have no choice - If you want to be a banker you have to take the salary given by England.Where would all of this money be redistributed to if there was a salary cap in place? In the Big 4, less money would be spent on transfer and player wages and there would be less demand. I have a feeling this will lead to lower ticket prices, which is good. Yet you keep on assuming that a salary cap will instantly lead to all of the money and players heading to another league. Which one specifically? The only areas in the world that could possibly support football leagues with the kind of wages to steal talent from Europe would be the US, Asia, and the Middle East. In the case of the first two, the player wages there are extremely low, as are local attendances, ticket prices, sponsorship deals, TV deals, etc. There is no way they could support a league that could poach players from Europe, and even if they did, they would run into the global flat salary cap. As far as the Middle East goes, they do have enough money to throw around at European players thanks to their Sheikhs, but the global salary cap would apply to them too, meaning they could pay their players no more than ManU could. Are you seriously scared of a ManU player leaving to go to Qatar for the same wage?
It was a completely hypothetical scenario to highlight the point why a salary cap only works for a sole buyer market. You've proven my point though, " it will take a long, long time before most players would want to move since the level of competition would be too low. After a long while I agree that enough players would move so that the competition would equalize and you'd have NBA players leaving for British basketball." If it takes a long time is irrelevant. I said it would be the death of EU football, I purposely didn't add a timescale. I don't care if it would take 20 years. I don't want the leagues I'm interested in to be gone in 20 years. I'm fine how they are.Your NBA example is a poor one again. First of all, it wouldn't happen, because Britain would have to have a social revolution to support basketball enough to rival the NBA's wages. Even if this did happen, they won't be able to pay their players wages higher than the ones in the NBA. The NBA is just too **** profitable. It is in a huge country with the world's largest economy. Now, even IF Britain somehow got more money in basketball than the NBA and could pay the players higher wages, it will take a long, long time before most players would want to move since the level of competition would be too low. After a long while I agree that enough players would move so that the competition would equalize and you'd have NBA players leaving for British basketball. But even then that doesn't happen in my example, since there is a flat global salary cap. The NBA players would not be making more in Britain, hence they wouldn't leave the US.
No. If European players started leaving Europe for another country, than yeah that would be the death of European football (which is exactly what happened to South American football, the death of South American football is thanks to the wealth of Europeans who steal their best players). Which country are they going to go to? I've already discussed how ridiculous the notion is that they would leave in droves to play in Qatar, and again that would be impossible since in my scenario there is a global salary cap and the Qatari teams could not have a wage bill higher than any European team's. What would happen is players would be much, much more likely to play in their local leagues since there wouldn't be higher salaries in the Big 3. This would mean more even competition in Europe, which would be good for most European countries. In England, you guys wouldn't get all of the foreign players, meaning the level of play would be lower in your league. and you wouldn't dominate the European competitions like you do now. In other words, it would be just like English football was until the 90's. What would be so bad about that?
And you're thinking about this waaaaaay too abstract basing everything on wild assumptions that person X won't do scenario Y. Your whole model falls apart if one assumption fails. My economics model has been proven in multiple other markets, I don't see what makes football so special it ignores this. Players will move for money, it's a fact. The basic economic assumption is that people will act in the most logical way. For most people, it's pure logic to maximise your earning potential. Especially when you have a career of ~15 years. If you were a footballer, would you rather retire rich at 35 and never work again, or retire at 35 and work for 30 more years because you didn't want to utilise your talent?Overall you're think about this waaaay too much like it's something in an econ textbook. Think of it in more practical, real world terms, where players want to play where the competition is high and like to stay at home if they can. If we think really abstractly in terms of econ models, a salary cap only imposed in Europe would lead to players going to Qatar (where they actually could pay the wages). But that won't happen in real life since no one wants to go to Qatar, and more importantly, because this would be a global salary cap, so the Qatari's couldn't do that.
You proved this yourself when you mentioned players moving to Europe. It won't happen immediately, but eventually money will make its way to other continents, and the players will follow. A footballer's career is extremely short, how very naive to assume they wouldn't maximise their earnings from their unique talent. Of course they will. I have economic theory and case studies of people migrating away proves the theory. You are just telling me that something will happen, when, in all honesty - it won't.
A global salary cap won't work. Nor will your method of calculating a cap. Each country would have wildly different caps, which is horribly unfair to other leagues. What you're failing to realise is that you keep harping on about the big 4. Over time, the big 4 will simply migrate elsewhere, and I'd rather keep it in Europe. The big 4 was established through money, yet you're arguing that money elsewhere won't create a new top 4? Short sighted and illogical.
As far as I'm aware, UEFA don't have the power to implement a European cap for every league in Europe. What if one FA decides it doesn't want the cap, the whole thing falls down like a pack of cards. Your whole theory is based on so many assumptions from 'footballers don't care for money' and that a salary cap will a) work and b) easy to implement. All of those are debatable at best, but all leaning towards being wrong.
I'm pretty sure I said that would be the cause of falling demand. But you said players will stay in Europe! I, for one, would consider the EPL a worse league if we were deprived of talent coming through.
Most of them are greedy. Has been proven time and time again, the ones who stay at a club for a long time are the rarities. So again, I fail to see how you conclude this.
It won't instantly happen. But it will, over time. Global salary cap simply isn't feasible. A European one is stretching things a **** of a lot in the first place, so can we get rid of that idea, please. As I've said multiple times, a salary cap works for America because it's the sole buyer of American sportsmen. Show me a market where a salary cap has worked for a global brand. Imagine if England had a salary cap on bankers, do you think they wouldn't all migrate to America. But what if England was the only country with banks? Well, then you have no choice - If you want to be a banker you have to take the salary given by England.
It was a completely hypothetical scenario to highlight the point why a salary cap only works for a sole buyer market. You've proven my point though, " it will take a long, long time before most players would want to move since the level of competition would be too low. After a long while I agree that enough players would move so that the competition would equalize and you'd have NBA players leaving for British basketball." If it takes a long time is irrelevant. I said it would be the death of EU football, I purposely didn't add a timescale. I don't care if it would take 20 years. I don't want the leagues I'm interested in to be gone in 20 years. I'm fine how they are.
I've already discussed how ridiculous the notion of a global and EU salary cap is, but you still go on about it. Players moved to European football from S.America. Why would they not move to Qatar from Europe? I don't see how you can say something's already happened, and then say it won't happen second time around. Of course it will freaking happen, did all the S.Americans stay domestic because higher salaries weren't there? No, they moved.
And you're thinking about this waaaaaay too abstract basing everything on wild assumptions that person X won't do scenario Y. Your whole model falls apart if one assumption fails. My economics model has been proven in multiple other markets, I don't see what makes football so special it ignores this. Players will move for money, it's a fact. The basic economic assumption is that people will act in the most logical way. For most people, it's pure logic to maximise your earning potential. Especially when you have a career of ~15 years. If you were a footballer, would you rather retire rich at 35 and never work again, or retire at 35 and work for 30 more years because you didn't want to utilise your talent?
Curtis & Joel:
You two are a joke.
Kind regards,
FM Base
How do you prevent a club offering lower wages and higher bonuses? Why focus on Asia, the markets could easily reverse to S.America etc. Players already have a value of their worth, Argentine players can't be picked up because Qatar isn't established as a league yet, and can't pick said players up. UEFA don't have the right to implement a salary cap in any way. Being part of the EU means free trade of goods and labour. A salary cap is a restrictive policy, therefore illegal in European law. Even if they could implement it, all it takes is one country to say no. Wayne Rooney's taxes pay about 4 annual nurses a year. Multiply by the whole premier leagues superstars, you think we're going to allow UEFA to restrict that sort of money?
In short, won't work.
Thanks Alex, <3 you too.
UEFA don't have the right to implement a salary cap in the EU market, and they certainly don't have the right to override domestic government policy. FFP is different, they're limiting debt not an exchange of goods. Players are labourers moving between countries, a cap is restrictive so it doesn't fit EU policy.
The money would go to a place with a lower tax rate, and because the market is restricted money will also be lost in the process. So the government is much worse off.
Again, salary cap is neither feasible nor a good idea.
Why did they not get lawyers to make sure these proposals were air tight before they forced clubs to implement expensive reform, to meet rules, that weren't even possible? And there goes UEFA's last scrap of credibility.
More reliable source than Goal.com?