Bateman

[Mike]

RE cap, if every team had to spend a minimum of 90% it would bring bottom teams up, as it is it brings top teams down.

Force clubs to spend money they don’t have?

How do we improve the product then? The game is going backwards.

Pool all income into a central fund and reallocate - treat the game as one business, not a set of competing businesses trying to put one another out of business. Licencing is one step towards this, the next step is a pooled merchanising strategy and finances. I know some people will say this in unfair and the teams that make no effort benefit from the teams that do, but those teams are extremely resource constrained so how are you going to get them to "invest" more in marketing unless you give them more resource? This way everyone is pulling in the same direction. If wigan sell more shirts it benefits the whole league, if cas sell more after a good season it also benefits everyone. Doesn't have to be 100% even distributions, there can be formulas that incentivise clubs to perfom well financially and with marketing, but some component of the total financial income of the sport has to be pooled.

[pedro]

Force clubs to spend money they don’t have?

How do we improve the product then? The game is going backwards.

Pool all income into a central fund and reallocate - treat the game as one business, not a set of competing businesses trying to put one another out of business. Licencing is one step towards this, the next step is a pooled merchanising strategy and finances. I know some people will say this in unfair and the teams that make no effort benefit from the teams that do, but those teams are extremely resource constrained so how are you going to get them to "invest" more in marketing unless you give them more resource? This way everyone is pulling in the same direction. If wigan sell more shirts it benefits the whole league, if cas sell more after a good season it also benefits everyone. Doesn't have to be 100% even distributions, there can be formulas that incentivise clubs to perfom well financially and with marketing, but some component of the total financial income of the sport has to be pooled.

so would penalise the clubs that do a lot and reward the clubs that do nothing, similar to the cap now and tv deal, its easy replace them with teams that will, the franchise (new) should get rid of the teams that promised the world and delivered nothing

[Caboosegg]

How do we improve the product then? The game is going backwards.

Pool all income into a central fund and reallocate - treat the game as one business, not a set of competing businesses trying to put one another out of business. Licencing is one step towards this, the next step is a pooled merchanising strategy and finances. I know some people will say this in unfair and the teams that make no effort benefit from the teams that do, but those teams are extremely resource constrained so how are you going to get them to "invest" more in marketing unless you give them more resource? This way everyone is pulling in the same direction. If wigan sell more shirts it benefits the whole league, if cas sell more after a good season it also benefits everyone. Doesn't have to be 100% even distributions, there can be formulas that incentivise clubs to perfom well financially and with marketing, but some component of the total financial income of the sport has to be pooled.

so would penalise the clubs that do a lot and reward the clubs that do nothing, similar to the cap now and tv deal, its easy replace them with teams that will, the franchise (new) should get rid of the teams that promised the world and delivered nothing

He is right on centralising areas though. Proper Advertisement of matches/ticket offers/Events should be a priority and it should be the responsibility of the RFL, they take a cut and do what?

Take the big one vs Leeds a few years back. Wigan took the time to do stuff around the town including freebies. Why is it down to the club to provide that level of advertisement for a professional sport with a overly involved governing body.

[the pieman]

RE cap, if every team had to spend a minimum of 90% it would bring bottom teams up, as it is it brings top teams down.

Force clubs to spend money they don’t have?

all clubs should have money to spend up to the cap - or should have done prior to the new TV deal
Sky basically paid the equivalent of 2.1million to each SL club, and therefore they should have been made to use that money on 1st team salary cap, but clearly, several clubs didnt / dont

Even if the sky money has now dropped to a lower level, the clubs should be forced to use that to pay as much as they can on 1st team player salaries

as many have said (many times previously too), the tail wags the dog when it comes to RL, and thus we are always defined by the lowest denominator, not the highest and its time that changed

if the Sky money equates to 1.5mill, then that should all be paid as salaries, the rest needs to be made up by the club, if they are going to pay up to the cap, but they cant not use TV money

[Wes]

RE cap, if every team had to spend a minimum of 90% it would bring bottom teams up, as it is it brings top teams down.

Force clubs to spend money they don’t have?

TV deal covers most of the cap for SL clubs so yes they do have the money to spend 90%.

If teams can’t spend the cap then what’s the point in it? Should be scrapped if that’s the case so the clubs who have can spend what they like

[medlocke]

I wonder if having a huge company as sponsors for such a long time adds any money to the clubs in the NRL, Maybe IMG should look into sorting one out for us, change the SL name as well and while they are at it maybe they could help line up some bigger companies for club sponsors and finally bring the corner flags back into play

[Mike]

How do we improve the product then? The game is going backwards.

Pool all income into a central fund and reallocate - treat the game as one business, not a set of competing businesses trying to put one another out of business. Licencing is one step towards this, the next step is a pooled merchanising strategy and finances. I know some people will say this in unfair and the teams that make no effort benefit from the teams that do, but those teams are extremely resource constrained so how are you going to get them to "invest" more in marketing unless you give them more resource? This way everyone is pulling in the same direction. If wigan sell more shirts it benefits the whole league, if cas sell more after a good season it also benefits everyone. Doesn't have to be 100% even distributions, there can be formulas that incentivise clubs to perfom well financially and with marketing, but some component of the total financial income of the sport has to be pooled.

so would penalise the clubs that do a lot and reward the clubs that do nothing, similar to the cap now and tv deal, its easy replace them with teams that will, the franchise (new) should get rid of the teams that promised the world and delivered nothing

I said people would say that...

But seriously. In the real world, how would you raise the level of the teams who are struggling for finance to a point where they could possibly start to contribute? Getting rid of teams is great, but we'd be left with 4 or 6 maybe?

[Mike]

RE cap, if every team had to spend a minimum of 90% it would bring bottom teams up, as it is it brings top teams down.

Force clubs to spend money they don’t have?

all clubs should have money to spend up to the cap - or should have done prior to the new TV deal
Sky basically paid the equivalent of 2.1million to each SL club, and therefore they should have been made to use that money on 1st team salary cap, but clearly, several clubs didnt / dont

Even if the sky money has now dropped to a lower level, the clubs should be forced to use that to pay as much as they can on 1st team player salaries

as many have said (many times previously too), the tail wags the dog when it comes to RL, and thus we are always defined by the lowest denominator, not the highest and its time that changed

if the Sky money equates to 1.5mill, then that should all be paid as salaries, the rest needs to be made up by the club, if they are going to pay up to the cap, but they cant not use TV money

So the clubs that can't afford to use the whole TV money on salary should be kicked out and go bust I suppose?

These are all very principled arguments, but we don't live in a world where there's money sloshing around, or interest from large corporations wanting to chuck sponsorship at us (meds). How do we operate now, in order to improve our competition and get to the point where we're in demand for TV and sponsorship deals?

I'd argue you can't do that with 3-4 "big clubs" and no realistic competition outside of that group. Someone's going to compare us to the Premier league now I imagine, but we're just not in the same position as that league in any meaningful way.

IMO centralising the finances of the whole organisation makes a lot of sense. I think the Hern's wanted to do something like this - i.e. own everything, but weren't able to.

[nathan_rugby]

RE cap, if every team had to spend a minimum of 90% it would bring bottom teams up, as it is it brings top teams down.

Force clubs to spend money they don’t have?

TV deal covers most of the cap for SL clubs so yes they do have the money to spend 90%.

If teams can’t spend the cap then what’s the point in it? Should be scrapped if that’s the case so the clubs who have can spend what they like

Just because the tv deal covers the salary cap doesn’t mean the club can afford to spend it all.

I am absolutely for changes to the league and structure but throwaway statements are just fantasy.

[josie andrews]

Can we change this topic to one in the General Forum under the banner Salary Cap please?