World Tour & salary caps.
rick_chasey
Posts: 61,040 Lives Here
This year I have been following NFL closely, and as such have come around to the idea of salary caps.
Furthermore, I think, if we take the practical challenges of implementing it aside, it is quite positive.
I shall explain.
What the nfl had done well is its structure and rules around drafting and pay is create a league whereby no team can really afford to have more than 3 top level players (at market rate).
QAs a result, the top players tend to be spread out between the teams rather than being concentrated in a handful of top teams.
This structure is ideal for cycling, as most teams operate around a star or two per team. In an ideal world, we want all the top riders on different teams, competing against each other.
Furthermore, because it is a closed shop, the draft system, along with locking their contract in for 3 years at the picking team, their is a real emphasis on finding young talent: a top level young draft is essentially an extra free top player as you don’t have to pay them market rate, so you free up money in the cap for other players.
Essentially you end up with a lot of teams with similar talent purchasing power, and so you level the playing field somewhat, and create more opportunities for the top riders to go for each other.
Getting this closed shop structure in is obviously not easy, though you wonder if the WT could be a foundation.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting discussion point.
Furthermore, I think, if we take the practical challenges of implementing it aside, it is quite positive.
I shall explain.
What the nfl had done well is its structure and rules around drafting and pay is create a league whereby no team can really afford to have more than 3 top level players (at market rate).
QAs a result, the top players tend to be spread out between the teams rather than being concentrated in a handful of top teams.
This structure is ideal for cycling, as most teams operate around a star or two per team. In an ideal world, we want all the top riders on different teams, competing against each other.
Furthermore, because it is a closed shop, the draft system, along with locking their contract in for 3 years at the picking team, their is a real emphasis on finding young talent: a top level young draft is essentially an extra free top player as you don’t have to pay them market rate, so you free up money in the cap for other players.
Essentially you end up with a lot of teams with similar talent purchasing power, and so you level the playing field somewhat, and create more opportunities for the top riders to go for each other.
Getting this closed shop structure in is obviously not easy, though you wonder if the WT could be a foundation.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting discussion point.
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[edit: I think I now know what you mean - cyclists can't go elsewhere to be paid more]
So, in the NFL model, no. They’d have fixed teams.
The obvious challenge is currently cycling teams are owned by sponsors and come and go a lot.
The NFL has the franchises - raiders, chargers, giants ETC, which are fixed and occasionally move around the US. But they always have that number of teams.
The major difference between the too sports is that the NFL teams bring in money primarily from TV contracts which are collectively negotiated with the salary cap adjusted according to how much is earned. Success in attracting money is rewarded. In cycling however the teams get their money by individual negotiation, so a cap would punish success in attracting money.
And that's before we get into where the young players come from, how that is funded and the whole nationality difference issue.
Sure, you could regulate that out.
It’s more an aspiration. Wouldn’t it be fun?
So you can avoid the situation of very highly paid helpers and even things out a bit.
To name a few things wrong with it:
- players contracts are front or back loaded to avoid cap hits (not quite that simple but you get the idea). This is very common practice and sounds like it would be an easy thing to fix, but teams always find ways around it.
- a maximum spend cap is accompanied by a minimum (89% I think) of the max. I won’t go into all the reasons for this now, but this clearly wouldn’t be so easy to apply to cycling in its current structure of sponsorship etc.
The playing field is somewhat levelled in the NFL but there are a lot more factors at play than the salary cap to achieve this.
If the NFL can’t get it to work perfectly being the US’s favourite sport and with all the money going around I don’t think the UCI stand a chance unfortunately.
#CakeStop
- @ddraver
Although the practicalities are pretty much impossible in a sport where sponsorship is pretty much the only revenue stream for the teams.
Why?
Actually, can we define “exciting racing”?
The best riders riding against each other not with each other more often.
Expand..
Cycling by it’s nature if a cooperative sport, no?
Sure, but if you're in the same jersey you ain't riding against each other. Riders who do on the biggest stage are rare enough that people write books about it. Co-operating with mutual interest is fine because, at some point, your interests will diverge. Not so in the same jersey.
Also, having people like Kwiatkowski riding as a domestique in the biggest race in the calendar is a monumental waste of talent, from an entertainment perspective.
The thing with that though is Kwiatkowski doesn’t have much opportunity to ride other classic races when the GT are on, San Sebastián falls nicely. If he went stage hunting in the GT’s then we’d call him Jens so even though i agree with the sentiment and the tours are made better for breakaways and hard stages they’re more of a side show and Kwia is not a GT contender. (Which is a good thing since i find riders like him and Valverde and Fabian, Boonen et al far more interesting to watch than froome.)
How about a World Tour points cap? Just a thought.
You'd get weird results - riders like Valverde would be overly punished ,whereas your Gilberts, who do nothing then win a monument every 3 years, would be over-valued.
Kiwat was pretty good value when he rode for QS. He's like a cross between Sagan and Gilbert - who are both good value in GTs.
This. I think that the NFL model would breach EU competition law. It would distort competition (in a way that visiting NFL teams/ football fair play rules do not) and so trying to implement it now wouldn't be lawful.
I don’t think that the “but sponsorship” argument holds water – if the big teams (and, most importantly of all, ASO) wanted this, the sponsorship revenue streams could be restructured to work in the new model. Money in, exposure out, nothing is insurmountable.
This is what I’m suggesting.
A points cap per squad. So if you’re at the Tour your squad can have a maximum of 2000 points. But a minimum of 1200. And to be select a rider must hit a certain bar.
(Points random and not reflective of real structure)
Then if you said if you only have 200 points, you can;t earn more than 150K you can stop people sitting up.
Surely it means smaller races will be robbed of big name talents who might ride well, so they can support a star rider at the tour.
true to a point i concede. but his real value lies elsewhere (from an entertainment perspective)
The draft system encourages lots of interesting and economically unsound behaviour, e.g., trading loads of later round picks for one first round pick, when statistically first round picks don't do much better if at all - because the college game is totally different to the NFL.
I would absolutely back it if you could get the kind of stable franchise system they have in the NFL.
That's exciting racing though innit?
- @ddraver
I guess the closest thing you would get to that would be Quickstep in cycling. For instance picking up Gilbert and getting a couple of decent seasons out of him.