Reasons for a percentage cap on the a-league rather than a flat cap

[costargh]

At the moment each club can spend about $1.8 million on salaries for their players plus an additional marketing fee of 25% of the $1.8 million. This article gives reasons why the a-league should revert to a  cap based on percentage of revenue rather than a "one size fits all" approach

There are a number of reasons why allowing clubs to spend a certain percent of their revenue on salaries would be beneficial to the league.

1. Capping clubs with a flat fee disallows significant player improvement with regards to improving the standard of play in Australia. A flat cap does not take into account the needs of each individual club with some clubs being forced to sign players who are not up to a certain standard just to meet minimum requirements. In the end player quality drops and you are left with only a handful of players in each team that are capable of playing a fairly high level of football week in week out.

2. A 'percent cap' ensures that shareholders of clubs are simply not sitting on huge piles of money and actually encourages success. Limiting a clubs choice of players to those constrained within a 50k-120k range simply does not give incentives to clubs to go out and search for good talent because the pool of players available is limited, thus limiting quality and ultimately leaving the league as a sub-standard national league. At the moment Melbourne Victory is run by a number of businessmen who seem to have the perception that the Victory is no.1 - a business venture and no.2- a football club. This mentality is wrong and is promoted by the lack of giving incentives to improve. The Victory were unable to capitalise on their stellar season last year and in the end it showed with poor recruiting and a lack of signings that really paid dividends. If the Victory were able to spend a percent of their revenue their potential pool of players from who they could have sought would have been much greater and thus signings probably would have benefited the club, and the leaugue in the sense that greater levels of standard result in better leagues which attract crowds, bring on more sponsors and open up opportunities globally such as global TV deals and better national TV deals.

3. An increase in the cap every year will ultimately lead to the same standard of players receiving more money then they should be receiving. There will be no increase in the standard of play and we will ultimately continue to see dismal defensive mistakes and poor finishing.

4. Bettering of the leagues players leads to a greater investment in capital resources for the club, thus improving facilities and increasing the standard of coaching and other staff. This combination will lead to a better league and a better national team. Investment in areas cannot be done without an improvment in player quality because if one believes that a player has only a certain amount of potential, then regardless of the facilities that they have at their disposal, there can only ever be a certain amount you can get out of them and they may already be at that level.

Greater players require greater clubs and thats what we want. We need to move up and an increase of 100k for example will simply not suffice. That figure which is slightly over the level of inflation barely allows for an increase in salaries for the players with only a small proportion left over for investment in better players. It simply cannot do. The salary cap has done its job for the past 3 years but greater freedom needs to be given to the clubs and decentralization from the FFA has to occur if these clubs are ever going to be able to become serious international clubs.