Players wages would not be artificially inflated, they would just no longer be artificially deflated as they are now. When a man has a set of special skills, he gets to sell them to the highest bidder, thats how a labour market works. The rarer and more valuable your skills, the more  you can sell them for. If Koukash wants to pay £1m a year to Sam Burgess, that is Sam Burgess value. He hasnt artificially inflated it in any way, shape or form. And yes, clubs will outdo each other, just like every other company in every other industry in every free country on the planet. Its not only the basis of business its the basis of sport as well. 


Our clubs arent asking for extra protection, they are asking for someone else to take the responsibility and that isnt fair or morally justifiable. Leeds Rhinos made £1m last year off the back of their employees. Their employees are banned from benefitting from the fruits of their labour. The salary cap literally stops some RL club employees from being rewarded for the success they created. 


You even contradict yourself here, whilst the mobile phone industry wasnt decimated by nokia's struggles, nokia's struggles didnt force Samsung and Apple to join together and agree to pay their employees less. 


You are also drawing a false dichotomy between players wages and investment in other areas of the business. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, they are not intrinsically linked, they are two separate issues. What you are doing is playing an emotional argument of framing the opportunity cost of players wages as long term investment in infrastructure when that isnt the vase at all. You might as well be screaming "wont somebody please think of the children"


Your argument is wrong for many reasons, 1)there are many other opportunity costs to investing in players, 2) there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that increased wages for players cannot me a catalyst for increase in revenue, 3) you draw a direct correlation between reducing spending elsewhere ant club revenue falling when there is no evidence that is necessarily the case 4) you draw a correlation between the SC and clubs 'accepting they arent going to compete' when even with a salary cap the majority of clubs accept they cannot compete. 5) you argue that clubs need to raise revenue first before they raise players wages, which even if we put reason 2 of this to one side, Leeds Rhinos made £1m last year, the salary cap stops the players upon whose backs that money was made sharing in that. It literally stops them sharing in the fruit of their labour. 6) this has created a situation whereby the players are expected to earn less so that clubs can lose less, but when that club makes money, that money still goes in to an owners pocket. You are putting the responsibility for not making a loss on the back of the players but the benefits of making a profit in rich mens pockets. 


Rob Oates seems a very capable man, very good at his job, but there are tens of thousands of good commercial managers out there, there are thousands of companies with bigger commercial turnover and bigger growth than leeds rhinos, the idea that his skills are more valuable or less fungible that JP or Kevin Sinfield is utter nonsense. You are comparing an MD and Commercial guy at a relatively small company to generational talents. It's just silly.

One the contrary, owners have less control over players salaries because of the salary cap

FFS Smokey! What is wrong with you? Is there any point attempting a debate if you're going to be this daft?

It is artificially inflated. Because Salford can't afford to pay that. Koukash can. He is distorting the market (in this hypothetical).
In the same way as Chinese steel currently flooding the market and being sold at below cost price is artificially deflating the market.
In the same way as a large supermarket opening up and selling things below cost-price eg beer, distorts and artificially deflates the local market.

But sport is very very different from every other industry on earth. It's basis is to win, not make money. An ordinary business will strive to ensure a solid business and to reduce costs in order to make higher profits. There's no such incentive for sports clubs. Because their motive isn't profit, it's success on the pitch.
Unlike football we can't afford clubs going under so we have to realign clubs priorities away from purely chasing success. It's much the same as governments introducing workplace or industry regulations, because those things are often neglected by ordinary businesses in the quest for profit. In sport what is sacrificed is financial stability.

In a small sport financial stability is absolutely vital.
Take a look at the top RL clubs. All are relatively financially stable. Take a look at the bottom of the table, it's a different picture.

I haven't contradicted myself at all with the Nokia example. It was an example of where sport and RL is different to ordinary businesses. When Nokia failed their customers didn't just stop buying mobile phones, they moved to Google or Apple or whoever. That doesn't happen in sport. If Leeds go under their 15k fans aren't suddenly all going to go and watch Cas. They're lost to the sport/industry.

We, as a sport, cannot afford that. We nearly killed ourselves in the 80's and 90's with high player wages compared to low incomes. We have to rebalance that.

As for your comments about Rob Oates, your dismissal of the effect of his and Hetheringtons impact on the club is very naive.
How do you think we signed Jamie Peacock? How do you think we plough over a million pounds a year into our youth development that produces such good young players?
Where do you think the money comes from to build new stands and new facilities at Headingley?
It's the professionalism and skill of managers like Hetherington and Oates that produces the company environment and revenues to enable Leeds to do those things.

They don't come cheaply and many clubs are doing their operations on the cheap and so get cheap results. Put more money into those areas to get better people and you get better results.

And again, don't be daft about players wages and more money on other areas not being mutually exclusive.
That's just utter batsh|t and you know it. The only way to do both is to increase revenues. Which doesn't just happen by accident. You have to invest in those areas of the club that produce revenue to increase them.
If you do it the other way around we're back to the 80's and 90's approach of betting on spending more on players will bring trophies. The problem comes when that doesn't happen.

It's the difference between investing and speculating. We desperately, desperately as a sport need much more investing and less speculating.

Grow up, It is fact. You may not like it but that doesn't change it.

You seem to have a passion for staff getting paid wages rather than businesses making profits.
Businesses are there to make profits.

So are you a champion of the working man, demanding an end to businesses making profits and paying their workers a pitance?
Or are you a champion of the freemarket which encorages wage suppression and businesses making a profit for shareholders?

You can't be both.

If anything the free market suggests that we should pay players who are effectively staff even less. We should export the league to china and get teams of people to play for $1 a day, just like Apple do with their staff and then export that product, produced at rock bottom prices back to the UK via TV were people will pay a premium to watch and give up on the sport being a spectator sport in the UK at all.

No. You are wrong. Just plain and factually wrong. If Koukash is prepared to pay Burgess £1m then that is his value. That you may disagree is neither here nor there. You want to define it is artificially inflated because it frames your argument as solving a problem. But it is still wrong. If a new big spending entrant to a market is prepared to spend more for a limited resource that isn't an artificial inflation of its value. It's the natural inflation of a market working properly as is value falling when there is a glut in the market. The salary cap is one sided corporate welfare.

Sport is not vastly different to every other business is the world. Also a normal business does not necessarily reduce costs to increase profits.

You again draw a correlation between spending on wages and a clubs viability, a correlation which simply does not exist.

You can state it is bat to deny the correlation between players Wages and other ares but it doesn't make it so.

As for your point re JP/rob Oates. It is utter utter nonsense. In fact your entire narrative about the rhinos and our outlook is entirely wrong. Prior to rob Oates even joining and a within a year of Gary Hetherington doing so we had broken the world record for a transfer fee. We used the signing of a big name as a catalyst for our growth and it worked very well. We had no problem spending money on Ellis or Lauitiiti, and why on earth do we deserve praise for spending a million pounds on youth development if that million pound comes from underpaying players? Its not Paul Caddick who has gone without, he has a million pounds in his pocket and a company he took over for next to nothing which is now worth tens of millions of pounds, all largely on the back of avoiding paying his employees their market worth. Im not sure why i should be impressed by that.

And there is a difference between speculating and investing, but that difference is a vague one and often only visible after the fact. So let's make sure those responsible for the decisions not only benefit from getting them right, but are also the ones responsible for when they get it wrong instead of under paying players.

I would be perfectly happy with Leeds rhinos making a billion pounds in profits if it was paying it's workers a their market value.

A free market does not suppress wages. And if you wish to export it to china then go ahead. But I think what you would find is that I could bring in more money here paying wages congruent with quality as people would pay more to watch my higher quality game than your low quality one.

I'm also not sure I would use apples exploitation of Asian workers in an argument in favour of a salary cap.

I didn't know Ayn Rand was a Rugby League fan.

the truth is that my preference would be the complete opposite of any Randian thinking. I would rather we had a far more centralised structure trying to sell RL rather than the individual clubs, with the players as a stakeholder in partnership with the clubs. But we dont have that, so there is no justification for limiting players wages, they are expressly banned from being financial stakeholders in the game, have had their security removed by the reintroduction of P+R and a centralised structure which has distanced itself and absolved itself from all responsibility for the growth of the game at a pro level. What we have is simply incompatible with a fair and morally justifiable, none-exploitative salary cap.

Added to that the thing just doesnt work.

I think it's you who's got this wrong. There is research to demonstrate the very phenomenon that you're trying to suggest won't happen; it even has a name - destructive competition - and it clearly describes that sports team owners will, on average, overspend on playing talent if it means they are more likely to win. The result of destructive competition is wage inflation and bankruptcy for some teams.

I think that salary caps are an attempt to safeguard sports clubs from the comings and goings of various owners with different levels of wealth and/or sanity - and to maintain the interest of fans through a more even competition; and history seems to suggest that it works - it disaggregates playing talent and maintains the revenue of clubs (through ticket sales) due to continued interest from fans, who above all, are attracted to unpredictability.

There probably is a decent argument to suggest that in clubs that are profitable, the SC leaves a disproportionate amount of profit for the owner, but that's hardly an issue in RL - at least not in SL.

The salary cap gives you less control over wages... I just don't know how you debate with this Fox News style approach.

I'm out.

Destructive competition isnt as easily applicable to sport as your argument supposes. There are, after all, only 17 players in a matchday squad. And there are other barriers, as described earlier within the thread which would stop such a thing. It also could, certainly in the case of RL, that the salary cap encourages more star players to congregate at bigger clubs, giving them an even greater advantage.

The destructive competition argument assumes that all clubs are in the market for star players and it is the open bidding which would force them out. The unfortunate fact is that the lower SL clubs are not priced out of the market because of the lack of the SC but the SC acts as a barrier to market to them.

As i have said earlier in the thread, if destructive competition is a worry (which i dont believe it to be as big a worry as you suppose) there are far better, more natural, fairer and more targeted protections.

I would also clarify that the negatives of destructive competition do not equate to an artificial inflation of market value.

As for your procompetitive arguments in favour of the salary cap, this is the big problem the RFL would have if the case ever did go to court. All those arguments could certainly be made in favour of a salary cap. The problem is that they simply havent been borne out. The Salary Cap hasnt protected clubs from owners incompetence, hasnt maintained interest through a more even competition and hasnt either created an unpredictable competition nor can it point to having taken advantage of the opportunities having done so would have created.

With no salary cap you have complete control over players wages. With a Salary cap you are limited.

You may less able to strong arm players in to signing a contract for less than their open market value, but you have complete and utter control over what you offer.

Just look at football clubs if you want to see how rugby would be without a salary cap. In the past twenty years we have witnessed the players costs rocketing up with clubs over inflating players values in an attempt to get the players they want on their teams. success bred success and we now have a situation in the premiership where the only way a tem can challenge the status quo is if they have a millionaire sugar daddy to fund their spending. Unfortunately, as rugby doesn't have a much money as football, any teams that wished to compete for players against their more successful rivals will find they have to sink more of their money into the wages (Leading to the prices inflating) than they would into the stadium, back room staff, the club as a whole.

What you find with Leeds, (As Sinfield famously announced after winning one of his grand finals.) is that the players are being paid less than they could get from other clubs, but they come to Leeds because they believe they stand a better chance to win silverware there than they would elsewhere. Hetherington has his fixed wage structure that he is unwilling to break and he has shown that he would rather players leave than break it. For an example, look at Mark Calderwood. he was the leading try scorer but wanted more money than Hetherington would pay and so he ended up at Wigan and didn't win another trophy.

Does anyone apart from Leeds fans believe that speech given by Sinfield? I doubt most clubs (NRL aside) would be able to afford the wages that the likes of Hall and Watkins would be on. What a load or bollox.

I see you ignored the point that you can't be both free market, anti profit and pro increased wages.

So I'll leave that to one side.

Lets take on this next fallacy that poor players are being forced to work in slave labour conditions. Surely the government would do something about these poor players not being able to get a decent wage for a decent days pay?

Players not being given their market worth, surely they could go get other jobs elsewhere in the world or in the UK or in other professions???

Surely people would just stop playing RL once they found out that they were on less than minimum wage.

Or could it be that for some people with a limited skill set, the prospect of getting wages way outside what they could achieve in other industries is still a tempting prospect. Because they could be engineers or accountants or surgeons etc....

i addressed it. I dont accept your premise. as i described earlier i think you have set out a false dichotomy.

Have you seen our government?

some do.

You've hit the nail on the head.
Junior development is the way forward for all Super League and Championship clubs.
Its no coincidence that the best clubs in Super League have the best junior set ups.

Seconded.

A successful youth system allows clubs to get more value from their cap allowance. The top clubs can all afford and attract 13-17 quality players, but the game is so often won beyond that. The better quality of youth you have, the more you minimise the impact when you loose your high-earning, high-quality stars.

Leeds were without several players the other week - Stevie Ward, Jamie Jones-Buchanan, Paul Aiton, Liam Sutcliffe just off my head. Two of those were replaced by Josh Walters and Jimmy Keinhorst. Now, I don't know what those two players are paid, but I suspect that there are call centre workers in Leeds City Centre who are earning more this year than the two men who combined for the winning try in the Grand Final.

That doesn't mean the players are underpaid or that Leeds are being cheap - the salary they are being paid is consummate to their experience and value to the club, but having quality in your 'lower paid' positions is what makes the biggest difference.

It's not my argument - it's one that's been made in research [ispecifically related[/i to sports teams - and it found that on average, in an uncapped environment, owners will overvalue players in pursuit of on-field success; and the result of overvaluing talent is, undoubtedly, wage inflation. It's logical to assume that financial difficulties for less wealthy teams, and aggregation of talent to more wealthy teams, would follow.

The procompetitive argument I think is still sound - we may not have a perfect system in SL, for some of the reasons you've described, but there is precedent in other sports worldwide, and the general consensus seems to be that sports SC's are not subject to anti-trust or anti-competition law; largely because they are an agreement between the clubs and the governing body, and that players sign up to that based on collective bargaining by their representative organisations. Didn't US baseball players challenge it and end up locked out for the best part of a season? The fact that the big 4 sports in the US are still salary capped would suggest that Derek Beaumont, with all his bottles of water, won't get very far in his attempts to overturn it here.

I understand the argument from a purely market forces standpoint - but you're applying rules to a situation in which those rules are not relevant or applicable. Sport is not a perfect market - the product is inelastic, there is no meaningful substitute and the primary driver is not profit maximisation.

did they over-value them or overspend on them? If over-valuing how are these studies quantifying value? If their pursuit is on field success, and that is achieved, how can that possibly result in those players being over-valued? Im not disputing that these studies have been done (i know they have) simply that the terminology and conclusions are different to how they are being presented here.

Again, wage inflation isnt a bad thing, my wage inflates every year, as im sure most do. So i dont think it is logical to assume that financial difficulties for less wealthy teams will follow and there would be more aggregation of talent at the wealthy teams.

Put in a real world scenario, which players not at Leeds, Wigan, Saints, Wire, Hudds, Hull or Les Catalans are elsewhere in SL because those clubs cannot afford them under the cap?



In the US there is specific exemptions from anti-trust laws which is entirely dependent on agreement with players unions. Something which is shamefully lacking here. But we arent the US and have different laws to them. Id also argue even if exactly the same principles were to apply, when your salary cap is nearly 150m it is a lot easier to argue it is working in everyones favour than when it has been stuck at 1.8m for nearly 15 years falling by about 50% in real terms over the course of its life. You are going to struggle to convince anyone that whilst the TV deal has gone up hugely and attendances and advertising have gone up it is necessary and beneficial for the market to function that wages are 1/3rd of what Wigan were spending when the cap was brought in.

With regards to the market forces argument, as i said, it isnt my preference and is a clear 2nd choice. I dont think you can argue on one-hand a salary cap is necessary and beneficial for all parties and on the other hand that clubs arent even trying to make a profit anyway. As for there being no meaningful substitute I dont think that holds water. Sport is entertainment, not only are there a huge amount of alternative sports out there, there are even more alternative entertainment options .

But that is a self defeating argument. If Leeds get to be exceptional because they are bringing through Josh Walters and Jimmy Keinhorsts and Stevie Wards, and every other club wants to be successful too, then every other club will be trying to sign Josh Walters, Jimmy Keinhorst and Stevie Ward, so the value of those players goes up.

What the salary cap does is stops an ambitious lower club paying out enough to tempt a Stevie Ward to sign for them instead of Leeds because the opportunity cost of doing so is too large. So it keeps the value of Stevie Ward lower than it otherwise would have been. So Leeds can offer Stevie Ward or Josh Walters, or Jimmy Keinhorst a relatively low wage because an ambitious lower club would need to offer substantially more to overcome the other things leeds offer meaning they cant spend as much elsewhere and the clubs who can offer the same 'other' things as Leeds cannot offer a meaningful amount more than Leeds because of the cap.

This is why we see such a relatively small amount of movement of star players. We dont even see them moving between the big clubs. When a star player moves he will go to Union or the NRL. Who was the last star player to move between SL clubs? Stuart Fielden? thats nearly a decade ago.

Of this years dream team, there are 2 NRL players, and 11 SL players, of those 11 SL players 8 are playing for the club they made their SL debut. Of the three to move, JP moved a decade ago. Danny Brough went to Hudds from Wakefield and Luke Gale signed from the relegated club.

The reality of the salary cap is it has destroyed the market for top quality players, they simply dont move from the top clubs. So an ambitious lower club is at a disadvantage in signing young players, have to pay more to attract fringe players and simply cannot sign top players. Its all very well arguing that good youth development allows a club to get more value from the cap, but it is impossible under the cap for a lesser club to create a fair playing field in attracting those players. The SC entrenches the big clubs at the top and the bottom clubs at the bottom.

If you over-value, you overspend; you're nit-picking on language. And no, I'm not changing the terminology or conclusions to suit - I'm summarising the findings of research specifically into SC's in sport, which is extensive, academic and credible.



Different kind of inflation - as you well know, so it really is logical; if certain teams can suddenly inflate the wages of players to attract them to their clubs, less wealthy clubs either have to gamble to keep up by paying more than they can afford, or fall behind - both resulting in financial difficulties. The more likely scenario is that certain teams have a roster of internationals and talent is aggregated at those clubs - damaging the competitiveness of the league and impacting negatively on spectator interest at all but the wealthiest teams.



I don't know.



US anti-trust law was based on UK anti-competition law - and now the influence is strongly in the other direction; EU law applies in some cases (possibly SL, since the inclusion of a French team means it crosses borders) and again, that was heavily influenced by the US model; so whilst the terminology and laws are different, they will be closely aligned and I just can't see an agreement that has been subject to collective bargaining being ruled any differently here than it was in the US. And if the SL players union is toothless - perhaps that's something for Jon Wilkin and his comrades to sort out - not a judge.

In terms of it working in everyone's favour - you miss out a key stakeholder group - the supporters; and it would be fairly straightforward to argue that an unregulated bun fight for players signatures would not be in their favour. Unless they happen to be supporters of a club with unlimited funds of course, which is exactly what a SC seeks to avoid.



In economic terms, there is no meaningful substitute; if Coca Cola put their fizzy spew up to £5 a tin, I can buy Pepsi's alternative spew - or a supermarket own brand. If Wakefield put their ticket price up to football levels or go out of business, I can't suddenly start supporting Leeds, or go to the pictures instead - sport doesn't work like that, nor should it, and economists understand that perfectly well - hence the significant amount of research into the subject.

I hope Derek Beaumont does take the RFL to court over the SC - I think he'd lose, and the concept of the SC would have a sound basis in law - then we can stop arguing about it.

I read a tweet recently suggesting that League 13 may be no more.

Lack of support and funds,apparently.