With our recent discussions in class about the majority of the clubs in Europe not being profitable, the article attached shows some of the glaring differences between the NFL and the EPL. Most notably is the salary cap and salary floor that exists in the NFL, meaning that there is a maximum and minimum in which a player can be paid. The EPL has no real system like that in place so to be competitive, teams are paying players astronomical amounts of money. The second main aspect has to do with a much more equitable distribution of TV revenues among all the teams in the NFL, and there are other more detailed factors that will never allow a team to go into debt. Financial Fair Play might help alleviate some of the looming bankruptcies of EPL teams, but I am having trouble understanding why the EPL has not taken a few notes from the governance and culture of the NFL.
http://warroomsports.com/blog/2014/01/27/the-nfl-vs-epl/
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the NFL got rid of their salary cap and the English Premier League added one. Would the majority of the EPL clubs become profitable and vice versa for the majority of teams in the NFL? It drives me insane that Major League Baseball hasn't utilized a salary cap but then again, the beauty and intricacies of the game have developed from small-market teams having to adapt and implement other strategies to compete with large market teams (i.e. Moneyball).
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, it is the club system that is destroying European sports, including the Euroleague. The selfishness of the powerful clubs prohibits profitability and any chance of sustainability of powerful soccer leagues due to their stranglehold on the soccer, marketing, and broadcasting market. While Major League Baseball has managed to stay afloat without a salary cap, it is a game with advanced statistical analytics, which allow lower budget teams to adapt to be able to compete, but many also have a single star player that is critical to the success. Soccer in Europe does not use near the degree of statistics or analytics that American sports do, further hurting the smaller club's chances of competing and tightening the major club's hold on the market.
ReplyDeleteThere is always going to be the need of some sort of salary cap, although that term has flexibility to become very loosely interpreted, and Will I totally agree that the array of statistical metrics developed in the baseball community has improved the game in a very positive way. The MLB will always be referred to in the United States as "America's Pastime", and for a period many people thought it was a dying sport, so here's a question:
ReplyDeleteDo you think the possible perceived loss of popularity changed the game, or did the game develop in the way it did for other reasons?
I don't think baseball is a dying sport, but baseball as a spectator sport is certainly no longer America's past time. The NFL has exceeded MLB in popularity many times over. I think one interesting trend will be seeing if smaller Premier League clubs can adapt using "Moneyball" approaches that have helped smaller MLB teams.
ReplyDeleteAfter class discussions it is definitely evident how much more profitable the NFL is in comparison the the EPL. With the growing demand for the best players, the EPL is forced to pay high prices to attain and keep the best players in their league. Since there is no salary cap, there is no limit on how much they will pay the players. On the other hand, the NFL does not have a comparable debt to that of the EPL, because they have a salary cap and budget an amount that will not allow them to go into debt.
ReplyDeleteIt´s crazy to think about how teams consider themselves as one or a whole unit, yet when individual players are getting bought for 50million+ euro they´re actually hurting the team more than helping it. There´s going to be a time when clubs just can´t support the amount of debt they´re getting into. That´s one of the major reasons why I´m a fan of FFP.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that baseball is still America's Pastime. It does not matter that the NFL is much more popular, baseball with always maintain that pedigree amongst many fans in the United States. I love the Moneyball approach and I think Billy Beane revolutionized baseball, but at the same time I am a Yankee fan and also loved the bottomless spending of George Steinbrenner
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