Quote:
Originally Posted by JMiller
Exactly, that's why boxing is the most efficient and least exploitive professional sport out there- no unions and plenty of different organizations to choose between.
- see, that's sarcasm.
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doesnt boxing pay its 'gate draws' more obscene amounts of money then any other sport? ultimately in the world of entertainment... gate draws should get paid whatever they are worth. in music, the rolling stones will make more money doing a concert then the local bar band will... because they draw a gate. both bands technically put on a show and play music, but one of them draws a gate and thus makes obscene amounts of money.
in a movie... the headliner might get 20 million dollar or more for being the gate draw... while the extra that is in the background scene for a min or two might get paid less then the caterer for the day will. both actors have a part in making the movie, but the gate draw gets the big paycheck.
that's the main problem with unions in the 'team sports' because they have skewed the compensation levels that the 'non-gate' draws are being paid. We all know owners have no issues with handing out mega cheques to the attractive free agent superstars in the league or the young homegrown talents either. If a player can be marketed to the fans, then the owners 'get it' and will go into bidding wars to have the player on their own team. This will happen whether there is a union or a cba or whatever. Its been like 50 years since the days of ted lindsey and the old exploition system of the 6 team league.
The world has grown up since then.
The reality is these days... if there was any real profit to be made running a pro hockey league, then someone would try to do it. The WHA was an attempt in the 1970's and it went bankrupt quickly ruining the fortunes of many of the millionares that took part in it. The IHL tried to get started on a slightly smaller scale and went out of business almost as quickly.
We will have to see how long the KHL can last...
In Football the most successful sport, both the USFL and the XFL tried to launch in recent times to cash in on the cow there... both went out of business quickly losing gobs of money for the owners that took the risk.
The reality is... there just isnt much money around for people that want to be owners of sports teams. The players arent going to pitch in and help some competition league get started. They are all fighting to maximize every penny they can INDIVIDUALLY make. I mean in a very real sense, when an NHL player is negotiating his contract, he is negotiating it AGAINST other NHL players. The CBA guarantees the players as a COLLECTIVE a certain % of HRR. This means that if the owners havent handed out enough INDIVIDUAL contracts that escrow will compensate the WHOLE of the union at the end of the season with the UNPAID money.
when an INDIVIDUAL player leverages an extra million dollars from an 'owner' this money is coming out of the % of HRR that otherwise would have been paid to the union as a whole.
I mean... that is how it is working in reality. So I dont really get how all these fans here are waving their union colors as a reason to support the union's position here. Ultimately at the end of the day... these players are not being hard done by with the amounts of money they are being paid. NON-GATE attraction players are getting a million dollars and more per year to be in a business that gives them like 4 months off each year. I dont think any of us are saying lower the minimum salary for any NHL player... and probably most of us would support AHL and ECHL players getting paid more. Even us supporters of the owners position do all believe that the players deserve a good level of compensation for entertaining us...
but how much is enough? The players are freaking out now and willing to lose a season because they are worried about what... a 10% possible loss in a year's worth of their salary... or something like that? This 'make whole' thing is about whether or not a small percentage of the money they were 'expecting' will get paid out or not. The actual amount of money any 1 player stands to lose is around a million dollars... and that is only if that player is making in excess of 10 million dollars.
the players themselves continue to use projections that the league is going to grow at huge % levels each year. they use this as the emotional fixation point about how much money they are 'losing' in the new cba... but then when they are asked to trust their own projections and trust that there will be money enough to pay the 'make whole' program in the future... the union says they cant.
the union needs a guarantee that the money is going to get paid... but there is no guarantee for the owners. the owners actually lose tons of money all the time and are just asking now to lose a bit less. They will still lose money... but thats the nature of pro sports. The owners are always willing to lose some money. They will always hand out the big contracts to try to get the best players for their team.
If a player actually 'deserves' to be paid 5-10-even 20 million dollars a year... some owner will pay it. Michael Jordon got paid. Alex Rodriguez gets paid. Wayne Gretzky got paid. Peyton Manning gets paid.
Owners dont mind paying guys that will fill their arenas and generate tv audiences. There was a time that unions were very necessary. Even into the 1970's the unions were doing a good job helping the players get free agency rights and getting the draft to be fair to young men. It is very very very difficult to find any good that any union has done in the past 30 years though. Pro sports have been suffering lockout/strikes again and again and again the past 30 years even though the players have seen the amount of their compensation increase 1000% and more during this time.
The world is starved for entertainment. If these yahoos dont kill their golden goose, there is plenty of money to go around. Boxers are getting their share too even without a union. Golfers and Tennis pros are getting more money then they ever imagined 30 years ago and doing it without a union. All you need to do to make alot of money in one of these popular sports is be the person that draws the crowd.
Like when you write a book... if your book sells you get paid. When you sing a song... if its popular you get paid. It is easy how it works unless a union gets involved and then all of a sudden you see some 3rd line guy who managed a career year get to arbitration and say he scored as many goals this year as the superstar did in an off season... so pay up
It is the third line guys making 2-3-4 mill a year that is currently the problem {and also how the taxpayers are being hijacked to fund the revenue streams that allow for this broken economic model to continue to limp along too}
there is no one screaming that crosby or stamkos or toews or the sedin twins or anyone of this ilk is getting paid too much. And we arent freaked out that guys like thornton and campbell and paille get enough to live like royalty either. The big problem with the union is how it has put a system into place where it becomes necessary to pay peverly and kelly and boychuck 3+ mill a year because that is what is now 'fair market value'
teams need guys like this to win... but guys like this dont need 3+ mill a year to still be getting paid 'more then they are worth.'
And that ultimately... is where the union is screwing up and destroying the economic of the game and creating this mess where the owners of the small teams just cant continue to be 'forced' into losing more money then they otherwise would agree to lose while creating all these very high paid jobs for the union members.
sports leagues do go out of business all the time if the economics dont make sense. teams fold and contract all the time if the economics dont work. the owners might be billionares but they will only lose the money they are prepared to lose before they reach their breaking point and say no more. Obviously that breaking point is close in the NHL cause they have supported two lockouts in the past 7 years. Lost one season and are prepared to lose this one too.
People can be in denial all they want... and say the owners are making gobs of money... but owner that make gobs of money dont lose 2 seasons in a 10 year period and risk pissing off all their fans in the process. The players sure as hell arent asking to lose the season. They say again and again and again they are willing to play under the old system. Why not? They were making crap loads of money under the old system. Of course they are willing to keep playing under it.
The owners though... arent willing to keep going as is.
think about it.
or, just blindly support unions right or wrong...
its not very difficult to see the truth here if people are wanting to see it. I hear people keep saying they 'dont understand the owners postion' and 'how can a league make 3.3 billion dollars and still shut down?' or 'not make a profit?'
the answers are soooooooooooooooo simple. 3.3 bill revenue IS NOT 3.3 bill profit. In fact if you have 3.3 bill revenue and 3 bill in expenses then your profit is around 300 million. This might sound like a lot but if one team is making 150 mill of it then the other 29 teams are splitting an average of 5 mill each.
a 5 mill return on a 200-300 million dollar investment is not a healthy return in todays economic enviroment. then 12 or so teams have ZERO chance of making any profit at all unless they are going 3-4 rounds deep into the playoffs.
there just arent alot of billionare owners around willing to do busines when they have ZERO chance of getting any return on a 200-300 million dollar investment. If there were... then rival leagues would start up. Bottom 10 markets wouldnt be constantly up for sale.
theres always 1 or 2 suckers out there that want to experience the glamour of ownign a sports team. So they will buy the tampa franchice or the islander franchise or whatever and run it for 5-6 years until they run out of money. It will be a shakey ownership the entire time with the owners constantly going to the local goverment begging for handouts. We see this in Atlanta and Phoenix... in St Louis and Nashville.... In Dallas and Florida and Columbus and somewhat even in the small canadien markets too over the past decade.
Again, even the most hardened of owner supporters is NEVER going to say that Toronto or Montreal or New York or Philadelphia or Boston cant make money. They do... but making money isnt a sin in this world. Apple computers and Walmart make money. It is okay to make money.
What most of us 'pro owners' are worried about is when fans in Atlanta and Phoenix hand over millions and millions of taxpayer dollars to their franchise to try to have hockey in their market... and then see the teams fail and move anyhow cause the business model simply doesnt work for markets like this. Did the players offer to give anything back to the taxpayers? The owners in these markets lost their shirts but the players made just as much money playing here as they do in Toronto and New York.
That is where the 'anti union' people here wonder just what the hell is going on... and how is the union actually making this process better?
But all in all... in the non union sports like boxing and golf and tennis etc etc... the top performers are getting paid even more money then the top guys are in hockey or any other unionized sport. And that is how it should be... that the top performers get paid the most. Like in movies or singing or tv or books or painting or any other entertainment source that the public wants
