Quote:
Originally Posted by sjaustin77
Only 6 (20%) lost money over the last CBA. Only 3 lost anything significant. Except for a couple of franchises at most it was through overspending, cap circumventing contracts, mismanagement, etc. It needed some give back by players and tweaking not a major overhaul all at once like the owners want.
I have never argued it doesn't need change but it is about other issues than just taking more from the players. I'm not even arguing the players shouldn't give back. My argument is the player's proposal at 50/50 with their make whole number should be plenty. The players deserve their current contracts honored in full at 57%. And the owners shouldn't get to change all the players contracting rights.
50/50 with the players make whole saves the owners $246M/yr. There is no need to hold out for the owners make whole version. The difference is minimal.
More revenue sharing is needed and the players want that.
Changing the upfront bonus contracts is needed. No more Philly-Nashville situations.
Length isn't a huge deal to me but 8 to 10 years should be fair. The owners don't need 5 years.
I think changing the cap floor is needed so that teams aren't forced to spend over their budgets. (Most still will but this mechanism should be there).
I think changing the 2nd contracts to have better cost control over young players is needed.
The owners need to take some responsibility for how and why we got here, for the players current contracts and for the future.
They should have a chance to make really good money on their investment if they run them with even half a brain.
They shouldn't be entitled to be guaranteed to make money no matter how they operate by taking it from players or rich owners.
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i just think maybe the owners did take some responsibility... after all they didnt shut down any teams despite signing a crappy deal. they didnt turn to collusion or try to falsify business reports to the players. it seems to me they honored the old deal. in fact they are accused by you of 'overspending' their budgets. so it seems to me they took responsibility and honored the terms of the old deal
and at the end of every cba theres an opportunity to renegotiate it. you live by it while its in effect... then you get a chance to renegotiate it when it expires. The players are asking 'whats in it for us?' the answer to that is obvious though... 700 odd jobs paying an average of over 2 million dollars a year guaranteed money
thats... a lot.
you say that the teams make a lot of money but they really dont. if you take 200 million dollars and invest it in ANY NORMAL BUSINESS for 6 years you would expect to make at least 40 million dollars minimum back. thats only a return of around 7 mill per year or 3.5% return on capital investment. The number of teams that actually have earned that type of profit since the last cba are limited to the top 10 teams in the league.
this... despite most teams getting millions and millions in government handouts... despite the new uniforms... despite some other one time only benefits. The profitability of these teams as meager as it is... is fragile and cant be reasonably projected into the future under the current CBA system.
Im not sure a 50/50 split will actually fix things either. At some point you cant have it both ways though. If you are saying the owners create their own crap by over spending... then whats the fear? Wont they continue to overspend? And if they do... wont the players be ok?
If the owners overspend anyhow... then whats the fear?
I dont get what the fear is? Why LEGISLATE them into a deal that is going to destroy them when you say they will overspend due to their egos and greed and stupidity anyhow? Why not just let them overspend by natural methods if its going to happen anyhow?
You are an interesting poster to read for me... cause i dont quite get your argument. You keep saying the owners are to blame cause they overspend anyhow and yet you still take the players side in this and say the owners are in the wrong for asking for a fix.
i got to admit, i dont get how thats a consistient pov conclusion from the facts you are tossing out.
Me... i dont think the owners necessarily deserve more profit, but i take them for their word that alot of teams are in danger of going out of business. We see it in pheonix and atlanta without any doubt at all... we see it in new york with the islanders and in tampa and nashville. We saw it in Pittsburgh not long ago. We see huge chinks in the armour in places like San Jose and Dallas where they actually have good teams usually. We see the Colorado market turning and we see ongoing problems in markets like Florida. I am probably missing a name or two...
I know they say Buffalo cant withstand a team in hamilton or another one in toronto cause most their fans commute down or whatever... so is buffalo a solid franchise under the current cba?
How many rock solid franchises are there... i mean a franchise that can turn a profit even when it misses the playoffs? Remember only 16 teams make the playoffs each year so its reasonable to say 14 wont. If 10 of those 14 teams are GUARANTEED to lose money because they missed the playoffs then how viable is the current financial system?
Would you stay in a business where you had a 33% chance of losing money this year?
You continuously toss out this idea that franchises go up in value... but you are quoting paper numbers guessed at by forbes. You havent gone and done the research to find actual sale figures. I tried to do that myself... but sales of teams is COMPLICATED. There is all sorts of crap that goes along with alot of these sales. Theres land deals in Tampa... and Casino deals in Pittsburgh... and tv sations in Toronto... and naming rights/management deals for some arenas... and all sorts of crap...
I say again... if owning a pro sports team was this lucrative business you suggest it is... then rival leagues would be sprouting up everywhere. The last 2 rival hockey leagues that tried though were the WHA and the IHL. Different models... both leages died BLOODY DEATHS that bankrupted alot of their owners.
Dont get me wrong... theres alot of billionares or wannabe billionares that love the GLORY of owning a pro team, and will willingly lose some money to get the EGORUSH. So life does go on. When one owner gets bloodied to the point he bails... some other SUCKER is lured in... so far... usually... most the time.
But what type of plan is this... where you have to turn over your bottom 10 teams to new SUCKERS every 5-6 years because the new CBA that promised to make their teams viable FAILS just like the old CBA did?
The reality is that all the teams do sell that are in trouble in this last few years... none of the owners that sold walked away happy. None are coming back. Leopold got a really sweetheart deal when he was the ONLY guy that wanted a new team. The group that got SUCKERED into taking his team has been shaky ever since and had criminals involved. The Los Angles ownership group has arena deals and shady things go on with them too. Boston has concession deals...
Theres alot of shady stuff going on with a few of the owners in the league which might cloudy up the waters... but in general we see evidence with our two eyes that everyone is leaving the NHL in recent years and none have anything good to say on the way out and none are knocking the door to get back in.
There are 10 or so owners/groups that do very well i guess. I dont think anyone says there arent at least around 10 markets that do very well. I know you want these markets to revenue share. So do some others... the players want it...
but making a profit ISNT A SIN in this democratic world we live in. We arent saying the players are sinful for signing a 7 mill contract here or a 6 mill contract there... then SUCKING to the point they cant even play a regular shift for their team.
Redden and Gomez get every cent they were promised because the owners honor the deals they made with these players. Once every few years the CBA comes up for renegotiation and this is the ONLY TIME the owners get a chance to fix problems they had to live with during the last CBA.
The players have had it very very very good for the past 30 years. I remember when Wayne Gretzky astonished us all with a 20 year 20 million dollar personal services contract with Pockington and that was what... 30 years ago? No player was making even a mill a year 30 years ago and now the average is 2.5 mill. From not 1 single player to hundred and hundreds making 2.5 times as much. SWEET
and Lidros came along... got 3 mill a year in 1993 was it? 20 years ago. He became the second highest paid player in the NHL if i remember right. Messier had some sort of guarantee to be the third highest paid player and got a raise if I remember right. Or.. was Lemieux involved too? Anyhow there might have been 4 guys in the entire NHL making 3 mill or more 20 years ago and now how many 100s and 100s of players make that? How many make more then 6 mill?
I dont begrudge guys like Lindros or Messier or Gretzky or Lemieux from making 100 mill a year if that is the going rate... cause these are hall of fame legends that sell the tickets. I dont care how much Crosby and Ovechkin and Stamkos and Chara make now for the very same reason. The owners dont really care either. The Owners would pay these guys whatever it takes to get them. But there is an artificial limit that no one player can get more then X% of a teams cap limit. Did the owners really want that limit or was that something the players insisted on?
I dont know... but its fashionale to blame this all on the owners i guess.
I wish the players would ask for better pension plans for their retired elders. I wish theyd ask for better payouts for career minor leagers. I wish theyd fight more for minimum salary players. A good union would do that... but I dont see much of it from these guys now.
The owners get accused of being greedy but they stay in a businss that loses them money and continue to toss out insane contracts. This isnt the action of greedy people... stupid and egotistical yes... greedy no.
The players on the other hand are guaranteed a % of the pie whether they maximize their INDIVIDUAL deals or not. The % of pie will be paid to collective one way or the other UNLESS the individual players get GREEDY and take for THEMSELVES... and thats exactly what they do. Anytime a player holds out for an extra 100k here or an extra million there... its being taken from the % that the collective would have gotten otherwise.
So not only DONT the players revenue share themselves... but they GREEDILY take from their union brothers everytime they MAXIMIZE their individual contracts with the team.
But... somehow this is something you dont want to admit to on their behalf. Only the owners somehow get damned for not revenue sharing and being greedy.
I dont say the players need to revenue share... but a unions job is to protect the weakest most abused members it has first... and this union is only trying to protect the middle class from what i can see. The middle class of NHL players numbers around 400 or so I would guess... and averages probably north of 3 mill per player I would guess. These guys dont need their union fighting for them at the cost of the season. These 400 players dont need to split 1.2 billion between them when the 30 NHL teams only get to split around 200 mill between themselves after expenses.
Take half the money from these middle class players and they still average a very healthy 1.5 mill or so annual salary and suddently the 30 teams have 800 mill to split between themselves and not only is the league super healthy... but there will be expansion and dozens and dozens of new union jobs too.
I know i sound crazy to suggest that the 400 or so middle class players would ever agree to this... but is it anymore crazy then saying the 2-3 profitable NHL teams should give up their profits?
Thats the thing. There are more then one way to fix this current problem. The owners arent going to agree to the revenue share approach. If they were, they would have done it already. Its NOT AMERICAN and I dont see any way Toronto or Rangers can justify it to their shareholders so... it aint going to happen.
That means some other possible solution will need to be swallowed down. The alternative is to lose the season. The owners are willing to do it. They were willing to do it last time. That is how much the current system sucks for them and the last one sucked too.
The players are freaked and want to keep the old systems. The old systems worked great for them. Of course they want to keep the old systems. of course they dont want to lose a season when their careers are so short. The owners could still own these teams 20-30 years from now if the economic model gets fixed. If the model gets fixed they might end up making an extra billion dollars or more in the next 20 years. So its very very affordable to them to shut down for a year and fix the system rather then keep operating under a broken system.
The players will need to face this reality or we as fans are going to lose out. And since its taxpayer dollars that have largely gone to float the boat in recent years for this whole mess... that sucks. We paid to keep this mess going and now they are screwing us because they are UNABLE to face reality???
Even accepting the owners proposals... they still have a DAMN GOOD DEAL. Take it and if the deal does get renegotiated next time... then deal with that too. What the heck are they talking about... we are worried about next time too? What?
Eventually if the day ever comes that the owners really to screw the players over... then a rival league really will start up. or the players will deunioize and sue the owners for combinds violations. or... at the very least i will jump sides and become a player union supporter.
But that day sure as heck hasnt happened yet. It hasnt been that way in my lifetime. The players have had everything their way for 40 years now and more...
They cant come crying poor to me... cause they arent poor. And they wont be poor even if they take this offer they have on the table.
Its not as good an offer as the last CBA but its a damn sight better then any offer theyd get from the KHL or AHL or Swiss League.. or flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Its a damn sight better then losing a year to a lockout too.
The owners will do it and there is a reason for it... they cant not do it. The players on the other hand... its unforgivable to me if they cant get realistic here and somehow meet the owners on common ground. Forget this insistence on revenue sharing cause it wont fly... swallow the 50-50 split. And trust in league growth to make the make-whole deal workout.
owners should give in on the other issues cause they are all crap issues anyhow and the owners will try to break them the second they get signed anyhow. Let the owners be stupid. Its what they want. But save them from themselves as far as going broke and destroying markets where the fans have invested in the teams.
No more Atlanta/Phoenix please.
you NHL/NHLPA !!
