In professional sports, a salary cap is a limit on the amount of money a team can spend on player salaries, either as a per-player limit or a total limit for the team's roster (or both). Several sports leagues have made salary caps mandatory, both as a method of keeping overall costs down, and in order to balance the league so a wealthy team cannot become dominant simply by buying all the top players. Salary caps are often the major issue in negotiations between management and players' unions.
The NFL's cap is a so-called "hard cap" (which no team can exceed for any reason under penalty from the league), and a hard salary floor (a minimum team payroll that no team can drop beneath for any reason, 75% of the cap).
The NBA's salary cap is a so-called "soft cap", meaning that teams are allowed to exceed the cap number in order to retain the rights to a player who has already been on the team.
There are ciriticisms of salary cap.
1. Unfair Negotiation Tactic
Salary cap is simply a way for management to get an unfair advantage in labor negotiations with players.
2. Veteran Neglect
Often a team will have to let go of many of its players – frequently, veterans who have been with the club for a long time – in order to comply with the salary cap.
3. Distorting Fan Attitudes
Fans tend to lose interest in a team once it is out of playoff contention.
4. Restricting Free Markets
"There should be no artificial limit on what anyone is able to earn if they have the talent."
MLB has instead implemented the so-called luxury tax, an arrangement by which teams whose aggregate payroll exceeds a certain annually revised figure is taxed on the excess amount (or fined). Unlike the other major North American sports, MLB has no team salary floor. The only minimum limits for team payrolls are based on the minimum salaries for players of various levels of experience.
Then, do you think MLB should introduce salary cap?
3 comments:
Hey AYA,
I think this is a great debate topic because both team and player salaries have become huge components of professional athletics as we know them today. Personally, I feel that if a league is going to establish a salary cap they should enforce it like the NFL and not the NBA. The NFL has created a salary cap which is strictly enforced while the NBA has created a cap which can be surpassed on certain occasions. This makes no sense to me because I feel that salary caps are established for a reason, and that is to level the playing field between wealthy teams and less wealthy teams. For this reason I feel that salary caps are needed but, they need to be strictly enforced too.
While the system the NFL has used has created parity, which in turn has helped attendance and tv ratings etc. I do not like the idea of salary caps.
I don't like them in the regular everyday workforce (punishes high performers, rewards middle to lower end performers), and I don't like them in sports either. If teams are willing to invest in their product, then they will win, and the fans and the money will come (see 2007 Brewers and Cubs).
Salary Caps and luxury taxes (MLB), and any other vehicle that redistributes funds is socialism just in disguise (because no one likes the word socialism).
So, are you pro free markets where you get paid on how you perform or do you support the socialist view of handouts regardless of production?????
Thank you for giving me comments.
As mid relief said, surely, salary cap reminds me socialism. However, it is also sure that if there are huge difference between wealthy teams and less wealthy teams, MLB will be boring.
I understand both of your ideas. Ummm...It is very hard to make a decision.
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