StormGate & salary caps [update]

I confess that I didn’t really pay attention to the Melbourne Storm storm that blew in last week—apart from being happy that Geelong’s rival St Kilda could be implicated (apparently, the chap who rorted for the Storm previously worked in the same position for St Kilda); wondering about the sense of these stupid salary caps; and expecting the Worriers to be whipped when they met the Storm at Terror Dome over the weekend.

Point number three was pulled off in style—turns out the Worriers can’t even beat a team who isn’t allowed to play for points, being 22-0 down by the half.

Point number one was rubbed in when St Kilda lost over the weekend to the team Geelong beat the week before by over ninety points.

And point number two, about salary caps, was answered for me by Stephen King, who argues that the effect of salary caps is to raise profits for the league at the expense of the earnings of the players, who “are paid less than the value that they would command in a competitive market.”

    “The AFL and the NRL are selling an entertainment product called football. They produce this product by having a number of licensed clubs who play matches against each other. In order to maximise the profit from the sales of their product (direct to fans, via merchandise and via television rights) they try and evoke an emotional response from their customers, hoping to align customers with a particular club (or sub-brand). In order to maximise their sales and profit they want to keep the competition ‘even.’ To do this they place various rules on the clubs to ensure that no one club can get too far ahead of the others or fall too far behind… And to minimize costs and maximise profits, they use their monopsony power over their main employees – the players – to ensure that they are paid less than the value that they would command in a competitive market.”

That hardly seems fair, does it. Restricting players’ earnings so the league itself can reap rents.

UPDATE: The rumours are already flying that the Melbourne Storm will shed players to the AFL—more than likely to new Sydney AFL club Greater Western Sydney, due to start next year as a rival to the Sydney Swans:

    “Sydney Swans coach Paul Roos seriously doubts that Greg Inglis or Billy Slater could switch to AFL - but believes new club Greater Western Sydney will target the pair anyway.
    “Because the Melbourne Storm is likely to shed players to comply with the NRL salary cap, both Slater and Inglis have been touted by several leading AFL figures as prime candidates to join Karmichael Hunt in switching codes.
    “But Roos was not convinced the ploy would succeed…”