International player Allocation Draft

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Permalink Reply by K C on October 5, 2008 at 6:56pm

Chevy, I sure hope you're wrong about the $3.5 million cap. If we are figuring 18 to 20 woman rosters that's about $200,000 per player. I just can't see that happening. Don't get me wrong, these players deserve every dime they can get, but I just don't think revenues are going to justify going that high.

It sounds like each team is going to have anywhere from 10-12 home games. Even if they could draw 10,000 each game (probably an impossibility), that would only be roughly $2,000,000 in revenue from ticket sales. I know there would be some advertising, merchandising and sponsorship revenue, but how much? Does the league have a television contract to help with the revenues to support salaries at that level?

I've heard that Schelin's contract with Olympique Lyonnais was around $150,000/year and I thought that would probably knock St. Louis out of the running for her. That would be great news for St. Louis if they could get Stensland.

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Permalink Reply by chevy on October 5, 2008 at 9:08pm

My mistake the report actually had the salary cap set at $2.5 million. I think you are right that anything above $1.5-$2.0 million is going to put the teams in the red, but the commish stated when organizing the league that the owners need to be willing to take losses for the first few years in the $1 million range as the league establishes itself. Still that puts the average at $120,000 which is respectable.

I do have to rethink my earlier statement. I don't think LA would be able to field a decent team with the salary Marta is going to get on top of trying to pay to get Han Duan out of China, something will have to give there. Depending on what the league's minimum salary is which I would guess is $40,000 or higher.

Here is the article that I found the salary cap info. http://au.sports.yahoo.com/news/article/-/5040667/matildas-snapped-...

K C said:

Chevy, I sure hope you're wrong about the $3.5 million cap. If we are figuring 18 to 20 woman rosters that's about $200,000 per player. I just can't see that happening. Don't get me wrong, these players deserve every dime they can get, but I just don't think revenues are going to justify going that high.

It sounds like each team is going to have anywhere from 10-12 home games. Even if they could draw 10,000 each game (probably an impossibility), that would only be roughly $2,000,000 in revenue from ticket sales. I know there would be some advertising, merchandising and sponsorship revenue, but how much? Does the league have a television contract to help with the revenues to support salaries at that level?

I've heard that Schelin's contract with Olympique Lyonnais was around $150,000/year and I thought that would probably knock St. Louis out of the running for her. That would be great news for St. Louis if they could get Stensland.

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Permalink Reply by K C on October 5, 2008 at 9:28pm

$2.5 millions sounds more reasonable. I don't think that will be a problem for the larger markets. Being from the St. Louis area, our problem is that we don't have a stadium, at least not yet. They are going to be playing at Southern Illinois University and I think that it only seats about 3500. The big hope is that St. Louis will get an MLS expansion team and our new soccer stadium will be built that will be home to both the men's and women's teams.

The other problem that the league is going to have is if teams go out and pay big money for the international players, it may short-change some of the US players. I mean Marta and some of the other players are super talented. But then can you tell Wambach and Chalupny and Solo that we paying an international player $400,000 to come in, but now we can only pay you $100,000.

It's a fine line because you want to have the world's best women's league, but not at the expense of US talent.

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Permalink Reply by chevy on October 5, 2008 at 9:41pm

What I think will probably happen is you will see the top 5 or 6 players on each team ranging between $150,000 to $400,000. The next 3 or 4 between $75,000 to $150,000. The rest between $40,000-$75,000. You can't have teams full of superstars anyways, you need your role players sprinkled in.

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Permalink Reply by StarCityFan on October 6, 2008 at 5:58am

chevy said:

What I think will probably happen is you will see the top 5 or 6 players on each team ranging between $150,000 to $400,000. The next 3 or 4 between $75,000 to $150,000. The rest between $40,000-$75,000. You can't have teams full of superstars anyways, you need your role players sprinkled in.

That seems kind of surprising to me for a league that's touting its budget-consciousness. Even the freespending WUSA only paid its top players (the Founders, pretty much by definition) around $80,000. But I guess we'll see.

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Permalink Reply by Soccerdad on October 6, 2008 at 9:43pm

Before WUSA ended the team budgets were set at 2.5 million for the 2003 and 2004 season. They could not revive the league with that as the target number. i find this salary cap to be incredibly HUGE

I would expect the players to make roughly 30K as they will be paid by the season and not the year, The USWNT will be subsidized by the National Team contracts so they make the same either way

in 2003 the founders took a pay cut to help the league survive and i think they were paid 60K

If you have a salary cap at 2.5 Mil, then your operating budget would be close to 4 Million for the first year alone. I know for a fact that the League itself wanted 500K from each team for operating costs per year

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Permalink Reply by chevy on October 7, 2008 at 3:53pm

I think it is as high as it is because you have to allow for inflation of salary over the course of 6 years. Plus if they want to sign those internationals they will have to pay them better than they did in '03 because the other leagues are paying them more now. I don't think more than a handful of internationals will make over $150,000. I also think the minimum will be closer to $40,000 per season.

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Permalink Reply by Hev on October 13, 2008 at 7:54pm

I've just watched a video on Arsenal TV Online in which Vik Akers (Arsenal Ladies manager) talks about how the WPS will affect the womens game and also about the draft picks.

http://tv.arsenal.com/default.aspx?p=channels/C8_S1&a=53713

In the video he says...

-He's told both Karen Carney & Kelly Smith they are both free to leave regardless of their contracts.
-The WPS teams have contacted at least 10 Arsenal players
-The draft system is "crazy"and like a "cattle market", talking about Boston drafting Smith and therefore owning the "rights" he says "a-she's not their player, b- she's our player and they have no rights to her at this moment in time"

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Permalink Reply by chevy on October 14, 2008 at 3:45am

Hev said:

I've just watched a video on Arsenal TV Online in which Vik Akers (Arsenal Ladies manager) talks about how the WPS will affect the womens game and also about the draft picks.

http://tv.arsenal.com/default.aspx?p=channels/C8_S1&a=53713

In the video he says...

-He's told both Karen Carney & Kelly Smith they are both free to leave regardless of their contracts.
-The WPS teams have contacted at least 10 Arsenal players
-The draft system is "crazy"and like a "cattle market", talking about Boston drafting Smith and therefore owning the "rights" he says "a-she's not their player, b- she's our player and they have no rights to her at this moment in time"

Yeah I watched that last week when Vic Akers came out with those statements. I think he is more upset than anything at the prospect of losing his best players. Also that he simply does not understand that drafts are the way we are accustom to doing things in the US. The WPS did come out with a statement saying that the WPS draft only gave the WPS rights to these players and that the teams still had to follow the FIFA regulations with respect to negotiating with players from other clubs. Also, that the players still held their rights in determinating their futures. Whether or not the WPS teams have violated those rules I do not know but it seemed like Akers was overreacting to me.

Judging from the plans that were discussed I don't think that the FA league is going to organize itself quickly enough to have a big influence on the WPS, at least not for the first couple of seasons. Should be interesting to see what the FA comes out with this week, it will probably determine whether or not the European commited players will start announcing their intentions for their futures.

In the end I think the US is going to have too much draw power for the European committed players. I think the competition level alone is going to be a huge draw. Just glancing at some of these league tables there seems to be a serious imbalance of competition level in all the leagues. Some of these results I have been looking at with 8-1 and 6-0 scores reminds me of playing video game soccer scores on the easy settings when I was younger. The cup competition seems to be the only thing that could rival the level of play that is to be expected in the WPS, but that makes for a good tournament not a league.

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Permalink Reply by StarCityFan on October 14, 2008 at 9:50am

chevy said:

In the end I think the US is going to have too much draw power for the European committed players. I think the competition level alone is going to be a huge draw. Just glancing at some of these league tables there seems to be a serious imbalance of competition level in all the leagues. Some of these results I have been looking at with 8-1 and 6-0 scores reminds me of playing video game soccer scores on the easy settings when I was younger. The cup competition seems to be the only thing that could rival the level of play that is to be expected in the WPS, but that makes for a good tournament not a league.

One of the things the WUSA did well that WPS is working toward emulating is making sure all the games are competitive. The European leagues seems to be more like the W-League, where there are a few elite teams (Pali Blues/FFC Frankfurt/Arsenal) that get most of the best players, then a whole lot of other teams that the elite teams beat up on.

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Permalink Reply by Soccerdad on October 14, 2008 at 2:54pm

Ok, so this league then is running with a operating budget of minimum 4 million a year from what you have said - the each team would need to make 500,000 per game in order to break even

assume 7000 people time an average of 25 per seat = 175,000 (This is extremely generous)

Even with Sponsorship money, I don't think a womens team can operate losing 200,000 over eight games

chevy said:

I think it is as high as it is because you have to allow for inflation of salary over the course of 6 years. Plus if they want to sign those internationals they will have to pay them better than they did in '03 because the other leagues are paying them more now. I don't think more than a handful of internationals will make over $150,000. I also think the minimum will be closer to $40,000 per season.

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Permalink Reply by chevy on October 14, 2008 at 10:05pm

Soccerdad said:

Ok, so this league then is running with a operating budget of minimum 4 million a year from what you have said - the each team would need to make 500,000 per game in order to break even

assume 7000 people time an average of 25 per seat = 175,000 (This is extremely generous)

Even with Sponsorship money, I don't think a womens team can operate losing 200,000 over eight games

chevy said:

I think it is as high as it is because you have to allow for inflation of salary over the course of 6 years. Plus if they want to sign those internationals they will have to pay them better than they did in '03 because the other leagues are paying them more now. I don't think more than a handful of internationals will make over $150,000. I also think the minimum will be closer to $40,000 per season.

Okay remember that report said that was the predicted salary cap meaning the most a team could spend to field their team. I think the players will expect higher salaries than those of the old WUSA. But just to take a wild guess at what a salary breakdown might look like I used the Breakers current selection to plug into my prediction salary model.

Kelly Smith- $250,000 Angela Hucles- $185,000 Kristine Lilly- $165,000
Maycon- $155,000 Heather Mitts- $95,000 Shinobu Ohno- $105,000
Fabiana- $85,000 Emma Byrne- $82,000 Nancy Augustyniak Goffi- $75,000
Kristen Luckenbill- $72,000 Sue Weber- $60,000 Amy LePeibet- $67,000
1st Round Pick- $65,000 2nd Round Pick- $60,000 Rest of team- $40,000

Rest of team I am guessing about 10 additional players putting the total Breakers player salary at $1.921 million. The only team I would think would actually hit the cap would be LA, given their selections of Marta and Duan and what they would have to pay to get them.

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