Too Many Marketplaces
After reading the latest Canadian Press report about the NHL lockout and NHLPA head Bob Goodenow’s responses to a Canadian television audience, NHLPA boss says no end of lockout in sight unless league chances stance, you really have to wonder where Goodenow’s “marketplace” ends.
This stands out:
“Hockey players are highly paid and they deserve to be highly paid,” said Goodenow. “It is a marketplace and it has worked for many, many decades and we believe that some type of marketplace going forward is the ultimate fair kind of system for fans, players and owners.
“Our proposals and all of our actions so far have gone towards finding a middle ground. To date, Gary Bettman and the owners have said there is only one solution and that is a salary cap.”
How is any of what he deems a marketplace system fair to the fans? How would it even affect them? Goodenow’s stated repeatedly that the PA deems any system that ties salaries to revenues as a cap, and the union won’t accept a cap. Fans only affect revenue. If revenue cannot control salaries, then fans have zero relevance. I’m sure the response would be that it would be up to the owners to control what they spend based on their own revenues. However, relying on individual team revenues doesn’t set up a league where every team can survive because all it takes is one or two out of thirty to warp the system (turn one or two into about five and you have our current situation).
So in Goodenow’s model owners are the marketplace - and that’s it. That leaves us fans to our own marketplace. But hockey isn’t baseball or basketball and it isn’t even close to football. Hockey is a sport that relies on revenue primarily from it’s fans. It’s more of a ticketsales:revenue sport then any other current major team sport. There are no heavy national tv contracts (or even light national tv contracts) in the US. There’s no big pot to split, no long list of advertisers adding cash to a pile. Hockey has its fans and without them there’s almost nothing left. Fans, unlike national tv contracts, are a lot less predictable. Having a cap system lets salaries fluctuate much smoother with interest in the sport. Another problem is that revenue is more localized. The old “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” problem that may not bother some in “real life”, but certainly has to in a sports context. If you just let the weak teams keep dying off you’re left with no competition. Sports can’t have team monopolies, no explanation needed there.
At some point the union will have to concede that the “marketplace” is more then just the owners’ checkbooks and perhaps that can get some talks going again.
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<trackback >Blogoversial: NHL Lockout
In this episode we talk about the current lockout in the NHL by taking a look at posts from around the blogosphere. Also, we check in with BlogPulse.com to see what kind of lockout chatter can be found.Posted by BlogosphereRadio.com on Oct 21, 2004 at 11:10 PM
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