Coxy said:
Nice Ari Gold. But do you know which clubs would make up the top 8 if it was open slather?
1. Broncos
2. Bulldogs
3. Parramatta
4. Manly (unless this bickering amongst benefactors results in one or both of them walking away)
5. NZ Warriors
6. Titans
7. St George-Illawarra
8. Sydney Roosters
None of the other clubs could compete cash wise. They'd have the also rans. Eventually they'd just perish.
We need SOME kind of cap, however it needs to be raised to be competitive against Rugby Union in Australia at least.
Some clubs honestly should perish, especially in Sydney. Teams that rely on leagues club, draw poor crowds etc. don't really do much for our game IMO. Lets say you took away the Tigers, Sharks, Penrith and Souths. Instead of having 16 teams available to sponsors, you have 12, which should drive up advertising revenues. Furthermore, the quality of each team will increase with less nuffies getting contracts and more stars on each team (which would thus increase crowd figures and hence gate takings). Also 16m of salary cap wages could be redistributed for the other 12 clubs to pay, improving salaries and chances of retention.
I honestly don't see why less teams is bad (other than less games each week for tv purposes). Besides, if you can get yourself 10-12 financially stable clubs with high quality rosters and games, you can then spend real money and efforts trying to expand into places like Perth and Adelaide, instead of wasting money and concern on the financial instability of the Sharks, Knights etc.
You are right in that the cap needs to still exist, but it needs to be high enough so that players can remain with their career-long clubs without having to earn less money than they could in other codes/leagues, and where it's a lot harder for rival clubs to attract players on a $ increase alone. And if the ability to pay a higher sum of wages is that big of a concern to a club, then perhaps they are one of the clubs that don't belong.
In the current state, I would say it's near on impossible to expand and improve the comp, largely because we already have so many clubs of financial concern, and too many clubs in general. Besides, given how many star players are leaving for what primarily is money, surely the current distribution of the $64m can be better re-allocated to allow more stars to stay in the game.
PS - In a reduced team competition top 5 is surely the way to go. If you are that worried about lost finals revenues, make the grand final best of 3, which would increase $ dramatically and also further the odds of the best team actually winning.