It's great to see players such as Andersen, Bairstow, Newley etc back but a lot of revenue needs to come through to make this work.

We all now that a majority of the revenue needs to come from television broadcast deals. The NBL must rate well on Foxtel this season to bring in more sponsorship.

Obviously other forms of revenue are gate takings, merchandise etc.

Television is the lifeblood of any sport though

It can happen but only if international expansion happens and we don't expand into regional areas

It can happen but only if international expansion happens and we don't expand into regional areas

Anon, thanks for the mention of that podcast. Really enjoyed it. Great that Brett Brown would go for the Aussies, when we play the USA

Great article, love the work!

One of the salary cap reforms, which I have only seen really badly expressed, is that the bottom five players (in salary terms) of any club cannot have a combined salary of more than $400K.

Looking at the Melbourne United roster, I assume that would mean Nate Tomlinson, David Barlow, Tai Wesley, Majok Majok and Owen Odigie all fit below that $400K cap. It won't be any of their starters, surely, and none of their imports. Who's worth under $80K there? Tomlinson and Odigie. How much are the other three worth?

It's going to be interesting to see, as the clubs have to disclose how much they're paying players, as another stipulation to the new rules.

Who will be the other teams' bottom five?

Part of the supposed reform was that Salaries would be reviewed and if necessary stipulated (regardless of actual) by an independent committee, and then made public. This was to effectively replace the points system.
So what has happened to that?
It's going to be extraordinarily hard to "peg" a salary for some of the guys coming home from Europe.

There's also going to be a massive potential problem (aka shit-storm) with regards to imports.
Several (most?) teams have gone and signed some new "unproven" imports from the USA.
Now we all know that teams like Perth offered more money than say Cairns or Adelaide. But how do you quantify that when it comes to the committee setting the salary? eg you've got two guys, a year out of college, who spent a season in the D-League, played Summer-League, but couldn't land an NBA contract. You know the guy bound for Perth is getting paid twice the guy headed to Cairns, but on paper they fit the same category.

We need alcohol sponsors to get a bigger push I feel too. With big beer companies backing a team each, for example coopers or west end behind Adelaide, VB behind United, Little Creatures behind Perth, etc, there will be a huge financial influx and promotional boom

Dazz, what was released publicly was a bit loose, but I think contract prices were only going to be stipulated where the contracts were signed at clear undervalue (like if Bogut came home at the end of his career to play a season on minimum pay).

Many of the big names you are talking about will have salaries 'capped' at the sliding scale for marquee signings. I doubt we will find out what they are actually paid.

March 30 press release:

"Every player in the competition will be given a player value by an independent Contract Review Committee. It is that value - an independent measure of each player's market value – which will be counted towards the salary cap – not the dollar amount, or the value of other benefits, which the team has contracted to pay to the player. "

So no stipulation of contract values, only stipulation of what a player is worth for salary cap assessment purposes.

When I read it, I felt the press release left open the question of whether these deemed market values or actual salaries would be used for other purposes. e.g., assessing the "Aggregate salaries of at least 5 players on each team must not exceed $400,000" criterion. I've seen nothing in the last 5 months to make that any clearer.

So, Freethrows, it may not be what those 5 players are paid that matters, only what the committee decides is their "market value".

Anyone know when actual salaries are used and when market valuations will be used under teh new rules?
Anyone know who's on the market valuation committee?
Anyone know how they'll determine market value?
Anyone know whether their valuations are going to be published?

Interesting SBS website article today, about sports investment and focusing on the views of Wang Jianlin (China's richest man). I was taken by these quotes:

'"We don't want to acquire clubs... because these sorts of companies don't make a profit."

Instead, Wanda would look to own cycling races, soccer or tennis events or ice hockey tournaments, he said.'

Dalian Wanda is the investment group he chairs.

I thought the point about owning leagues (or at least media rights) and events being the way to make money, as opposed to owning clubs and teams, might interest others reading this thread. It suggests that the clubs individually may not need to be viable, as long as the league is (and so can prop them up?).

^ link for those who are interested in the whole article

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/26/own-goal-chinas-richest-man-fires-warning-football-splurge

I have a really uneasy feeling about the whole "salary cap" as it's being put in place at the moment. @PeterJohn has it right, there's no definitions on the table about which values are to be used, when they're going to be made public, or by whom.

There's also no description or definition of how any amounts clubs are stipulated to pay for going over the limit will be shared among the other clubs. Will clubs have to apply for the money? Will it be assigned on a shared basis according to how far under the cap a club paid its players the previous years? What if no one club is under the salary cap (unlikely, I know, but there should already be a system in place.)

Spot on, anon.