cw said:
Now if the owners were making all kinds of wild and crazy profits, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that the owners feelings on this would be considerably different: a lockout would cost them big bottom line profits on top of a lack of revenue to pay expenses during the lockout. A lockout is considerably more costly to the owners if they're making big profits as opposed to big losses.
Then explain the NFL's position on their own CBA from last year. They seemed no less willing to lock out players in pursuit of a significantly larger percentage of the revenue generated by their sport. By your own account those two leagues were in substantially different financial positions. How do you reconcile that?
cw said:
This so called "leverage" you raise is heavily dependent on the financial circumstances between the two parties.
Oh I absolutely agree with that. Just not in the way you're presenting it. What dictates the leverage is that the owners, basically all of them, are not financially dependent on the NHL operating. Even the most profitable ones.
The players are. Most of the players, in part because they tend not to be good with money and in part because it's just the realities of the amounts they're paid, experience a major shift in how they live if they're not getting an NHL paycheck.
That determines leverage. It's making the other guy sweat. It's like the Seinfeld routine. The power in a relationship is always going to be held by whoever needs the other person less.
cw said:
The players can recognize the leagues financial problems while also recognizing the increase in leverage that the NHL's financial problem provides to the owners - who have less to lose in a lockout due to those financial problems.
Oh absolutely. They could. But that is never, ever going to be what dictates how a CBA process goes.
Look at the EPL. If a league's financial circumstances were going to dictate how it went then the bigger soccer leagues would have had massive CBA battles long ago that made drastic differences to their contractual relationships with their players. But if you look at big soccer leagues they're essentially unregulated financially by their CBAs and many of them are just absolute sinkholes in terms of profitability with the concept of competitive balance not existing.
Do I think Roman Abromovich "doesn't care about money"? Or the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi? No. I'm sure they're big fans of money. I bet they'd, given the question you posed to me in your other post, also choose for their teams to be profitable.
But they run their clubs as sporting pursuits and in addition to the fact that they've benefitted competitively from the way their leagues are organized the leverage that I'm talking about just doesn't exist for them. By most accounts Manchester City lost money last year that would make the Phoenix Coyotes look like friggin' Apple Computers in terms of an investment. And those are the big teams. By all accounts the idea of the smaller teams making money is just about unheard of.
So what scenario do you think is more likely if Manchester City and Chelsea decided to lock their players out and present their woeful balance sheets as proof of their need to cut wages?
Do you think soccer players would sit down and say "Man, that Sheikh of Abu Dhabi sure does have it tough. We can't just sit here and expect to operate Man City like it were a charity organization. We should give him back some money."
Or would they say "Eff it. I'm going to go play for Barcelona."
That is leverage.
