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The act of spending too much money for otherwise legitimate purposes seems to be a non-central example of "cheating" in sports. I thought it would be match fixing, doping. Not about bureacuratic violations nothing to do with the actual matches.
Yes, this is a foundational question whether you're a neutral observer or the most hardcore of soccer fans when approaching this case. The actual sporting on the field is still pure and and there's no sporting cheating there. But there is no doubt these "bureaucratic violations" has effects on the field. Other clubs, in compliance with the rules, had to sell players, even important ones. MCFC driving up wages of players, forcing clubs to also up their own player wages, but since they're in compliance with the rules, MCFC obviously has an advantage. MCFC players and coaches can talk all they want about no actual sporting cheating occurred and current consensus is it's true their victories and losses on the field were earned. But in the universe where MCFC complied with the rules, no such team of players and coaches would have even existed to earn those victories and losses. The rules may not be right, but when everyone complied with it, at least the rules would be fair. By shirking the rules, MCFC definitively got an "unfair advantage", and that's why "financial doping" as a term was introduced.
The bureaucratic violations are important because most leagues benefit from having parity and stable ownership. Stable ownership helps fans build tribal loyalties to their team. This boost long term revenue. Parity means more competitive matches which means fans are willing to pay more to see those games. The ecosystem of professional system benefits players because higher revenue means higher salaries and benefits owners because they make more money. Fans benefiting by having a better product to watch.
IMO there is a subset of owners willing to take large losses because the money doesn’t matter and their own fandom is fun. Mark Cuban said he had negative fcd on the Mavs and he’s not a rich guy compared to other owners. Ballmer also apparently cheated with the Clippers. He’s rich enough that if he wanted to he could break the other owners by subsidizing losses with his other wealth.
Best I can tell with a potential exception of the NFL most pro sports teams lose money every year. The owners are getting rich because sports team are being valued like pieces of art with a limited supply so the franchise values are going up.
Yeah parity is very important to the long-run success of a league. Nobody cares about "Ligue 1 McDonald's", or Bayern winning the Bundesliga, or La Liga matches outside of the Big 2.5 teams there, but the Premier League has become the global leader by far in revenue in large part because it's consistently dramatic and unpredictable. Unquestioned dominance by a single big-money team hurts the league in the long run even more than it hurts fans of other teams in the short term.
Sports economics can get interesting.
Why does every league restrict free agency until age 26/27?
It’s the median age. You can get the union to approve a deal that limits young players salaries if that means more money goes to the older players and the convenient age to get the majority or 51% is the median age.
Why is baseball the only league without a salary cap? Revenue is dominated by local revenue far more than other leagues and not national revenue. It’s much harder to share local revenue since revenue sharing % effectively act like tax and going much above 50% revenue sharing of local revenue would discourage revenue maximizing at the local level.
Do you mean 16/17? In football (soccer), this was settled by the Bosman ruling in 1995, in an EU court verdict that was then extended to British law, but youth players are covered by different rules intended to protect underage workers.
I can believe this is how it works in a more cartelized system like the US. Every other cartelized profession is either there or headed in that direction, just ask a lawyer or a doctor.
I am talking US
In the US pro sports is exempt from competition law. US-style drafts would be illegal in Europe, or in any other non-sport context in the US. Imagine the top Wall Street banks drafting the incoming analyst class if you want to think how ridiculous it would be if you weren't accustomed to it.
Yes it’s one reason I not a pure free market capitalists. The draft is not capitalists but it’s probably good for the leagues, fans, and players. It boosts parity which seems to benefit everyone.
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