Salary Caps Should Be Illegal

[MushroomX]

So you want no salary cap? Cool, enjoy paying $700 to sit behind a damn pillar. No cap means owners pass all the cost to fans... your talking ticket prices, merch, concessions... everything skyrockets because they got to pay a scrub $60 Million a year. You're not fighting for the players, you're fighting for $40 Nachos and $500 parking lots. Congrats, champ.

 

[JoelB]

So we can see the Lakers win the title every year? nah im good

 

[Double Burger With Cheese]

So you want no salary cap? Cool, enjoy paying $700 to sit behind a damn pillar. No cap means owners pass all the cost to fans... your talking ticket prices, merch, concessions... everything skyrockets because they got to pay a scrub $60 Million a year. You're not fighting for the players, you're fighting for $40 Nachos and $500 parking lots. Congrats, champ.

Baseball don’t have a salary cap and nachos are around $8 dramatic ass nikka

 

[MushroomX]

Baseball don’t have a salary cap and nachos are around $8 dramatic ass nikka

MLB has no salary cap, but the NFL prints money and fills stadiums weekly because parity keeps fans in every city invested. Baseball’s got $8 nachos and $80 attendance. Meanwhile, the NFL sells out with $30 nachos and 100+ million Super Bowl viewers. Cap or not, one’s a machine, the other’s background noise.

 

[Harry B]

It's not really a problem.

Of the teams with public books (Green Bay Packers), the team's profit is the same as Jimmy Butler's salary, sometimes more/sometimes less.


Also the cap it set based on the revenue, and in the NBA teams need to pay out 90 % of the cap, meaning that you can't be stingy as in baseball.

The only people that want no cap (and no revenue sharing) are the owners of the richest teams, or the richest/least stingy owners like Clippers.
And the very few players that would benefit. While a majority, who would not be playing for cheap owners and/or small markets and make significantly less.

 

[No1]

So we can see the Lakers win the title every year? nah im good

Salary caps are only designed to preserve the owner’s money and costs. It’s basically socialism for rich people and it’s why it doesn’t exist in this form anywhere else in the world.

 

[No1]

It's not really a problem.

Of the teams with public books (Green Bay Packers), the teams profit is the same as Jimmy Butler's salary.


Also the cap it set based on the revenue, and in the NBA teams need to pay out 90 % of the cap, meaning that you can't be stingy as in baseball

You just compared the Green Packers in Wisconsin to other franchises . The salary cap was designed so that owners would not have to compete with each other for top tier players. The NBA literally locked out over the contract KG got.

 

[Harry B]

You just compared the Green Packers in Wisconsin to other franchises . The salary cap was designed so that owners would not have to compete with each other for top tier players. The NBA literally locked out over the contract KG got.

Green Bay Packers is estimated to be #12 of 32 teams in valuation in the NFL and somewhere around there in revenue too, while Dallas is far ahead of everyone

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/05/official-nfl-team-valuations-2024.html

And in the NBA they estimate that a majority of teams make less than 100m before taxes, interest rates, depreciation and amortization. Fortunately for them though, corporate taxes are not as high anymore. But an average of about 28 percent including state.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/14/cnbcs-official-nba-team-valuations-2025.html

Go and laugh at CNBC, Forbes and them, Professor Einstein, not me.

 

[tremonthustler1]

Salary caps are only designed to preserve the owner’s money and costs. It’s basically socialism for rich people and it’s why it doesn’t exist in this form anywhere else in the world.

no caps would drive player salaries through the roof, but then you'll have half the league just be like "I ain't paying for this shyt" which is not good, and in the NBA, there's too much outside factors that already work against teams that they can't control.

 

[No1]

no caps would drive player salaries through the roof, but then you'll have half the league just be like "I ain't paying for this shyt" which is not good, and in the NBA, there's too much outside factors that already work against teams that they can't control.

I mean, my stance has always been you need to have a certain level of wealth to own any NBA team but that’s not an inconsequential counterpoint. The flip side is in soccer you have financial fair play rules that prevent teams from spending to win to the point the team is unprofitable. So that’s how would take of the Warriors just doing whatever in theory.

 

[threattonature]

Salary caps are only designed to preserve the owner’s money and costs. It’s basically socialism for rich people and it’s why it doesn’t exist in this form anywhere else in the world.

Do you think salaries aren't capped in every industry in existence? Every company has a budget with a set percentage the company is willing to pay. Pretty much every job has a set limit they are willing to pay for each department and each position in the company. And before you counter with the NBA being a monopoly that is also a reality in a lot of the working world. There is always a top company in any industry that pays more than others, in this case it's the NBA.

 

[MicIsGod]

Would be a disaster in the nba.

 

[Copy Ninja]

No salary cap would be a death blow for smaller market teams. Only hope for them would be a shiek or an oligarch with money to burn to buy their team.

Look at European football, I know there's spending limits when it comes to transfers, but there is no 'salary cap' and it's the same teams that dominate in their leagues year in year out because they have the money to pay the best players. Smaller teams are basically farm systems for big teams.

In the past 15 years for European football -

Ligue 1 (French league) - PSG has won 11 league titles
EPL (English) - MC 8 (other winners are all big money clubs besides LC which was a miracle season for them)
La Liga (Spanish) - basically a rotation between Barcelona and RM
Bundesliga (German) - Bayern Munich 12
Seria A (Italian) - Juventus 8

Why the fukk would US fans want this for their American sports?

 

[Double Burger With Cheese]

Do you think salaries aren't capped in every industry in existence? Every company has a budget with a set percentage the company is willing to pay. Pretty much every job has a set limit they are willing to pay for each department and each position in the company. And before you counter with the NBA being a monopoly that is also a reality in a lot of the working world. There is always a top company in any industry that pays more than others, in this case it's the NBA.

Any budget can increase. To be against the salary cap is one thing, but to frame it as is if every industry does this is false. The NBA by rule cannot pay players more than X amount because of max contracts. There is no other way to slice it, some of these players are able to generate exponentially more than they are getting paid, which in turn makes them underpaid.

 

[FTBS]

So you want no salary cap? Cool, enjoy paying $700 to sit behind a damn pillar. No cap means owners pass all the cost to fans... your talking ticket prices, merch, concessions... everything skyrockets because they got to pay a scrub $60 Million a year. You're not fighting for the players, you're fighting for $40 Nachos and $500 parking lots. Congrats, champ.

Owners already pass every cost they can on to fans. They arent lowering prices because they have a cap. They still charging as much as possible. If you paying a scrub $60 mil thats a choice and your bad. At least with no cap you can correct that mistake rather than just being stuck for years because you cant afford anything else under the cap.

MLB has no salary cap, but the NFL prints money and fills stadiums weekly because parity keeps fans in every city invested. Baseball’s got $8 nachos and $80 attendance. Meanwhile, the NFL sells out with $30 nachos and 100+ million Super Bowl viewers. Cap or not, one’s a machine, the other’s background noise.

NFL prints money and fills stadiums and has a cap yet it does everything you just bemoaned above. nikkas get gouged at draft events and for EXHIBITION games. NFL absolutely does not have parity. Fans in every city are invested because they actually like football and its a community event and its only 8/9 games.