The salary cap for the Euroleague teams is the dumbest idea ever

In an interview for ERA Sport, quoted by Sportando, Ergin Ataman stated:

“All teams will be affected, we should all learn from this. Budgets should be balanced in regard to the profits, Euroleague has to find a way to reach an even balance with a salary cap. It’s not possible for some teams to have such huge budgets, especially since this pandemic will impact everyone’s finances”.

This statement is based on a communist idea of uniformization of the market but in a real competition, this is nothing than bullshit. How to impose a salary cap? This idea is crap. It means that if you as a sponsor have a lot of money to invest, you cannot invest because other teams don’t have the same money. It means as well that lazy organizations that are not searching day and night for sponsors will be at the same level as the clubs that are attracting a lot of sponsorships. The idea of the salary cap is implying no free market, no capitalism, but the purest “MAO ZEDONG theory” of basketball. But even in the communism, the teams didn’t have the same budgets, they were very different on the salaries offered to their players.

Even more, the statement made by Ataman is contradictory in itself. The Anadolu Efes’ coach said that ALL the teams are affected, highlighting later that “this pandemic will impact EVERYONE’s finances”. But if it’s true and it is without a doubt (each team will be affected) why do we need the uniformization of the budgets? I would have understood this crazy idea of space cap only if some teams would have been affected by the Coronavirus and other teams not. But since the virus is democratic and it’s affecting all the geographic areas of Europe and all the clubs, let’s leave open the democratic possibility for every club to build their budget how they want and how they could. We don’t need any dictatorship ideas in the free market of the Euroleague. Each team will play with their available money and that’s all. Any idea of a salary cap is leading to real capping, the other name for mediocre results.

Photo: Euroleague

Gratian Cormos

Loading...