League Changes?

I have some concerns about competitive imbalance and the future of this league. I thought I'd make a post to see if anyone else shares these concerns, and if so, whether there is a way to address them. I started drafting this post a few weeks ago when we were still in the regular season, but I decided to wait until the new budgets and media contracts were announced to see if the problem is getting better or worse. I'm now convinced that it is not getting better and may be getting worse. A while back, I started a post about some possible changes to the financial settings. There was a good discussion but many of the suggestions either died on the vine or were voted down. Since then, we've all gotten a bit more familiar with version 9.0, so this seems like a good time to revisit the discussion.

My concern is that we basically have two teams that have accumulated such a high degree of talent and wealth that it will be extremely difficult (but not impossible) for other teams to remain competitive. Much of it is the result of excellent strategy and planning by the GMs of those teams and they deserve credit for doing so well. This post is not, in any way, an attack on those GMs who obviously play the game the way it should be played. :) But for me, at least, it's not a lot of fun playing in a David versus Goliath environment.

Here is a quick background to illustrate some of what I'm seeing. I took over my team just prior to the 2013 season. The team had a fan interest rating of 13. It was a terrible team overall, but I had a few really good young players that I could build around. I ended up with a 58-104 record in 2013. In 2014, my team's record improved to 72-90 and attendance/fan interest/revenues increased significantly over the prior year. As a result, I was hopeful that my 2015 budget and media contract would increase. But in the last sim I learned that my budget actually DECREASED by $3 million this year. This severely hampers my ability to compete in the free agent market and to acquire good players via trade, which makes it almost impossible to contend. It just doesn't seem right to me that an organization should be penalized for improving, which is essentially what has happened.

I'm competitive by nature, and honestly, it's just not fun for me right now playing in the current environment. It would be different if I felt that I had a decent chance to win in a few years, but I don't. Cleveland was a nice story this year, making it to the finals and coming ever so close to winning the championship, but (no offense intended to Jeremy whatsoever) given the difference in talent between the River Cities team and the Cleveland team, I view that as an extremely improbable and unlikely outcome. It happened, though, which cannot be denied. But even if I am wrong that Cleveland had no business getting to the finals in the first place, Cleveland's 2015 budget ($57 million) is barely higher than mine ($52 million) even after making it to the world series! That is just wrong.

So here is a list of possible changes for consideration and comment. This is not intended to be a complete list, just a starting point for discussion.

1. Impose revenue sharing and/or a luxury tax. According to the OOTP manual, revenue sharing only benefits teams that sustained a loss, so that is unlikely to benefit many teams. Personally, I don't like the idea of revenue sharing because it has a tendency to "reward" teams that lack financial restraint. A luxury tax is permitted by the game, but the manual doesn't explain how it works. If a luxury tax is implemented, I think we would probably need to do something about the cash cap. It wouldn't make sense to divide the proceeds of the luxury tax among the smaller market/less competitive teams, only to have that money be lost to the cash cap.

2. Impose a salary cap. This probably deserves its own topic because there are likely to be many opinions about it. But it's definitely something that should be considered.

3. Modify or eliminate the cash cap. I know we discussed this previously and the decision was made to keep it unchanged, but it can't hurt to revisit the issue now that we have another year of experience. My opinion is that the cash cap should probably stay even though it is artificial, because the most successful teams could just start hoarding cash and become even more dominant. But I do wonder whether it should be modified. At a minimum, it seems to me that the cash cap doesn't always work as intended. In at least one situation, the cash cap actually helped a team (Los Angeles) by capping its annual loss at $10 million when its actual loss was significantly higher. This isn't Michael's fault at all, but it has happened for 2 years now. Honestly, I don't know if the solution is to increase the cash cap, eliminate it entirely or do nothing - perhaps people with bigger brains can weigh in.

4. Adjust the media contract settings. The variance in media contracts in this league is extremely significant. Seattle's media contract exploded this year to $70 million, twice the amount of the two lowest teams (one of which is world series runner-up Cleveland, at $35 million). My team is one of the $35 million teams, even though I have a "Big" market. Every team in the league has a "Big" market or better, so it seems that "Big", in this case anyway, is actually small. It is my understanding from speaking to Mack that media contracts are renegotiated from time to time, but I don't know when that happens. The OOTP manual is somewhat confusing on this point. It says: "Media revenue is partially driven by team market size, fan loyalty, and fan interest. However, the biggest influence on media revenue are the Average Media Contract and Media Contract Fixed? settings." So possible changes include changing the average media contract amount (currently at $40 million), or fixing the media contract amount for all teams (each team gets the same amount in annual media revenue).

5. Change the "Team Owner Controls Budget" setting. I am not sure about this, but I think that changing this option to GM control will make more money available.

6. Free agent compensation. OOTP 9 permits this, but it doesn't always work very well. Still, it's another option for less competitive teams to get some compensation if they can't afford to resign their good players before they depart for free agency.

7. Greater flexibility in spending. Nate made some good suggestions in the last thread that are worth repeating. Some of the options he mentioned are allowing teams to spend their cash on things like (a) custom stadia (i.e., changing park dimensions, dome/open, adding seats); or (b) team "marketing" (to increase fan interest, fan loyalty, and/or market size). Adding these options will increase the administrative work for Zev, so that's something to consider as well.

I just re-read this post and I think I come across like a self-absorbed whiner, but I've spent far too much time on it already, and I'm not going to spend more on editing. :) So please accept my apologies for the tone. Thanks for considering the above. Any thoughts?