Its an interesting thought. Definitely encourages parity, almost to an extreme.

I’m not exactly sure that the “Haves” would be as excited about this though. For another example, I wonder if the David Beckham deal would have happened under your proposed system. Instead of his MLS salary being worth $6.5M, the Galaxy would be on the hook for $9.75M. That’s a big difference.

That I called “the nearly-punitive luxury tax” or “the tinkerer’s cap.” In mine, they weren’t called allocations, but going over the cap would have caused a team to pay the same amount of tax you’re talking about here.

And if I do say so myself, the blogger is on to something here. The DP rule is too rigid for the best health of the league in the long term.

I would say the league’s not quite ready for this type of thing yet, but it’s getting there. Right now, DPs are still getting signed for ‘instant gratification’ in terms of an immediate boost for tickets and sales. A previous commenter is right that Beckham doesn’t get signed under this system, because the point of signing him wasn’t winning games so much as selling a lot of tickets, which, to be fair, he did (and the tax is so high you’ve over-ridden the incentive). And to be further fair, he made the league stronger in a lot of ways by doing so.

But after Beckham and to an extent Blanco, there aren’t a lot of ‘instant gratification’ players left. I think a star in NY might sell some tickets quick, but I can’t think of that many other situations.

When we get past that stage of signing guys just for their fame, a proposal like this makes a lot of sense, because the current DP rule is very limiting. It creates an incentive to throw a lot of dough around on one guy, when improving 4 or 5 or 6 guys by a little bit is probably a much more efficient way of improving the team. The Galaxy’s roster will cost more than $10 million on their roster this year, and it’s frankly not very hard to envision designing a better team for half of that figure. You don’t think that, for instance, the current RSL team + $1 million > Galaxy? I sure do.

Anyway, while I like here is that under your system, example 2 is never going to happen. The New York team is certainly going to spend more, but to go bats—t crazy and lay out $25M, at a cost of 50? In the local lingo, fugheddaboudit.

Why I call it “the tinkerer’s cap” is that what’ll really happen here is teams will tinker just above the cap. If they find an excellent player at $200k that would put them in the playoffs when they aren’t now, they’ll get him, even though it will cost them $400k. Or they’ll keep a guy who’s important to the team—say, Stuart Holden?—even though it will cost them some money.

Holden’s a good case in point here. Right now, Houston is offering Holden $400k to stay. . . but that’s not competitive if he gets the offer from Blackburn that’s being rumored. And the cost of upping that offer right now would be Houston having to trade for a second DP slot. But if you implemented this kind of solution, Houston could go to $600k a year, which might be close enough to keep him, without having to make a trade. It would be good to have that option. But they don’t, and that’s why I call the current system too rigid.

OK, I get that it is the holiday season and all but this would lead to the demise of MLS. This is similar to the NASL model of the the 70’s that ended with the league folding.

While you know I am no fan of the current system, this would allow teams with billionaire owners to live their EPL fantasies, while other teams would be forced to fold. First RSL had a good year but remember they have 65 million in debt to pay off on their new stadium before becoming profitable, same for New York. Houston will eventually need a new stadium and that will add 10’s of millions in debt, same for DC.

It is an interesting thought but without TV revenue your plan would bomb and teams would fold like a house of cards, how do teams like San Jose, FC Dallas, or KC compete? These teams can barely pull 10,000 to their home matches.
I think you are about 5 years early in your plan, there are some very fundamental things that have to change within the league structure first.

First is the division of MLS and SUM, this has to end as the two need to merge into one organization, second is that the structure of the league being the holder of all contracts, we are close to where that has to be turned over to teams.

Right now MLS is an affordable sport and that has helped with it gaining a foothold in the very crowded US sports market, your changes would lead to a doubling of ticket prices within two seasons for almost every team and since there is no real TV money coming in that would cripple the cash flow of most clubs.

Sorry, but a good idea just bad timing.