Here is the US pro sports teams do not change leagues no matter how bad or good they are. I guess the main reason is there is a big gap between major leagues and minor leagues - especially in terms of pay.
However in other countries teams move up and down between leagues in soccer (maybe in other sports too.) Is this possible because the lower level leagues are not considered to be way below the highest level league? I know there are very high paid guys in Euro soccer , if their team gets sent down do they keep their high pay? Here in the US a top pro can make $20 mil per year but there is no way a minor league team could pay even $1 mil.
Oh no, the lower levels are considered lower, however there’s a continuum of talent within each level too. In the top soccer leagues there are usually 2-4 top teams that win everything every year, then a bunch of teams in the middle, and then a couple teams at the bottom that are just glad to be there are pray to not be relegated. So the bottom teams in a division aren’t much better, if at all, than the top teams in the lower division.
Players will keep their salaries if their team is relegated. This isn’t generally a huge deal because the teams with large payrolls tend to not be relegated and if they are they will often sell their better players to teams that were not relegated or promoted.
Do the lower level teams bring in a lot less money? I assume they do which is why they would have to sell off players with big contracts.
Of course here in the US for football and basketball the lower levels are college teams which are not pro in the strict sense of the word. Of the big 4 sports in baseball and hockey the lower levels are pros.
Yes, much less. Some of this is due to lower attendance, but, I think, the biggest difference is their portion of the TV contracts. The English Premier League gets paid some truly ridiculous sum of money for the TV rights.
In the US one of the biggest sports TV contracts only covers 10 days over 3 weeks - it’s the college basketball championship tournament. It’s bigger than the hockey TV contract that lasts 6 months.
West Bromwich Albion, the archetypal yo-yo club, were relegated from the Premiership in May, and will start the 2009/2010 season in the Championship. This was WBA’s third relegation from the EPL in seven years. The club’s business model is based on the worst case scenario of relegation every season it plays in the top division. Because of this, players’ contracts are structured so that they take a salary hit of 25% - 40% should relegation actually occur.
Newcastle United, on the other hand, did not budget to be relegated in May, and the club now has players contracted on large salaries who will be playing Championship football.
In American and Canadian professional baseball, there are distinctions between the leagues based on contract. People use the phrase “minor leagues” to refer to leagues other than the major leagues, but that doesn’t exactly cover it. There are officially trademarked “Minor Leagues” and there are independent, unaffiliated leagues. The trademarked Minor League teams have contracts with Major League teams. The major league teams provide the minor league teams with players and coaches, and money to pay the players and coaches’ salaries. In turn, the minor league teams provide the players with a place to play and once the player gets sufficiently good, that player goes from the minor league team to the major league team or up to a more highly ranked minor league team. The minor leagues are ranked, in that in order to make the competition fair each major league team stocks its minor league team with appropriate players. The better quality players play in AAA and AA, and lower lever quality players play in A leagues and rookie leagues.
Unaffiliated, independent leagues have no contracts with major league teams and hustle to get their own players. The pay level is much lower. These players are looking to catch on with a major league team.
Examples of Minor Leagues are the Pacific Coast League, the International League and the Eastern League. Here’s the official web site of minor league baseball. Link
I used to cover sports in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the high schools had upper and lower divisions. Of course, you can easily yo-yo back and forth thanks to graduation – the gifted seniors who helped you get promoted are gone, leaving the team to get hammered by the now-superior competition.
Hockey has a weird system where a player can sign an NHL contract but then go back and play in the amateur junior system in Canada. They can’t sign if they play NCAA (college hockey)
Also I think Euro leagues can sign players to pro deals below the age of 18? That’s not allowed in the US. Here are the age limits:
Hockey, baseball - 18
Football - 3 years after high school in most cases - about age 20 or 21
Basketball - 1 year after high school, around 19 or 20
For baseball if a guy goes to college than they can’t sign for 3 years
That’s true; but it also gives players an incentive to try and keep their teams up if they know their contract says that, in the event of relegation, they lose half their salary.
Besides think about it; if a club gets relegated from the Premier League, it’s because over a season in which every team plays every other team twice, their players weren’t good enough. Most of the players won’t be able to interest the teams now in the EPL, unless those teams have specific weaknesses to address.
Newcastle will be in serious fiscal trouble if they can’t renegotiate their salary payments down.
US leagues do not allow players to take a pay cut for a contract. They can only take a cut when their deal expires. Of course they can’t get a raise either during a contract.
Certain players have non guaranteed contracts which means if they are cut from the team they get no more pay. I think that is only the case for football.
I don’t follow the fortunes of WBA that closely, but so far I believe the club has lost only a long-serving defender in Paul Robinson, who has gone to Bolton. The captain Jonathan Greening also wants out, but the offers made for him have been described by West Brom as derisory.
Remember that the main difference between soccer leagues with promotion/relegation and American sports leagues is that soccer leagues are not franchised. The league is not owned by the clubs; it’s run by an umbrella organization (in England, it’s the Football Association, or FA). So there is a different dynamic involved than in America, where the NFL is owned by the franchises collectively.
It’s worth noting that when a team is relegated from the Premier League they get a ‘parachute payment’ to help them adjust to their lowered income, taken from the TV deals the Premier League teams get. It lasts two years. According to Wikipedia (I know), this amounted to £11.4 million a year in 2007-2008, with the average PL club bringing in £45mil and the average Championship team bringing in £1mil. As you can imagine, if the team rely on this too much and fail to get promoted, they’re screwed, likely to face administration.
In the US there can be big differences in income from team to team in the major leagues, mostly in baseball because of local TV deals. The Yankees make a killing from TV since their market is so large ,that’s why they can have such a high payroll. Of course baseball also has no salary cap.
The NFL is unique in that all their TV money is shared equally since the TV deals are all national. That’s one reason why all their teams are basically OK from a financial point of view.
MUCH MUCH lower. I worked for one and our best pitcher worked for Costco in the off season to make ends meet. In fact, IIRC the TEAM salary cap for the entire league was $20,000 a month.