A few years ago in the UK its seemed you could not turn on one of our national 24-hour-a-day-all-soccer –oops sorry, sports talk – radio stations, without the news of some soccer players’ mega money transfer deal from one premiership club to another.
In fact it seemed, and may well have been true, that agents, players and clubs were constantly trying to prove that they had just broken the record in transfer fees. According to Wikipedia the highest fee ever paid was by some club in Spain to some club in England for some player from Portugal for a total of £80 million (€94 million).
In broad brush strokes let me try to explain something about this football transfer business, and then I will explain what part of it could be good for cycling.
In football, a player can only play in cup and league competitions for the club they are registered with, so when a player joins a club, even at youth level, that club must register that player with the national governing body. Once registered, clubs and not players hold the registration.
It follows then, that if and when a player moves to a new club, the new club must ask the player’s current club to release the registration.
Of course, at the lower levels of football this is usually done without too much fanfare.
However, the higher up the leagues a player goes then the more the clubs see the player as an investment, an investment they want a return on.
Clubs figured out as they hold the registration of any player who is leaving they could demand a fee from the new club to release the registration.
As you see, the term transfer fee does not relate to the player, but rather to the player’s registration.
So powerful is the registration of a player that up until the so called “Bosman ruling,” if “Club A” wanted the services of a player who was no longer under legal contract to “Club B,” “Club B” could still demand a transfer fee for the release of the player’s registration.
Since the Bosman ruling, transfer fees are only paid between clubs for players wishing to move while still under contract.
While people may or may not agree with the principle of transfer fees in football, there is the little spoken about “solidarity contribution” that I feel could be incorporated into the world of cycling.
The solidarity contribution is 5% of the transfer fee, which is distributed to all the clubs that the player has previously been registered with between that player’s 12th and 23rd birthdays; to see how this breaks down, check out Wikipedia.
The point here is that almost every club involved in preparing that player gets a share of the solidarity contribution.
In real terms 5% may not seem a lot, but I am aware of a small youth football team in Dublin, Ireland, which got a very large 5-figure lump sum every time one of their previous youth players was transferred around the English premiership.
These payments went a long way to ensuring the survival of the club and encouraging them to keep looking for good players and good coaches.
As we all know in cycling, your registration is called a licence and you get it directly from your national governing body.
You then decide what club you want to ride for, and if you don’t like it you can jump to another club, no issues.
It also seems, as we saw from the Saxo Bank – Leopard shenanigans two years ago, that you can also jump between pro teams without too many contract issues.
Every pro cyclist started at the grassroots level.
Grassroots cycling clubs around the world are full of dedicated clubmen/women who work hard to keep their club afloat, spread the gospel of cycling, and who train and encourage our youth to become the best cyclists they can.
Most, if not all of these clubs survive on subscriptions paid by members, and that is the way it should be, but wouldn’t the odd solidarity contribution go a long way?
To support cycling at all levels I suggest that it is time for cycling to think about solidarity payments.
As in soccer this payment could be a percentage of the salary that any new team is willing to pay the rider which will then be distributed to all the previous clubs and teams that the rider rode for between the ages of 12 and say 25.
To my mind this is very important in an age where pro teams need rider points to ensure their entry into the pro tour events.
In fact at the end of the 2011 season we saw teams rushing around the world to sign up riders to ensure that the team gets enough points to get into the pro tour.
I wonder how much those pro tour teams paid the previous clubs and teams as a thank you for developing the riders they just contracted; in fact I am sure I know how much was paid and I would suggest the figure starts with Z and ends in O!
As a rider develops, and moves up the ranks, we know that is not a solo effort. At each step on the road riders benefits from the coaches in their amateur clubs to the top trainers, nutritionist and more in their last team.
Each one of these people and organisations have put time and money into developing the rider, it logically follows that they and their organisation should get something back for their efforts.
I feel that the grassroots must get a bit of money directly from the top, and while, for now, cycling solidarity payments would never be as much as soccer players payments, they are a start which can benefit the sport.
In a time of uncertainty for our sport, it is time to look at all other professional sports and cherry pick the best bit, to me solidarity payments are a good idea.
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Irishman Feargal Coffey is an avid cycling fan who also does press and public relations for London Irish Amateur Rugby Footbal Club when he’s not running his web communications company or stalking the twitterverse as @fergs01. This is the first part in his op/ed series on applying revenue, marketing, and media strategies from other sports models to the cycling world.
1 Comment
Sounds interesting but, unlike football, the money in cycling is paid directly to the rider, not his team so for this model to work, the riders themselves will have to be taxed.