NFL wage dispute threatens American football season
If the NFL lockout goes ahead,
everything from March onwards
would be halted. Photograph:
Peter Morgan/AP
American football, the most
watched sport in the US, could
be cancelled next year over a
long-running dispute between
owners and players, which a
union leader warns this weekend
will almost certainly result in a
lockout beginning in March.
The Super Bowl final would go
ahead in February as planned,
but everything from March
onwards would be halted, from
summer training camps through
to the planned start of the
professional 32-team, four-
month season in September.
Given the hundreds of millions of
dollars that team owners would
lose and pressure on them from
TV companies, the chances of a
deal being struck eventually are
high. But US sports have been
brought to a standstill in the
recent past by such disputes,
including the loss of the 1994-95
baseball season and the 2004-05
ice hockey season.
In an interview to be broadcast
this weekend on Bloomberg
television, the executive director
of the National Football League
Players Association, DeMaurice
Smith, issued his strongest
warning yet, saying a lockout is a
"near certainty".
He put the loss in wages to
players at $5bn (£3.2bn), and
said team owners and local
economies would also suffer.
"The magnitude of the loss
would be at the very least about
$160m to $170m per team city,"
Smith said. "That is a
conservative estimate of the
economic impact."
The team owners are seeking to
cut players' wages, saying they
are too high at a time when the
cost of running teams, such as
the building of new stadiums or
their upkeep, is rising. Players get
an average of $1.5m a year.
The owners, who want the
players' overall pot cut by $1bn,
are bringing existing contracts to
an end in February, two years
early. The players are happy with
the existing contracts and are
demanding they be honoured.
The owners have the advantage
of an extraordinary deal with
television companies in which
they get $4bn whether games
are played or not. But the
players' union has power, too:
the public outcry that would
result from a lockout.
"We know they have an
economic leverage over us.
Those TV contracts [are] a huge
economic hammer that hangs
over the players," Smith said.
"But when it does come to
leverage, about understanding
the necessity of sacrifice,
teamwork, our players believe
they are this game. I believe that
we have a tremendous amount
of leverage."
The union has tried to recruit the
support of members of Congress
as well as the White House, but
has had only limited success so
far, with politicians unwilling to
become engaged in labour
disputes.
Ken Gude, who worked for the
Washington Redskins in 2000 and
now works at the Democratic-
friendly thinktank Centre for
American Progress, said today: "I
can't actually believe the NFL
would be stupid enough to
jeopardise its position with the
American people in a period of
difficult economic times when
they argue over the allocation of
millions of dollars."
If the lockout goes ahead,
players will stop being paid from
March onwards. The annual
draft, a high-profile event where
teams select new players, would
go ahead in the spring, but the
training camps that begin in the
summer would not happen.
The next season is scheduled to
begin on 9 September. Unlike
baseball and basketball, the
playing season is relatively short,
ending on 2 January, with the
Super Bowl the following month,
and teams play relatively few
games.
One compromise under
consideration is that the season
be extended from 16 games to
18, which would give the players
extra money to make up for the
pay cut, but would mean two
more games, with attendant
injury risks. Unlike association
football, the average career of a
professional American football
player is only 3.6 seasons.
The NFL, in a statement earlier
this week, criticised the union for
trying to politicise the issue. "The
union's request for state and
local political leaders to
intercede in the negotiations
ignores and denigrates the
serious and far more substantial
problems that those leaders, and
that state and local workers
across the country, face.
"We can resolve our own issues
as we have done many times in
the past."
No comments:
Post a Comment