Interesting numbers but as noted, not overly meaningful without details of all the caveats and adjustments

And, as much as I don't want to defend Perth, if my understanding is correct marquee players must be Australian?

So Perth may appear worse on these base numbers, since they would include Cotton's huge salary, whereas actual "marquee" players like Delly, Creek etc may not be included

It's pretty much meaningless without the details of the exclusions from the cap. Humphries was said to be on $400k a year the past two years at the Sixers but was probably our 'marquee' player and thus would've been excluded from the cap.

I'm not sure 'marquee' signings have to be Aussies as such some one on here said Zhou Qi was SEM's marquee player last season as an SRP player rather than an import that may have been true.

Explodes the fantasy that Adelaide was one of the highest spending teams.

No it doesn't.

https://nbl.com.au/news/explaining-the-nbl-salary-cap-system

"A marquee player must be an Australian or New Zealander and a club can have a maximum of four of these players. That being said, teams are only allowed a total of four marquee and restricted (import) players combined.

Now, contrary to popular belief, marquee players are not completely paid outside the cap. What actually happens is the NBL caps the value of these players so that, no matter what they are getting paid, only a set amount is included in the salary cap.

The amount included in the cap for a club's first Marquee player is $171,654.

However, that value increases for each additional Marquee guy on your roster. A second Marquee player will cost you $228,873 in the cap, a third is valued at $286,091 while a fourth costs $343,309."

Article from 2019

To be honest this data is kind of irrelevant when the top four earners on each team are excluded. It creates a headline and buzz for those that don't understand. E.g. this shows that Perth spent the most, even that could be wildly untrue.

Unless its fully transparent all this sort of article does is create false headlines.

If I was Cairns, I would be strongly pushing for the soft cap to INCLUDE the marquee salaries. This system crushes teams that can't afford to pay the full cap (marquee+regular cap).

So United may have had, say, Goulding, Delly, JLA (3 marquees) since they only had one import (Agada)

(Although JLA was a 6th man the year before, so questionable whether he would've been a marquee)

Whereas if you have 3 imports like Sydney did, you could only have one marquee (Cooks for example)

From Santa's salary cap article a number of years ago:


A marquee player must be an Australian or New Zealander and a club can have a maximum of four of these players. That being said, teams are only allowed a total of four marquee and restricted (import) players combined.

To be honest this data is kind of irrelevant when the top four earners on each team are excluded

If I was Cairns, I would be strongly pushing for the soft cap to INCLUDE the marquee salaries

Tells us nothing until the value of marquee players are added.

[It only excludes the top four earners for teams with no imports]

To be even more precise it only includes the top four earners for teams with no imports, where those players are exceeding the marquee limits

This is an important qualification because, in the example I gave Delly and CG43 were almost certainly earning over the marquee thresholds. Quite unlikely JLA would've been earning over 286K IMO (and that would likely have risen to 300-350k since 2019 when that article was written).

It also appears that these numbers aren't the actual numbers. These are the applied numbers the committee gives to players and ergo teams.

These numbers are against the cap not actual salary spend - this indicates who knows how to work the rules the best

Interesting article, but the NBL has to come out and make these's player payments public. Even the AFL should do the same because members of clubs deserve to know what their clubs are spending their money on.

This whole salary cap needs to be more clarified with the marquee players earns etc.

What this does do, though, is throw out the narrative that clubs are spending recklessly. Whether they're spending within their means is another question, of course, but they're clearly all (outside of Perth) being smart about what money goes where.

What's the "figure above the soft cap"?

Is it the future plus marquee players? Is it the amount above the soft cap including marquee base but not including the other marquee payment?

Is it the figure inclusive of marquee players**

It's not just marquees. SRPs and Next Stars don't count against the cap, I remember there being an exemption for indigenous players as well.

Kobe how can you possibly deduce that clubs aren't spending recklessly? If they can be paying 4 people.literally whatever the want and the cap hit (these numbers) is fixed, nobody knows what clubs are truly spending?

Of course we don't know exactly what they're actually spending, but they're all pretty clearly trying to stay close to the soft cap. Maybe Sydney are paying Cooks $4M just for the lolz, sure, but we're not seeing a number of clubs well over the cap where money is clearly being thrown around haphazardly.

Except for Perth that is.

As I said above:

they're clearly all (outside of Perth) being smart about what money goes where.

I'm not sure how anything is clear when 4 players in each teams calculation can literally be any figure. I'd wager a fair amount that if real spends were shown there would be 2-4 teams right up there, probably above, Perths reported spend here. And Perths could be far higher than the reported as well for their other Marquees.

I'm not sure how anything is clear when 4 players in each teams calculation can literally be any figure.

Perths could be far higher than the reported as well for their other Marquees.

If they had one it would have been Norton, who received a massive offer from Tassie. Are there rules around who can classify as a marquee?

https://nbl.com.au/news/explaining-the-nbl-salary-cap-system

"A marquee player must be an Australian or New Zealander and a club can have a maximum of four of these players. That being said, teams are only allowed a total of four marquee and restricted (import) players combined.

Now, contrary to popular belief, marquee players are not completely paid outside the cap. What actually happens is the NBL caps the value of these players so that, no matter what they are getting paid, only a set amount is included in the salary cap.

The amount included in the cap for a club's first Marquee player is $171,654.

However, that value increases for each additional Marquee guy on your roster. A second Marquee player will cost you $228,873 in the cap, a third is valued at $286,091 while a fourth costs $343,309."

Article from 2019

If they release this I don't know why they wouldn’t release 1) the total actual salary spend for the roster and 2) the total actual salary spend plus the luxury tax paid (or whatever they call it)

Those are the two figures we are actually interested in....

Back in the day teams used to blatantly cheat the cap, take the piss out of the league in the process and left other teams in their wake. It defeated the purpose of the entertainment value for most.

These days, they’ve considered the balance between expenditure to make sure that clubs could attract strong talent vs maintaining a competitive league.

When you’re a fan you want to see guys like Bogut, Delly, Landale, Cooks, Cotton play both for your team and against your team. They are drawcards. If they are against you, you want it to be a close competitive game as well.

The league has tried to thread that needle of 1) allowing expenditure to grab that drawcard talent without cheating, 2) created mechanisms and provided support so that teams aren’t left behind and 3) generated a highly competitive league most years.

It’ll never be perfect and there’s lots to do, but I certainly don’t have a problem with clubs putting their money where their mouth is and attracting talent that ultimately I’m extra keen to see my club play against.

Cairns are really the ones that I’d love to see further support provided to so that they can compete year in year out.

Thanks Kobe, but I meant rules around whether they need a certain level of achievement to be considered marquee. For example, could the JJs make Matt Kenyon one if they want, or would the NBL say he's not a marquee-level player?

"It's not just marquees. SRPs and Next Stars don't count against the cap, I remember there being an exemption for indigenous players as well."

I believe that is the case with Will McDowell White

If the true value was announced and i believe it should be, you will probably find the clever clubs no how to operate the cap properly, ie marquee players. I think you will then find the kings are the top spenders.
As I've said previously, Smith is a very smart business man, he wants Sydney to be number one and he’s is achieving that, and like all smart businessmen they don’t help the opposition.

It's not just clever, it's having the finances to attract a player who you can then get a massive discount on as a marquee. Melbourne could afford Goulding, Delly and Landale over the past couple of years, Sydney could afford Bogut and Cooks (and possibly this year Vasiljevic after the overseas interest he had). Not all teams have that luxury though.

Well said KET

The system they've designed seems to meet their goals the increase the entertainment value

But I do agree for transparency sake they should release all data. Would give more opportunities for informed debate and whether there needs to be further tweaks. Perhaps increase the threshold of marquee salaries that's included, so teams actually pay tax. Gives the likes of Cairns and Illawarra more of a boost

And* increase the entertainment value

"So Perth may appear worse on these base numbers, since they would include Cotton's huge salary, "

LV - you need to factor in the exchange rate used for imports' salaries. Imports are paid in US dollars and are converted to Australian dollars at a rate of USD$0.92 per AUD$1.00.

Actual exchange rates varied between USD$0.69 and USD$0.76 per AUD$1.00 during the 2021-22 season. So imports’ salaries would have been discounted by somewhere between 18% and 25% for salary cap purposes.

So if Cotton’s salary is why Perth is $400,000 over the capr, then their actual spend would have been at least another $70,000 higher again.

It also means teams paying imports a lot generally would have had much higher actual spends than these salary cap numbers, regardless of marquees.

^ the import salary are locked in at the time of the contract , they dont fluctuate after that. Both sides take currency risk.

Import salaries are calculated at a fixed deemed percentage rather than actual foreign exchange rate.

The current deeming is AUD 0.92 for every US dollar.

(because the contracts of imports are always in USD.)

Q Anon - yes, contract values are set at contract signing. As Perthworld says, those contract values are in USD$ and are then converted to a corresponding amount in AUD$ for dalary cap purposes, at a fixed rate of USD$0.92 per AUD$1.00. Because actual exhange rates were much lower at the time of contract signing, that calculated salary cap figure is way below the actual salary spend in AUD$.

You can find out more about this aspect of the salary cap in the article multiple posters have linked to above.

The use of Salary cap figure is a bit miss leading, especially in Sydney's case, which makes this a little but useless, and total cash spend would be a far better guide.

The Kings were 135k under the soft cap,

However they had Cooks who would have been a marquee, player so for cap purposes cooks salary was $172k, but the real cash salary would have been morel likely 400k plus, so you can add around $228k to the 1.5 mil cap figure they claim

Which puts them around 1.7-1.8mil, which im sure would have been in the top 2 or 3 spends in the league.

Plus Maker the next star would have likely cost them some cash, but not counted for the salary cap, the league would have paid for some of it too.

Kings would have likely spent around 2 mil on their roster,

To claim they only had the 7th spend is crazy, does anyone really believe they spent less than Tassie? They just managed to use the rules well.

I hope in future if they are going to do these articles they use the actual spend not the cap spend that has been manipulated, or the information is a little useless imo.

Report gross spend or GTFO NBL.

As Perthworld says, those contract values are in USD$ and are then converted to a corresponding amount in AUD$ for dalary cap purposes, at a fixed rate of USD$0.92 per AUD$1.00.

does the manager still take 10%

No way were Sydney spending so frugally last season, but the SRP and Next Star deals really helped their bottom line for salary cap purposes.

Perth obviously have a lot of their actual spend tied up in Cotton. If he naturalises it frees up an import spot, but would it also help their salary cap position? I think it would, but it might also depend on how much a "replacement" import costs them.

I hope in future if they are going to do these articles they use the actual spend not the cap spend that has been manipulated

Perth obviously have a lot of their actual spend tied up in Cotton. If he naturalises it frees up an import spot, but would it also help their salary cap position? I think it would, but it might also depend on how much a "replacement" import costs them.

Depends who it is. The Dragons spent an absolute mint on Donta Smith as a replacement import.

top 15 players salaries have now been published in a " range " eg McCarron is being paid between 300- 400 k so 350k

eg McCarron is being paid between 300- 400 k so 350k

top 15 players salaries have now been published in a " range " eg McCarron is being paid between 300- 400 k so 350k