Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences

- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences


Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Management Research and Economic Development

Series Vol. 20 , 13 September 2023


Open Access | Article

Can Higher Salary Cap Bring the Team a Trophy? -The Correlation Between Player Salary Expense and Team’s Ranking

Jiateng Zeng * 1 , Chengting Wu 2 , Ryan Ge 3 , Zhe Tang 4
1 Loughborough University
2 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
3 Concordia International School Shanghai
4 HangZhou Wickham School

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences, Vol. 20, 110-118
Published 13 September 2023. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by EWA Publishing
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Citation Jiateng Zeng, Chengting Wu, Ryan Ge, Zhe Tang. Can Higher Salary Cap Bring the Team a Trophy? -The Correlation Between Player Salary Expense and Team’s Ranking. AEMPS (2023) Vol. 20: 110-118. DOI: 10.54254/2754-1169/20/20230180.

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of a team's salary cap on its end-of-season standing. This study made use of data from the Spanish Soccer League (La Liga) and the National Football League (NFL). Four consecutive seasons of correlation and regression analyses were conducted for both leagues to determine the relationship between these two variables. The analysis revealed that in La Liga, a higher salary cap will result in a higher team ranking. However, no correlation between salary caps and NFL team rankings has been found. The root cause for the inconsistent results may be that the disparity in salary cap between NFL teams is insufficient to have an actual impact on team performance. This research is valuable in informing the club manager whether accumulating expensive players to buy the trophy is a feasible strategy.

Keywords

player salary, salary cap, team performance, team ranking

References

1. Totty, E. S., & Owens, M. F. (2011). Salary caps and competitive balance in professional sports leagues. Journal for Economic Educators, 11(2), 45-56.

2. Zimbalist, A. S. (2002). Competitive Balance in Sports Leagues: An Introduction. Journal of Sports Economics, 3(2), 111–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/152700250200300201

3. Lakhani, K. R., & Ferguson, P. J. (2021). Consuming Contests: Outcome Uncertainty and Spectator Demand for Contest-based Entertainment. Harvard Business School.

4. Dietl, H. M., Franck, E., Lang, M., & Rathke, A. (2012). Salary cap regulation in professional team sports. Contemporary Economic Policy, 30(3), 307-319. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7287.2011.00265.x

5. Staudohar, P. D. (1999). Labor relations in basketball: the lockout of 1998-99. Monthly Lab. Rev., 122, 3.

6. Zimbalist, A. (2010). Reflections on salary shares and salary caps. Journal of Sports Economics, 11(1), 17-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002509354890

7. Aubut, M. (2003). When negotiations fail: An analysis of salary arbitration and salary cap systems. Sports Law Journal, 189, 190-236.

8. Miller, K. (2018) How NBA free agency, salary Cap work, Bleacher Report. Bleacher Report. Available at: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2787871-how-nba-free-agency-salary-cap-work (Accessed: January 30, 2023).

9. Sanderson, A. R., and Siegfried, J. J. (2003). Thinking about competitive balance. Journal of Sports Economics, 4(4), 255-279.

10. Hall, S., Szymanski, S., & Zimbalist, A. S. (2002). Testing causality between team performance and payroll: The cases of Major League Baseball and English soccer. Journal of sports economics, 3(2), 149-168.

11. Buzzacchi, L., Caviggioli, F., Milone, F.L. and Scotti, D., (2021). Impact and Efficiency Ranking of Football Managers in the Italian Serie A: Sport and Financial Performance. Journal of Sports Economics, 22(7), 744-776. https://doi.org/10.1177/15270025211012053

12. Spotrac.com, (n.d.). NFL Team Salary Cap Tracker. Retrieved February 4, 2023, from https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/

13. Camenker, J. (2022, September 01). The NFL's 25 highest-paid players in 2022: Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray set the standard. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/nfl-highest-paid-players-2022/ot9egmldb6sly6mtqc3jb1dx

Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Authors who publish this series agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this series.

2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this series.

3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See Open Access Instruction).

Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Management Research and Economic Development
ISBN (Print)
978-1-915371-83-6
ISBN (Online)
978-1-915371-84-3
Published Date
13 September 2023
Series
Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences
ISSN (Print)
2754-1169
ISSN (Online)
2754-1177
DOI
10.54254/2754-1169/20/20230180
Copyright
13 September 2023
Open Access
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Copyright © 2023 EWA Publishing. Unless Otherwise Stated