The Importance of the Players vs CSA Pay Dispute

[SpecialK]

I hope he went home because he resigned or got fired

[ray]

Supposed ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times qualify for a World Cup" 😵

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Finally watched the press conference. What's so bad about Nick Bontis showing a bit of passion about the sport? Better to have the CSA prez acting like he's one of the more colourful characters at a WOSL premier game in London, Ont that's getting a bit heated than acting like a reanimated corpse Earl Cochrane style. Non illegitimi carborundum.

[SpecialK]

1 minute ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Finally watched the press conference. What's so bad about Nick Bontis showing a bit of passion about the sport? Better to have the CSA prez acting like he's one of the more colourful characters at a WOSL premier game in London, Ont that's getting a bit heated than acting like a reanimated corpse Earl Cochrane style. Non illegitimi carborundum.

He clearly lied and showed no facts, no details information, no numbers and didn’t answer question and walked off. He’s a scum bag 

[ag futbol]

23 minutes ago, kohanz said:

The CSA is a not-for-profit.

I think the idea here is that in European football (and other sports too), is common for players contracts to be specified in pay "net" of the tax (e.g. the team pays the tax on behalf of the player). So if your wages are listed as X, you receive X with no taxes owing, while your team covers your income tax for you. In other words, wages/contracts are discussed in post-tax numbers. I think that's what the players are asking for.  That their portion be paid to them and then the CSA also covers their income tax (related specifically to the WC bonus) on top of that.

 

What the actual absolute or percentage numbers on that are, I think is getting widely speculated and confused here.

Thanks. That would explain the disconnect if true.

That said, would also be wildly inefficient. You have players in X different countries at X different tax rates. Admin nightmare. 

[ensco]

4 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Finally watched the press conference. What's so bad about Nick Bontis showing a bit of passion about the sport? Better to have the CSA prez acting like he's one of the more colourful characters at a WOSL premier game in London, Ont that's getting a bit heated than acting like a reanimated corpse Earl Cochrane style. Non illegitimi carborundum.

Bontis insulted everybody's intelligence yesterday. 

His big, lecturing, aggrieved, finger wagging point … was that the team couldn’t make the numbers work even if they didn’t have all the futsal, para, beach, U 20 etc teams.

Which is absurd, patently false. This is a bonus. They can fire all of the WC payment out of a cannon to the moon, without it impacting the budget for those programs. 

 

[kohanz]

nvm, nonsensical thought

Edited June 6, 2022 by kohanz

[The Real Marc]

3 minutes ago, ensco said:

Bontis insulted everybody's intelligence yesterday. 

His big, lecturing, aggrieved, finger wagging point … was that the team couldn’t make the numbers work even if they didn’t have all the futsal, para, beach, U 20 etc teams.

Which is absurd, patently false. This is a bonus. They can fire all of the WC payment out of a cannon to the moon, without it impacting the budget for those programs. 

 

I'm no fan of his performance yesterday, but if if IF the request is that the men want their cut to reach a certain level so they can have x left over after they pay their individual taxes, the CSA could be on the hook for more money than they're getting from being at the World Cup. Thereby depriving other programs of funding. I just find it weird the players would ask for that. 

Edited June 6, 2022 by The Real Marc

[ensco]

I think people are over-relying on the Rick Westhead story. Sportswriters botch details re the business side all the time.

As you say, it makes no sense. The players aren’t idiots, and I think they have a legit beef if the CSB deal “cuts” into their payout, without them having been a party to that negotiation.

I am going to wait and see on these details.

[SpecialK]

6 minutes ago, ensco said:

I think people are over-relying on the Rick Westhead story. Sportswriters botch details re the business side all the time.

As you say, it makes no sense. The players aren’t idiots, and I think they have a legit beef if the CSB deal “cuts” into their payout, without them having been a party to that negotiation.

I am going to wait and see on these details.

But it does ! Come on man just look at what the CSB has done!! They sold the media rights for 20 million a year. The CSA get 3 million in total of all CSB. Mediapro goes to Rogers and sells the games to Rogers and the CSA and players get ZERO!

[Admin]

1 hour ago, kohanz said:

The CSA is a not-for-profit.

I think the idea here is that in European football (and other sports too), is common for players contracts to be specified in pay "net" of the tax (e.g. the team pays the tax on behalf of the player). So if your wages are listed as X, you receive X with no taxes owing, while your team covers your income tax for you. In other words, wages/contracts are discussed in post-tax numbers. I think that's what the players are asking for.  That their portion be paid to them and then the CSA also covers their income tax (related specifically to the WC bonus) on top of that.

 

What the actual absolute or percentage numbers on that are, I think is getting widely speculated and confused here.

This gives things more context if tax is indeed the confusion here. 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

30 minutes ago, ensco said:

Bontis insulted everybody's intelligence yesterday. 

His big, lecturing, aggrieved, finger wagging point … was that the team couldn’t make the numbers work even if they didn’t have all the futsal, para, beach, U 20 etc teams.

Which is absurd, patently false. This is a bonus. They can fire all of the WC payment out of a cannon to the moon, without it impacting the budget for those programs. 

Did you miss the part about how a third of the CSA's revenues are from player registration fees and how they are now in deficit because they weren't able to collect those over the last two years for pandemic related reasons?

[Free kick]

27 minutes ago, ensco said:

I think people are over-relying on the Rick Westhead story. Sportswriters botch details re the business side all the time.

As you say, it makes no sense. The players aren’t idiots, and I think they have a legit beef if the CSB deal “cuts” into their payout, without them having been a party to that negotiation.

I am going to wait and see on these details.

You will never see the details of that because it was negotiated between two private parties.  Best one can do is just ask either of the two parties and hope they agree to divulge.  If the rights were flipped for 20 Mill to Rogers,  then that's a big chunk (17 Mill) that went into a blackhole.   The players would be right to seriously complain about this.  When pro leagues negotiate new broadcast rights,  the players in those leagues can reasonably expect the benefits (or some benefits) to accrue to them in the next collective bargaining round.   But this is a unique case becasue the CSA gave that all away

Edited June 6, 2022 by Free kick

[kohanz]

20 minutes ago, Admin said:

This gives things more context if tax is indeed the confusion here. 

I am not an expert on this by any means and I do think it varies by country and league. For example in the Premier League, wages are gross (pre-tax), whereas I think in the Serie A wages are often reported as net (post-tax).

Here's an example from European basketball: https://europrobasket.com/overseas-basketball-salaries/#Do_Overseas_Basketball_Players_Pay_Taxes

Edited June 6, 2022 by kohanz

[Mitchryan11]

5 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Did you miss the part about how a third of the CSA's revenues are from player registration fees and how they are now in deficit because they weren't able to collect those over the last two years for pandemic related reasons?

Thats a good point

[Bison44]

Everyone has gotten a paycheque eh?  The players get paid 8mil from CSA, but the cheque from CSA to the players is really 4mil, the CPP, UI and taxes have been taken off already and remitted to the CRA for the players.  If they want the take home pay to be 4 mil, that wont leave much of anything to share with the women or filter down to grass roots growth of the game  by the CSA with this windfall. BUT..is that really what the players are saying?   

Hume had a good point, in that this is usually all decided years before eh?  Before qualifying.  How do they figure they can renegotiate at this point??  And just from what I can find plenty of countries are between 20-70% straight to the players.  Canada being a backward soccer nation with so much infrastructure missing it makes sense to me the the CSA would want and justifiably need a bigger %  than some of the powerhouse associations keep.  

[El Diego]

8 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Did you miss the part about how a third of the CSA's revenues are from player registration fees and how they are now in deficit because they weren't able to collect those over the last two years for pandemic related reasons?

Whatever the case is, the CSA should not be relying on the men qualifying for the 2022 WC to keep afloat

[Ruud]

4 hours ago, costarg said:

Perhaps the Iran fiasco, on top of a "sure, ya, no problem, we'll pay you well, don't worry about it, we'll sort it out" pushed the players over the edge.  How much time between the strike announcement and the Iran cancellation?  Players probably all landed at training and started discussing and figured the time was right.  I for one, can't blame them.  Something needs to be done to end the joke which is the CSA.

 

3 hours ago, TGAA_Star said:

I wouldn't be surprised if money issues are the reason why Canada's team crashes out of Qatar. Same thing happened to us Ghanaians in 2014 in Brazil especially within our camp about money issues and it caused in fighting within the squad which caused us to crash out of Brazil back in 2014. It looks like Canada may be headed down that same path.

Better now than in November I guess. 
what about hurdman. He was Also negotiating with other offers a few months ago for he and his staff.  

[A_Gagne]

2 hours ago, ag futbol said:

Speaking as a financial professional, this is a nonsensical interpretation by people who clearly know nothing about how corporate taxes work. 

CSA gets WC bonus = revenue 

CSA pays players = expense 

revenue - expenses = taxable income 

So anything passed to the payers is not being taxed. The the idea that the CSA need the players to “cover the tax” on their portion is nonsense.

How I interpret the "after vs. before tax thing", is that the players are asking for is 4M after THEY pay tax on the money. Again though, this makes no sense whatsoever. These guys make wildly discrepant incomes - Kone makes 65K USD, David makes 2.5M EURO -, pay equally divergent marginal tax rates, live in numerous tax jurisdictions around the world, and some are likely incorporated themselves.

It makes no sense that they would ask for 4M after their own taxes, and speaking of transparency, we're all sitting here debating net vs gross vs total, etc, because we really don't know what they asked for... All we've got is the letter they tweeted. If they're all for "transparency" then perhaps they can publish the text of their actual demand to the CSA?

IMO there's 4 possibilities here:

1) Neither side are actually talking about taxes, and this whole discussion is a bunch of broken telephone bunk. Has anyone actually came out on the record and stated there was a demand for "after taxes" compensation by the players? Given how much smoke there is here though, I think this possibility is unlikely.

2) The CSA is pushing the "after taxes" narrative to make the players look bad. That seems stupid and likely to backfire, so less likely, but also wouldn't put it past the CSA to, you know CSA, and what not... they did once organize a steel drum band for a CAN vs JAM game.

3)The players have perhaps just drawn a broad brush and actually asked for 8M, assuming an average approximate marginal tax rate of 50% for the players across the board.

4) They're actually asking the CSA to calculate their pay out net of each individual player's personal tax rate. That seems a little crazy.

All in all, I think scenario 3 is most likely.

Edited June 6, 2022 by A_Gagne

[MauditYvon]

The prize money is 12.5 millions btw.

[Ruud]

1 hour ago, CanadaFan123 said:

The Women’s team should not be getting the prize money for the men, period. It is such a ridiculous and entitled notion that has led us to this point. It’s impossible to make logic of without devolving into a straw man argument. 
 

Ultimately there’s nothing “equitable” about having to share your bonus with someone completely unconnected to the work you did. 

Reasonable people can disagree on this. uS men have agreed to sharing all revenue equitably.  
would this deal be needed if fifa offered same bonuses for all fifa events?  
 

which players receive the payouts?  Current or former members?  

 

[CanadaFan123]

1 hour ago, Floortom said:

Bad optics - why would he go home before the deal is signed? 

He has other grifts to keep afloat. 

 

1 hour ago, Colliedor said:

Especially because we all know its very very important to talk face to face. It's just not possible otherwise. He needs to see the players shake their heads!

He has a device called a cell phone that is able to take calls apparently though! Also, he stayed in the same hotel as the players ... on purpose.

[CanadaFan123]

1 minute ago, Ruud said:

Reasonable people can disagree on this. uS men have agreed to sharing all revenue equitably.  
would this deal be needed if fifa offered same bonuses for all fifa events?  
 

which players receive the payouts?  Current or former members?  

 

Can they? Why stop there? 
 

Why is it just split equally between the men and women then? Why not include the para squad? 

[MauditYvon]

And what if one doesn’t qualify…

[A_Gagne]

20 minutes ago, kohanz said:

I am not an expert on this by any means and I do think it varies by country and league. For example in the Premier League, wages are gross (pre-tax), whereas I think in the Serie A wages are often reported as net (post-tax).

Here's an example from European basketball: https://europrobasket.com/overseas-basketball-salaries/#Do_Overseas_Basketball_Players_Pay_Taxes

Hmm... thanks for this. Didn't know it was standard for athletes (at least in basketball) to have their teams foot the tax bill. It makes sense though in a globalized sport to negotiate with players on net (post-tax) income. That would make it simpler for the player to make a decision say for instance if they were evaluating a 1M EURO contract from a Swedish vs a Greek club.