August 08, 2015

Is it time for a sort of Piketty wealth tax to be applied to the national football (soccer) league?

Sir, Tim Harford quotes Stefan Szymanski’s book Money and Football with: “It costs something like a billion quid to turn a club from a bottom-half Premier League team to one of the best teams of Europe” “How to level a playing field” August 8.

Boy that sounds like it is high time for a Piketty wealth tax to eliminate the structural inequalities in sports… so that everyone has an equal opportunity.

By sheer coincidence on August 5, I tweeted out in the Internet space: “First division soccer (football) clubs should pay out to the lower divisions' clubs, for fertilizing, 50% of all transfer payments received.”

Really, if we use handicap system in golf (more or less strokes), and handicap system in horse racing (more or less weights), why can’t we use handicap system in team sports, like taxing the better and subsidizing the lesser ones, in order to let the individuals shine more on their own worth? Aren’t teams now sort of de-facto monopolies, or at least oligopolies? 

What would happen if for instance some second tier club, to make up for their almost irreversible second tier position, would suddenly have access to pay for what them in relative terms would be a player of the category of Zlatan Ibrahimović? I think that if so the quality and the spirit of football (soccer) on a global level could prosper tremendously.

Teams might be de-facto monopolies… so why not turn football (soccer) over to all the individual players... or their fans?

@PerKurowski