It’s shit. I’m seeing fans of each club defend this as some kind of necessity to survive but it’s utter shit.
Teenagers being shifted around between clubs like cattle just so clubs can register a gain on a spreadsheet. It’s fecking despicable imo. I hate it.
There’s probably something very clever and elegant that you could do in this space. I’ve not thought about it long enough, but tossing around some ideas;
- Sale Value of academy assets are not discountable at point of sale, but a small % of PSR headroom is granted if an academy product under a certain age makes X number of appearances at another club after sale.
That’s full of holes as another club controls whether the selling club sees that benefit. But make the period 5 years or something and it dilutes negative gearing.
- Perhaps legislation for first option buy back clauses for academy players sold before a certain age.
None of these daft initial suggestions to help clubs, but to engender the release and movement of talent with a POTENTIAL upside for helping young players, and not this instant binary cost/benefit decision involved.
The current system is a mess.