The man who negotiated the most recent pay deals for Australia's footballers and cricketers has accused Cricket Australia of lying in its latest pitch to players.
Five years ago, as Australian Cricketers' Association chief executive, Paul Marsh signed off on a revenue-sharing agreement with CA, which expires next week without a new deal in sight. On Monday, Marsh, now head of the AFLPA, completed what he says, and the AFL agrees, is a lucrative revenue-sharing deal for footballers for the next five years.
CA, which wants to abolish revenue sharing, welcomed the footballers' new deal, but disputed that it was revenue sharing. "The AFL, with the agreement of its players, has rejected the funding model that currently exists within cricket," a CA spokesman said. "They understand that the fixed percentage model is outdated, and hinders the sport."
The new footy deal is "more akin to a profit share", the spokesman said.
This infuriated Marsh. "To say it is profit sharing is factually incorrect," he said. "Our deal is not that all. It is revenue share. This is another in a long line of disrespectful and disingenuous actions by CA against the players."
Marsh said AFL players would get 28 per cent of forecast AFL revenue, 28 per cent of AFL revenue greater than forecast and 11.2 per cent of club revenue greater than forecast. This, he said, was revenue sharing, tried and true. "Profit is a very different concept to revenue," he said.
Five years ago, Marsh said, CA had provided players with highly detailed financial forecasts on which to base a deal. This time, it had offered only "bits and pieces", making negotiation impossible. As it happened, revenue was much higher than anticipated, and therefore so was the players' share.
Marsh said that nearly always in both sports, revenues were higher than predicted, so for CA, there was no risk in revenue sharing.
But CA says this arrangement is outdated, and the footy deal proves it. "The AFL deal demonstrates clearly that you do not need a player payments model based on a fixed percentage of revenue to be a successful sport that looks at all levels of the game, including grassroots, or to have an effective partnership with the players," the spokesman said.
Marsh acknowledged that the two sports were structurally different, but not so different that they could not learn from one another when it came to payment models. He cautioned that crisis was upon cricket. Even if a deal was struck now, it would take weeks, even months, to nut out the details. Meantime, all would be in limbo. "In nine days time, cricket potentially will be a sport in a world of pain," Marsh said.