You have to break it down by league as each has very different CBA's. In the NBA and MLB for example, they have a luxury tax which means that a team is allowed to pay over and above the salary cap to a certain point, but beyond this the team will be forced to pay a fine (or a 'luxury tax') to the governing body.

That example is thought to not work here for a variety reasons - namely because we don't have owners and there'd be massive disparity if Bruce Mathieson said 'fine - go over the cap, just use 10% of pokie revenue to pay the luxury tax' and North Melbourne said 'We can't afford to pay the luxury tax'...

The New York Yankees have paid luxury tax for the last decade. Over $20million in luxury tax this year alone. The Pittsburgh Pirates never pay the tax because they have a smaller market, smaller revenue and therefore smaller payroll. The Yankees earned $427 million in revenue last year, the Pirates earned $160 million. It's that gap that MLB hope to bridge by using the luxury tax. The New York Yankees pay at a rate of 40% on the amount of their payroll over $178 million.

The money generated from the luxury tax in the MLB is not distributed to the rest of the league, as is the case with the NBA, but rather is used for other purposes. The first $5 million is withheld to cover potential refunds, and is contributed to the Industry Growth Fund (IGF) if no refunds are forthcoming. The remaining money is divided as follows: 50% funds player benefits, 25% funds developing baseball in countries without high school baseball, and 25% goes to the IGF.

You could tinker with the MLB model and come up with something that might work for the AFL. But US Sports franchises don't whinge and whine like Australian ones do. Much of it is media driven but FFS - take care of your own backyard. If the AFL want to continue to look after a non-traditional football market like they've been doing since they completely dropped the ball in the early-mid 90's - let them. No one has presented me an argument as to why it harms their club. I'd like Carlton to fix Carlton's problems first.

'equalization' 'integrity' 'fairness' 'competition' - hogwash !!

the AFL industry is engineered almost exclusively to create maximum revenue for its 'engineers'

''And, as for Stephen Kernahan, who I dearly admire and have always got on well with, he is only telling half the story. My apology came as a result of his abject apology to me. He was very disappointed in Greg Swann's comments about our club, had made that clear to Greg and told me he regretted them. In that spirit, I was happy to apologise as well.''