Costs
People in the league talk a lot about "max earners", referring to a player's ability to get all available TPE. However, I think most people don't think about the cost to max earn.
Saying that there's a cost to earning could seem contradictory - earning something tends to imply that you're getting it while costs tend to be something you lose. However, earning TPE in the ISFL requires money. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who is invested enough in the league to be reading the media section, but I'm going to break down the minimum dollar costs of maximum earning.
For reference in case people haven't memorized numbers, maximizing TPE requires $1 million per week of training and $13.5 million per season for equipment.
How long is a season?
(I define "half week" as any week which had regular and offseason in the same period of training/activity checks, ie Monday to Sunday)
S27 had a ~2.5 week offseason and is scheduled to have ~6 weeks of regular season (second half of the week at the end of preseason, 5 whole weeks, and then a half week at the end) meaning that you'd need 9 weeks of training.
S26 had a 2.5 week offseason and then 6 weeks of games.
S25 had 2.5 week offseason and then 5.5 weeks of games
Given that S26 and S27 had holidays, I'm going to go with 8 weeks per season being the expectation and ignore the occasional extra week.
Adding the costs of 8 weeks of training and equipment, that results in $21.5 million per season. Straightforward enough, right?
Salary
Every player on a team in the league earns a salary of some sort. For anyone who hasn't looked into the details of the rules for that, the highest minimum salary is $5 million/year for players with 1000 TPE or more. Simple math says that a max earning player on a minimum contract faces a shortfall of at least $16.5 million per season. Does anyone actually get paid enough to get close to making up this difference purely on salary? No. If you look at the player salary sheet, the highest salary at this point (Feb 21 2021) is $8.5 million/year for Darrell Williams. Even the highest paid player in the league is losing $13 million/season to play in the league.
That conclusion may again be obvious to anyone who has participated in the league for more than a season. With media, twitter, betting, etc. there are many ways to get paid that aren't purely from your player's salary. I do think it's interesting to consider though - why aren't there any players who insist on getting paid enough contractually to avoid needing to participate in the other avenues of earning?
Presumably the salary cap is a major factor. The current cap is $85 million, meaning that paying out one max earning contract would be more than a quarter of the team's cap. Obviously that puts a severe constraint on the number of players you can pay at that rate. And nearly as obviously, money in the league is primarily there to make your player better to help do football better - there's minimal personal benefit as compared to the NFL, meaning that most people are willing to take contracts closer to the minimum so as to enable their team to perform better with the aim of winning more.
Cash Monies
@TheCC posted an interesting article on valuing ISFL dollars vs. US dollars. The Very Scientific Conclusion was that $1USD = $604,370.49 ISFLD. At that exchange rate, max earning costs $35.57 USD/season and the $16.5 million max earn vs. max minimum salary shortfall is $27.30 USD/season. That puts another interesting spin on the situation to me - is increasing your team's chances of winning several percent worth $27/season? Or, to reframe the numbers, that's $3.38/week, or $1.69/game.
There's an argument that the article's method 2 and 3 (how much USD people would pay/sell ISFLD for) are more relevant to the consideration and both of those are fewer USD per ISFL. The highest ($3,816,793.89 ISFL per $1 USD, from method 2) puts a max earning season's cost at $5.63, the shortfall at $4.32/season, and the per-game cost of $0.27. At numbers that low, I personally figure that most ISFL members would consider the value (in terms of personal enjoyment) of the increased chance of winning more than the hypothetical cash monies. But, I'm interested to see if other people agree or not!
People in the league talk a lot about "max earners", referring to a player's ability to get all available TPE. However, I think most people don't think about the cost to max earn.
Saying that there's a cost to earning could seem contradictory - earning something tends to imply that you're getting it while costs tend to be something you lose. However, earning TPE in the ISFL requires money. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who is invested enough in the league to be reading the media section, but I'm going to break down the minimum dollar costs of maximum earning.
For reference in case people haven't memorized numbers, maximizing TPE requires $1 million per week of training and $13.5 million per season for equipment.
How long is a season?
(I define "half week" as any week which had regular and offseason in the same period of training/activity checks, ie Monday to Sunday)
S27 had a ~2.5 week offseason and is scheduled to have ~6 weeks of regular season (second half of the week at the end of preseason, 5 whole weeks, and then a half week at the end) meaning that you'd need 9 weeks of training.
S26 had a 2.5 week offseason and then 6 weeks of games.
S25 had 2.5 week offseason and then 5.5 weeks of games
Given that S26 and S27 had holidays, I'm going to go with 8 weeks per season being the expectation and ignore the occasional extra week.
Adding the costs of 8 weeks of training and equipment, that results in $21.5 million per season. Straightforward enough, right?
Salary
Every player on a team in the league earns a salary of some sort. For anyone who hasn't looked into the details of the rules for that, the highest minimum salary is $5 million/year for players with 1000 TPE or more. Simple math says that a max earning player on a minimum contract faces a shortfall of at least $16.5 million per season. Does anyone actually get paid enough to get close to making up this difference purely on salary? No. If you look at the player salary sheet, the highest salary at this point (Feb 21 2021) is $8.5 million/year for Darrell Williams. Even the highest paid player in the league is losing $13 million/season to play in the league.
That conclusion may again be obvious to anyone who has participated in the league for more than a season. With media, twitter, betting, etc. there are many ways to get paid that aren't purely from your player's salary. I do think it's interesting to consider though - why aren't there any players who insist on getting paid enough contractually to avoid needing to participate in the other avenues of earning?
Presumably the salary cap is a major factor. The current cap is $85 million, meaning that paying out one max earning contract would be more than a quarter of the team's cap. Obviously that puts a severe constraint on the number of players you can pay at that rate. And nearly as obviously, money in the league is primarily there to make your player better to help do football better - there's minimal personal benefit as compared to the NFL, meaning that most people are willing to take contracts closer to the minimum so as to enable their team to perform better with the aim of winning more.
Cash Monies
@TheCC posted an interesting article on valuing ISFL dollars vs. US dollars. The Very Scientific Conclusion was that $1USD = $604,370.49 ISFLD. At that exchange rate, max earning costs $35.57 USD/season and the $16.5 million max earn vs. max minimum salary shortfall is $27.30 USD/season. That puts another interesting spin on the situation to me - is increasing your team's chances of winning several percent worth $27/season? Or, to reframe the numbers, that's $3.38/week, or $1.69/game.
There's an argument that the article's method 2 and 3 (how much USD people would pay/sell ISFLD for) are more relevant to the consideration and both of those are fewer USD per ISFL. The highest ($3,816,793.89 ISFL per $1 USD, from method 2) puts a max earning season's cost at $5.63, the shortfall at $4.32/season, and the per-game cost of $0.27. At numbers that low, I personally figure that most ISFL members would consider the value (in terms of personal enjoyment) of the increased chance of winning more than the hypothetical cash monies. But, I'm interested to see if other people agree or not!
![[Image: JYi8HmG.png]](https://i.imgur.com/JYi8HmG.png)
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