Monica Abbott signs record contract.

Pales in comparison to other professional sports,
but it's a step in the right direction...

Pitcher Monica Abbott signs $1 million contract with National Pro Fastpitch expansion team

http://profastpitch.com/news/news/?article_id=2517

Yes! That's awesome news for us because we're about 90 minutes east of Houston and can go watch some games. Dd can rock an Abbott jersey (which is our last name, too!)

Great thing for the sport

This is great for all Women's sports!!! So happy for you Monica!

Awesome. Just curious don't they have a salary cap in that league and isn't her annual salary over the cap by itself?

Anyway good for her.

Sweet Lou said:

Awesome. Just curious don't they have a salary cap in that league and isn't her annual salary over the cap by itself?

Anyway good for her.

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I believe shes going to make $20,000 for 6 seasons + Attendence Bonus (when more than 100 fans attend a game) accounting for the rest

Cobb_of_Fury said:

I believe shes going to make $20,000 for 6 seasons + Attendence Bonus (when more than 100 fans attend a game) accounting for the rest

Click to expand...

LOL, nice work around.

Silly me, I though she signed a record contract....with RCA.

Yes, this is quite the "outside the box" salary cap work around. Something tells me other owners are not going to take kindly to this.


There's two threads on this going on at once. Here's something I posted in the other thread. Not a knock against Monica, I hope it works out and many many many other players earn what she will and then more.

I just worry about the financial viability long term, as in order to pay Monica her "bonus" they need to average about 600 fans a night at $10 a ticket for 25 home games. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Looking at the 2015 stats, average attendance across the league was about 1,000, maybe less as Akron didn't report attendance for about half their games, and the ones they did averaged well under 1,000. There were a couple of Pride games that had large crowds, one about 12,000, one about 9,000. Don't know if that was all paid or a special free even that I've seen them advertise for before. Or if someone fat-fingered the number into the stats, as the days before and after those big ones had less than 1,000 fans.

So even if they can get 1,000 PAID butts in seats each night at an average of $10 a ticket, that leaves $4,000 per game to pay field operating expenses, player salaries, travel, equipment, management, etc. Times 25 home games and that's only $100K of revenue...with $20K going to Monica. So $80K for EVERYTHING else.

Now that doesn't count money coming in from advertisers, TV contract with CBS Sports (can't imagine that is all that much), concessions, parking, merchandise, etc. But I think you can see that this is a monumental undertaking for them to commit that much of their potential revenue to one marquee player. Don't get me wrong, maybe they'll average 2,000 fans per game, maybe more. I would love to see this work, and for attendance to rise, TV ratings to rise, and the financial stability and viability of the league to rise to the level to pay the players substantially more than they make now. In the case of the Scrap Yard Dawgs, they have to pay 17 other girls with $130K of salary cap space. That's less than $8K apiece. I'm sure they find ways around the cap for some of the better players, but still it is a tall order. I for one would love to see their financials and what assumptions they used to get this done.

I would think that with that contract ownership has deep enough pockets to absorb losses for the next few years as the NPF brand builds.

I wonder if Cat would come out of retirement for a similar deal???

Cobb_of_Fury said:

I believe shes going to make $20,000 for 6 seasons + Attendence Bonus (when more than 100 fans attend a game) accounting for the rest

Click to expand...

Interestingly enough, last night's announced attendance for the Dawgs was .... 100.