Anasta, Munsters manager on 360 tonight. "Its incredible the amount of money offered to Munster by The Dolphins, on and off the field"
Munster subsequently turned them down.
Legal?
It is legal and has always been the elephant in the room.
From 2022
Third-party agreements
Given the juggling that needs to be done to fit 30 players under the $9.4 million cap, it’s imperative that players can bolster their income with outside deals, and that’s where the third-party agreement comes in.
Any payment outside a player’s contract is considered a third-party deal and they are not subject to any kind of cap.
According to Faulkner, any deal a player does with one of the game’s sponsors like Telstra or Kayo is uncapped as long as their club has no part in it. Players are also free to wear whatever boots or headgear they choose and can promote those companies.
As a definition, a third-party deal is an agreement between a player and third party. This could be a large corporate company or a small business,” Faulkner said.
“The most common are arm’s length deals which are agreements with companies that have no association to the player’s club and utilises the player in their own IP, not the NRL’s or clubs.
“Another type are game sponsor deals, which are agreements with our major partners such as Telstra and Ampol.
“We also have appearance fees which can be anything from an appearance on The Matty Johns Show, NRL 360 or at the local shopping centre.
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TPAs are excluded from the salary cap provided they have no association with the players club and the club did not play a role in sourcing the agreement. If there is a link, it will be included the salary cap.”
Faulkner said the most common misconception about TPA’s is that there’s an endless pool of money for players to dip into.
“The market isn’t as big as people think,” he said. “It only makes up about 3% of the total cap, down from 5.5% in 2018”
“The TPA market crashed during COVID when players couldn’t do appearances and promotions, while a lot of our marquee players (such as Cameron Smith and Johnathan Thurston) have left the game in recent times.”
A deep-dive into the NRL's rigorous salary cap process, why the cap exists, how it works and how it's managed across the game.
www.nrl.com
