Baseball is the home of the guaranteed contract.  Players (through their agents) and team management negotiate contracts for potential services. These contracts are still active even if a player is injured or if a player is not playing due to substandard performance.
Contracts may include deferred payments owed to players after they retire. That means today’s player could be paid from revenues generated in future years! As a fan, how does that make you feel?  Isn’t it frustrating to know that team revenues generated through your purchase of a ticket is going to players who are not playing for one reason or the other or even maybe not even with that team anymore? In some situations, a team can be responsible to an active player who doesn’t even play for that team anymore!

Fiscal responsibility is the mantra in TruStar Sports.  Players are now paid from the league and not the team that they play for.  They are paid a base salary for the time that they’re with a team and also have the chance to earn bonus money.  Monies brought in to a common league fund during any one year are the monies spent during that same year.  Nothing more, nothing less. This provides fiscal responsibility in the whole league as well as the benefit of balanced competition.  Now fans are not being burdened with the costs of departed players.
TruStar Sports believes just like everyone else that some players deserve more compensation than others. That some players should be rewarded more than there counterparts for superior efforts both on and off of the field.  To decide which players earn more, member fans create a hierarchy of players with the best or more valued players on top and the lesser valued players on the bottom. The higher a player’s value, the bigger his end-of-season performance bonus.
Read “Power to the Fans” for complete details.

How many times have we seen management of teams bow to player desires rather than lose their services to another willing to pay (sucker) team. It seems as though this scenerio plays out quite often in the pro sports as we know them. The problem  is that, especially in baseball,  GUARANTEED contracts pay for potential and not performance. This means that there’s a good chance that just because a players services are tied up with a team, there’s no guarantee for performance.A great irony. After the Chicago Cubs signed yet-to-be-phenom Carlos Zambrano to an extension instead of possibly losing him to another higher end of season bidder, he loses the first four games he pitched and then complains of the lack of compassion from the fans (boos).
Or how about New York and it’s contract with ex-phenom Roger Clemens. He negotiated 18M and the right to NOT have to go on the road.

Two things: there are no performance guarantees and now there’s a new precedent from players to decide when and where they’ll play. That’s where we are in the power of negotiating nowadays and we’re headed down a slippery path. The ideals of competition are not only being compromised, they’re losing more and more ground much to the dismay of the fans.Are these guys players or actors? Is negotiating before play begins like an actor would negotiate his services meant to be the right M.O. for competitive sports?No more contracts and no more negotiating.

The only negotiating in TruStar Sports occurs on draft day. Teams take turns selecting players from a pool of players to play for their team. Teams draft players in hopes that they want to play for the team that selected them or try to be traded to another team that they more prefer. Talent is now divided as equitably as possible amongst every team of each league so that no market, big or small has an advantage. The only advantage any team might now have is through the ability of management as they select talent.The days of talent and their agents negotiating with owners for contracts before play begins are now over. Because players are now paid from the league and not the team that they play for, players who prove themselves both on and off the field get the biggest performance compensation.Read “Power to the Fans” for complete details.

How many times have you become dissappointed with a favorite team when all of a sudden it’s management substitutes a newly acquired high priced stud for the already proven player because of the ” for the money they just gave so-and-so, he’s going to play” situation?

TruStar Sports players are paid from a common league fund and not the team that they play for, upper management is taken out of the equation and cannot holdover the heads of managers/coaches who is going to play and who is not.  No more certain players play because they are getting paid huge management ordained contracts based on potential so that no matter what the situation, they will be playing even if other players are superior.  Isn’t that cool!  Now it’s the managers/coaches who hold all the power (like it should be) in regards to who will play and who will not striving to put the best team on the field.  No more politics or convoluted reasoning for putting the less than superior team on the field! 

 David/the Bears think that if they give more playing time to Cedrics backup, Adrian Petersen who did comparatively well in last weeks game, that just maybe the  “Threat may push the Bears top running back to excel”.  OK, they let Thomas Jones, the player who had more obvious heart for the game than most players, for Cedric, the draft pick who held out on signing with the Bears and has a bigger ego (and better agent) than he has ability to “excel” on the field.  And to bolster the running back they now will have to use the threat of a secondary back. What the heck is going on?  How have pro sports gotten this way?  Players are being contracted with before play begins for potential and the whole dynamic of true competition is being compromised!  It’s insanity!

In Tru Star Sports, players are paid a base salary.  A BASE SALARY that is equal from one player to the next.  Every player gets the same amount of base salary. Every player receives the guarantee of only a base salary with the opportunity to earn more through two different bonuses.  One end-of-season bonus for team standings which promote the best chemistry and team play possible, and one end-of-season bonus for performance as decided by the now empowered member fans.
IT MAKES SENSE!
Sports are now based again on the true ideals of COMPETITION.  No more contracts / agents before play. Teams put on the field the best team they can that has the best chance of winning games.  Power is entirely back in the managers/coaches hands and not shared with upper management.  The players give their best effort every game, all season, every season. Involved fans decide the right compensation for players.  Market-based sports is sports of the future.  Tru Star Sports is market-based sports and is here today!

There are a ton of examples of how out of whack professional sports have become.
How about the franchise that is willing to bet the bank ( and future revenues) on the unproven collegiate athletes. It used to be that you had to prove yourself before you could earn the big bucks. No so any more. With agents, TV contracts and merchandising, professional sports teams are free and easy with the big contracts and signing bonuses.  Even baseball, which usually requires, several strong years of performance before the big bucks come, pulled the same kind of thing with Daisuke Matsuzaka. A proven Japanese superstar, Matsuzaka’s agent, Scott Boras, allowed MLB teams to bid just to negotiate with the pitcher. The Red Sox won the bidding by paying over $51 million and then signed Matszaka for a six year deal worth between $50 million and $60 million more dollars. While a proven Japanese performer, this pitcher represents and investment of more than $100 million. He’s just a pitcher and is only as good as his arm.

There is a solution to this crazy system of teams mortgaging their futures on unproven athletes. It’s TruStar Sports. In these new leagues, there are no signing bonuses; no long-term contracts; no long-term risky commitments. All the players start with the same basic compensation package. Those who excel are paid exactly what they are worth according to member fan discretion. The athletes that make the big bucks are the high performers.  Moreover, in order to become a member of the TruStar Sports elite, that athlete must excel off the field as well as on the field or court.  Any player who turns up on the police blotter with take a big hit on his bonus paycheck.  Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?  As ordinary people holding jobs, aren’t we paid for performance and not for potential?

 Some people believe the NFL is now America’s favorite sport, even surpassing Major League Baseball. Because of it’s pay structure, it’s probably the most competitively balanced league of the four pro league sports. Aside from player injuries, that balance provides a chance for just about any team to succeed in post competition.

How could pro football (all pro sports) get any better?
Future TruStar Sports leagues are around the corner and they will include the fans as active participants, where the “Fans Decide” player salaries.  All sports will be played just the same way during the same season as the current leagues except that the players are paid for their performance at the end of the seasons according to fans discretion.  As good as  leagues any of the leagues are and the excitement they provides, they could be better.  It seems that in the back of every fans mind, there’s something missing.  Most fans don’t even consciously realize that there is anything missing because it hasn’t been considered yet.  That something, that vague thought that resides way back in our minds says that even as exciting as sports have been, we the fans are and have always been on the outside looking in.  That the presentation from the leagues point of view or even each teams point of view, we’re always looking in and not truly a part of it.  It’s what the league believes is plausible.  It’s how each teams management fields it’s team and pays it’s players what it deems right. The fans get to watch, and pay for, but that’s it. Fantasy sports players who want more from sports do try to take it to a new level.  They put their money on the line and assemble an imaginary team that they think would be successful against other imaginary teams using real life stats.  These fantasy players try to exhibit that sense of control.  These players want more from their game and like the idea of active participation.  To make sports better, player compensation needs to be changed.
One of the biggest regrets of most fans is player compensation.
          Where will the escalation stop? 
         Does every player get the correct amount of compensation? 
         Does every player earn what they are contracted for? 
         Do a lot of players get overpaid for their lack of play? 
         Does contracting with the player before play even begins
              take away player motivation?
Isn’t the definition of competition that the winners get to “share the spoils”?   TruStar Sports are brand new leagues in all the pro sports.  Hugely different, every league uses the same new business philosophy.  Players are now paid from a common fund and not from the teams that they play for.  Players get a base salary, a bonus for team standings and a bonus for performance as decided by the fans.  Not only will the football league be competitively balanced but each of the other leagues will be balanced as well.  Now, sports can’t get any better!  Finally, the fans are included.  No more players and owners playing for the fans who pay for everything, but owners, players and the fans being equal stakeholders. Yes, pro football and each of the other pro leagues can and will get better when the fans are included!  

When enough of a sport’s season has already played out to know who will be making the playoffs and who will not, aren’t the teams that won’t be going to the dance “just going through the motions”? They really have nothing to play for. In most cases, players are signed to long-term contracts and except for insignificant bonus clauses, players on these out-of-contention teams probably have their minds more on golf instead of their game.
And, what about the fans — especially those who invested in costly season’s tickets?
These poor fans are forced to sit in the stands and witness mediocrity.
The out-of-contention team going through the motions as the regular season ends is a major flaw in today’s professional sports system. But, it’s something that can be fixed.

TruStar Sports, our new concept in professional sports, will make for exciting competition throughout the entire season. The reason is that under TruStar Sports, there are no long-term contracts.  Players receive end-of-season bonuses on the basis of performance according to member fans discretion.  Whether it’s opening day or the end-of-the season, a players performance will make a difference between a great bonus and and not so great bonus.  What this means is exciting, competitive games right up until the end of the regular season whether the team is competing for a playoff berth or not.

Especially in Major League Baseball, there are the HAVE’s and the HAVE NOT’s. There is huge payroll disparity between the teams mostly because of the different sized markets and the revenues that they can generate. In 2007, the New York Yankees had the top payroll of $189.7M versus Tampa Bay Devil Rays payroll of $24+M payroll. Although MLB has tried to level the disparity through revenue sharing, it’s not even close to working and competition is severely unbalanced. Baseball payroll is a function of performance in MLB. Small market teams, for the most part, simply can’t compete with the big market behemoths. So what’s a fan of the Pirates, Reds, Devil Rays to do?

 Competitive balance is a cornerstone of TruStar Sports.  Market size now has absolutely no reflection on the capabilities or success of any team in any TruStar Sports league. (Complete details are available in “Power to the Fans”).  Because player salaries come out of a common fund and not from the teams that they play for, any team that comes from a larger market area will not have any advantage over a team form a smaller market.  Players are paid from a common fund.  From it they receive their equal base salary, an end of season team standings bonus and a end-of-season performance bonus that’s determined by the now empowered fans!