Sportsmen and women in the 21st century are being constantly compared to their peers from years gone by. Whether it’s Ricky Ponting to Donald Bradman, or Darren Lockyer to Clive Churchill, there will always be those that wish to compare eras and try to establish an idea of who at what time was the greatest player of all.

What we do not see is sports management being compared to years gone by. No one has ever wanted to compare how the sports we love used to be managed, compared to the way they are today. A simple inspection of the history of any sport will unveil how over the past 20 to 30 years, sports have come as far on the field as they have off it.

In order for the modern-day business of Rugby League to survive, it must always look forward and never back to the days were players had full-time jobs, enjoyed a few beers the night before a big match to calm the nerves, and whose end-of-season event was a camping trip to Broome with free meat pies.

It is in this process of looking forward that the business of Rugby League needs to look at other sports around the world that are enjoying unimaginable amounts of success. Such competitions as the English Premier League, Major League Baseball and the National Football League generate millions upon millions of dollars in revenue each year from fans, sponsorships and endorsements. Australia is by no means a poor country, and our major corporations such as Qantas and Telstra are global players; however, we still cannot generate nearly the amount of financial success that a sport such as the NFL in America can.

Player contracts can be seen as a major yardstick to how a sporting business is performing. When comparing the NFL to Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL) there is no comparison. It is important to remember that in sports like baseball in America and football in England, there are no salary caps. However, the NFL still adheres its teams to a strict salary cap, which makes it the best gauge for a comparison such as this.

The best players in the NRL right now are earning anywhere between 500,000 to 600,000 Australian dollars a season, maybe more. The NFL, on the other hand, has a minimum contract that a player must be paid of something like $200,000 to $300,000 in US dollars, and the best players are making anywhere from $10million to $13million a season. How do they afford it? Also, how do they police this mammoth salary cap?

For a start, the NFL has a system in place where all 32 teams share their revenues with the other 32. Revenue sharing is the only reason teams in smaller markets such as Buffalo and Jacksonville can compete with teams from the financially rich markets such as New York and Miami. Revenue sharing allows all teams to profit from the success of the league, and doesn’t leave the smaller teams behind to constantly chase the larger teams, as we have seen in the past here in Rugby League.

Revenue sharing in Rugby League could revolutionise the business of the game, and allow the NRL to have much better control over the revenue produced, and to use this influx of funding to generate more exposure for the game. This would, in turn, further enhance its business standing and allow the game to grow more evenly as a business.

The salary cap for the NRL clubs this 2007 season will be $4million, a rise from around $3.2million last season. The salary cap for the NFL this season jumped by more then three times the total salary cap for NRL teams to a figure around the $120million (US) mark. The gulf between these two figures is large, and sure it can be explained by the fact that there are 280 million more people living in America, making its economy far superior to that of Australia. However, whileAustralia has just under 7% of the population of America, our number one sporting code has a salary-cap figure closer to 3.5% of its American counterpart.

The NFL salary cap is policed in a very basic way. All players are contracted by the NFL itself, not by the individual teams. Players sign individual contracts with the NFL as stipulated by the team signing them. Such details as bonus payments, performance target payments, and basic salary under the salary cap are spelled out by the team and the player’s agent, and this is forwarded to the NFL, where a contract is drawn up for signing. This allows the NFL to have full knowledge and control over player payments, and if this practice had been employed by the NRL a few seasons ago, the Canterbury Bulldogs would never have been able to get away with paying their players too much, exceeding the cap, and throwing the game into turmoil.

There is plenty of financial backing out in the market for competitive sports such as Rugby League, and it is absolutely critical to the long-term survival of the game itself that the RL business grows with the skill of the playing ranks.

Professionalism for players has revolutionised the skills and style of players, and turned them into modern-day rock stars. It is imperative that the business side of our great game looks forward and uses modern-day examples of best practice in the field of sporting management to continue to grow and develop the business.

Staying with the ways of old can only lead the RL business down the path to ruin. The time to act is now -- and the way ahead has never been more accessible.