The hard salary cap will stay at 900 million rubles

The proposal to increase the salary cap was brought forward by Igor Yesmantovich, a member of the Board of Directors and president of CSKA. He wrote to Gennady Timchenko, the chairman of the board, and KHL President Alexei Morozov with a proposal to revise the salary cap upwards to 1.3 billion rubles. In accordance with the KHL charter, this proposal was put to the board for consideration. Following that process, board members voted by an overwhelming majority not to increase the salary cap and to leave the existing provisions of article 50 in place. The additional funds referenced in article 51 of the KHL’s regulations are fully preserved. These funds are not taken into consideration when calculating the hard salary cap.

The schedule for the introduction of a hard salary cap, as well as the limits to be imposed, were developed by a working group in conjunction with the Russian Hockey Federation and member clubs of the KHL. In July 2018, the KHL’s Board of Directors approved changes to the KHL regulations and set a hard cap of 900 million rubles to be implemented from the start of the 2020/21 season. The changes were adopted unanimously by the KHL Board of Directors, were voted for by the member clubs and were also approved by the Russian Hockey Federation. As part of the move towards a hard salary cap, the league launched a two-year transition period to enable all clubs to prepare for the change.

The decision to keep with the original salary cap is fully in line with the KHL’s long-term development strategy, which was approved by the Board of Directors. One of its key aims is to see increased competition on the ice, which can only be achieved by way of levelling the financial playing field for the clubs and encouraging a more even distribution of the top players among the teams.

The April 30 decision not to raise the salary cap is also in line with the ideas of the Presidential Council for the development of sport and physical culture in Russia, which aims to reduce the dependence of professional sports organizations on funding from state corporations and organizations. It’s worth noting that in the current socio-economic circumstances, the need to reduce state funding for professional sport is more relevant than ever