One of the things that attracted me to this sport, beyond the on-field action, is the regular restoration of parity between teams that seems to occur over a number of seasons play.  The draft system, salary capping etc. only seem to serve this way of keeping the playing field varied.  A team that sucks for a couple of seasons ca benefit from top class draft choices, or trades of those picks for older but high grade players.

Beyond this great leveller the Salary Cap keeps the poorer, or we should say 'less rich' in the mix.  Back in the 70s and 80s one team dominated the sport of Rugby League over here (I won't go into the differences  between League and Union!) and that was Wigan.  This was because their owner had all the money (at the time the owner was the same guy who owns the UK sporting goods chain JJB) to buy in players from Australia and also the best of the UK players.  This had two effects, firstly Wigan were paying more and more money for their players which was putting them in financial difficulties.  Secondly other teams were making more and more financial commitments beyond their means often going into receivership.  

There is much more to this tale that I won't bore you with but the bottom line is that without constraints, the pursuit of accolades and trophies to the exclusion of all else - including the health of the sport - could very well have eliminated Rugby League as a sport all together.

Now the NFL is big business and has infinitely more cash behind it than a sport like Rugby League.  So let's look at an uncapped sport - Football, or Soccer as you guys call it.  The UK Premier League is one of, if not the most watched league on the planet. It has the world's best players in it and is worth a ludicrous amount of cash.  However there is one thing that you will notice and that is Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United are almost always in the top 3 spots at the end of the season - which gives them entry to a variety of other competitions which earn them more cash.  A team that was challenging these positions about 5 years ago was Leeds Utd. but they overstretched in transfers one season, failed to make it into the Champions League and the resultant 'lost' income sent them crashing out of the Premiership and into receivership.

I've gone on a bit here, and I apologise.  My point is this:  No salary cap, in my opinion, is much more likely to produce a relatively small number of dynastic teams that slug it out each season, with the occasional 'Giant Killer' coming through.  This will reduce your gates on the smaller teams, and is rightly pointed out will drive prices up further.

This is a great game and the capping and from my point of view, the salary cap and the draft system is part of what makes it great.

Apologies for veering off the point a bit here and probably contradicting myself, this is a bit of a brain dump.  Let me know if I've completely missed the issue!

Matt

Football (soccer) remains uncapped and you end up with ageing playes passed their prime getting paid £125m a year.  

I still have to assume that there are far too many logical people involved at the top levels to let this get screwed up.  Don't mess with a good thing.  

More specifically, though, ticket prices go up because people are willing to pay it. Take a look at what the ticket prices actually are and then take a look at what the asking price for tickets on StubHub or whatnot is; good seats for the 8-10 most popular teams easily sell for double face value.

And, for the kicker, with the revenue sharing agreements in place, over 2/3rds of each teams' revenues come from television deals and merchandising, not ticket sales and the like. Gate revenues aren't nearly as important as most people would think.