i've been wondering the same thing. but i think that the reason why they can pay so much is because of 1 main reason. NT players in their top divisions.
if i'm correct ( if not LoD or Angi will most certainly correct me) having NT players has 2 advantages:
1) if helps you out weekly with your merchandise ( especially if the player is from a NT that wins alot of games and is high on the world ranking order)
2) (I'm unsure about this, but you could call it having a hunch about it being right) NT players influence the TV rights of the league.
If you compare the BBBL with alot of other top divisions, then i can't help but notice that we much less NT players in our division. Sure, they often eat up alot of salary, but in most cases, they are much better than most other teams...
Other than Vottems 2 internationals, Hupez in Sonics, a South Korean guy with the Wizzards, Terrible (Malta) for Ventola, an Austrian and Cymru international for Popo, and a belarusian guy for Pokola, we got no others.
now if we look at it, how many of those guy's are in top NT's on the world ranking list? none.
of all those internationals, the best ranked one are the belgians... (currently 45, we started this season at 57 :D)
IF you look at the top B3 teams, they often have NT players of their own country, and if it's not from their own country, it's from a top NT country ( Lubnan team in the B3 has 2 top french players...) (horstival 3 internationals, 2 of their own country, River legends, 3 internationals, all of his own country, ...)
Also, another difference, is that the average salary of the top divisions in Italy, England, France, Spain etc are higher than here. if everyone has more Salary, then that should mean that everyone should have a better team ( no need to buy monoskilled monsters...) and i was told a few day's ago, that TV rights would be linked to the average salary of each team in that division.
now, i'm basing this on the TV rights in my own division. Alot of divisions lost a 5 to 10% in TV rights comming into this season. however, in my season, yolymapa bought a 620k C (little mistclick) but during the calculation of the TV rights, that C was not only a NT player for a rather good country, but it also made the average salary ( and that of Yolymapa in particular) go up for the whole division when TV contract was calculated, and thus, II.3 seems to be one of the very few divisions who didn't lose alot ( if you could call 176$ a week a loss) on their TV rights.
So, in the event that the belgian NT keeps winning, and qualifies for the european championship, then our NT ranking should go up. Not only that, teams with a NT player should get a higher Merchandise, since their players are winning games on the NT lvl.
So it's no use to go and buy all the internationals of teams such as Malta, Luxembourg, Senegal or what not. You'll need to buy players of NT teams ranked within the top 25 or so. Ofcourse, players fo top 25 NT teams often mean alot of salary.
but they do provide a serious extra to your economy (and to your divisions economy too).
It's just a theory that i have, but it could explain the difference how they can cope with so much salary. ofcourse, i'm not 100% sure of what i wrote here. but i got the impression that it is like that. their isn't another way to explain why on earth they have much more salary. Hostival has had 800 to 900k salary for the past few seasons now. So did Former BC Töroo.
again, it's just a theory. though i might as well spit it out, and see what you guy's think of it. if you can provide me with another explanation, feel free to, but it seems to make sence.
LA-Revo