Ticket Prices in Baseball Cathedrals vs. Small Town Parks

[Neags23]

This is my idea for my current universe:

It's 1908 and the U.S. is rabid with baseball fans. The country has baseball fever.

I've got 12 cities, 6 in the north, 6 in the south. The 6 northern cities all have huge markets and have baseball colliseums. Gigantic stadiums that seat around 100k people. But the southern cities are very poor and have to build smaller stadiums, around 15k-20k, though they have no problem selling those out. The behemoth cities are in a different league and the north and south only play during the World Series, so the competition remains decent in both leagues, even if the southern league can't afford the higher priced players.

But here's the issue I'm running into. I set attendance to average about 80k around the league. This obviously makes the southern league sellout every game. Which is fine. However, I want them to realize that they sellout every game and raise their ticket prices. The average ticket price is $7, so even though the southern cities have fans packed into their stadiums every night, they have the same ticket price as the northern cities who average 10k to 20k empty seats every night (though they do sometimes sellout their 100k seat stadiums).

Is there a way to force the southern city teams to raise their ticket price to try to maximize their revenue? I tried setting their ticket prices for them in commish mode, but it just reverts back to what they want it to be. I could act as the GM for a team, set it and then sim that one game, but that seems more than tedious.

Suggestions?

[Neags23]

I'll continue the monologue for bookkeeping's sake.

I've finished the first two seasons, and the results are starting to look like I was hoping. I have the min. salary set low to $50k, but superstars should make about $10 million. In the offseason after the second season, one of the northern teams signed a 38 year old free agent to a $15 million/year salary. He probably wasn't worth half of that, but they had the money (well over $100 million in cash reserves).

To me, this is an early sign that all of the established talent in the league will migrate north while the young (and cheap) up-and-comers will rule the south.

I've set revenue sharing to really lop off a large chunk of the northern team's extra income to see if the cash flow to the south would ever help a southern team sign a marquee free agent.

Every southern team sells out every game, which would be fine except they still sell tickets for the same price as a northern team who gets a half filled 95k seat park.

Interesting note... the south has won the first two all-star games and first two world series. Of course, the talent hasn't had a chance to migrate north much, so I expect this to change over time. Though it would be really interesting to see the south dominate with lesser players.

[Neags23]

Continuing my monologue...

A northern team finally won the series.

Ticket prices are still about even on both sides, even though attendance figures for the north are about 5-6 times what the south is.

The big free agent signing of the offseason was a three time mvp from the south. He migrated north, signing a 2 year $26 million/year contract. Keep in mind superstars should make $10 million/year. Of course, it's a northern team, so they had the spare dough. There were a few other southern league superstars that went north, but none quite like this one.

I think the tide of the all-star game should start to turn.

Anyone care to share ideas about the ticketing issue?

[gordyhulten]

No ideas, but this is a really interesting concept. In my experience, I can get the AI to increase ticket prices only slightly if they're repeatedly selling out a small ballpark, but I've never tried with the large disparities you're dealing with here.