Market and stadium size

[Padreman]

I'm Assuming that market size and stadium size makes a difference in how much team makes. To make smaller markets compete financially with the larger market teams will it makes sense to make the smaller markets teams have larger stadiums? That way they don't have the market size but they will make more in ticket sells and financially keep up with the big boys?

[joefromchicago]

Attendance is the product of the interaction of three things: market size, fan loyalty, and fan interest. Fan loyalty can be translated roughly as season-ticket sales, fan interest can be translated as single-game ticket sales, and market size is ... well, it's the size of the market (a somewhat nebulous concept that definitely does not correlate with the size of the team's home city).

A bigger stadium will allow the team to sell more tickets, but it won't increase the size of the market. At some point, a small-market club just can't sell any more tickets. I don't know what that point is (I'm not sure anyone knows aside from the developers), but I'm pretty sure there's a link between the size of a market and the number of tickets that can potentially be sold.

In addition, I don't know if OOTP has an optimal value for stadium size, but real-world baseball clubs certainly do. The recent trend has been toward stadiums that have capacities of around 40,000 to 45,000. In many cases, that has meant teams moving to smaller stadiums. The Indians, Tigers, Mets, Yankees, White Sox, Giants, Cardinals, Pirates, Phillies, Orioles, and Reds are all in ballparks that have smaller capacities than their previous homes. Teams have decided that, by getting rid of cheap seats that they couldn't sell on a regular basis, they can make more money by selling fewer tickets at higher prices.

Of course, an OOTP team owner doesn't have to worry about paying the upkeep on an empty stadium, so I'm not sure if there's any disadvantage to boosting a stadium's capacity to comical levels in an effort to increase attendance. I suppose if you want your home ballpark to have a 250,000 seat capacity, there's nothing stopping you except your own common sense. In the real world, though, the trend is toward raising ticket prices rather than increasing stadium capacity.

[Padreman]

OK so if I understand this correctly if I have a small-market team with a large stadium and good fan loyalty potentially that small-market team will make more money than a large market team that also has good loyalty because they're stating will be smaller?

[TGH-Adfabre]

Potentially, depending on the disparity they may be even.

[MBarrett]

Don't forget Media Revenue, larger markets will always make more than smaller. Don't think you can sell enough tickets to make up a $50M+ difference in media.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Padreman

OK so if I understand this correctly if I have a small-market team with a large stadium and good fan loyalty potentially that small-market team will make more money than a large market team that also has good loyalty because they're stating will be smaller?

I don't know what the formula is, but it's some combination of market size/fan loyalty/fan interest. Presumably, if team A and team B have the same fan loyalty score but team A has a market size of 20 while team B has a market size of 5, then team A will sell more season tickets than team B, regardless of the sizes of their respective ballparks. Stadium capacity certainly imposes a limit on the number of tickets that can be sold, but I think that market size also imposes its own limit. We just don't know what that limit is.

Ticket prices also factor into the formula somehow. I know that, if you raise the average ticket price to some astronomical number (say, e.g., $1 million), it will affect ticket sales. But then you may not care as long as you can sell one ticket per game for $1 million, as opposed to selling 40,000 tickets per game at an average price of $20. I know that's a problem in some online leagues, where balancing stadium capacities and ticket prices has an impact on team competitiveness, so participants in those leagues may have greater insights into this question.

[Padreman]

Originally Posted by MBarrett

Don't forget Media Revenue, larger markets will always make more than smaller. Don't think you can sell enough tickets to make up a $50M+ difference in media.

Oh yeah I forgot about that. Thanks

[Padreman]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

I don't know what the formula is, but it's some combination of market size/fan loyalty/fan interest. Presumably, if team A and team B have the same fan loyalty score but team A has a market size of 20 while team B has a market size of 5, then team A will sell more season tickets than team B, regardless of the sizes of their respective ballparks. Stadium capacity certainly imposes a limit on the number of tickets that can be sold, but I think that market size also imposes its own limit. We just don't know what that limit is.

Ticket prices also factor into the formula somehow. I know that, if you raise the average ticket price to some astronomical number (say, e.g., $1 million), it will affect ticket sales. But then you may not care as long as you can sell one ticket per game for $1 million, as opposed to selling 40,000 tickets per game at an average price of $20. I know that's a problem in some online leagues, where balancing stadium capacities and ticket prices has an impact on team competitiveness, so participants in those leagues may have greater insights into this question.

You know I don't really understand season ticket sales biggest during the off-season I go to all the teams just to check what they're doing as far as her finances and stuff and all the teams in my league always have a zero on season-ticket cells does that reset itself after each season and goes back to zero?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Padreman

You know I don't really understand season ticket sales biggest during the off-season I go to all the teams just to check what they're doing as far as her finances and stuff and all the teams in my league always have a zero on season-ticket cells does that reset itself after each season and goes back to zero?

I have no clue. That's not something I've ever really paid attention to.

[TGH-Adfabre]

Originally Posted by Padreman

You know I don't really understand season ticket sales biggest during the off-season I go to all the teams just to check what they're doing as far as her finances and stuff and all the teams in my league always have a zero on season-ticket cells does that reset itself after each season and goes back to zero?

I bet they are "sold" at the start of the PreSeason or Spring Training.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

For any reasonable stadium size, market size doesn't really matter as far as attendance goes in my experience. I'm playing with a small market (value of 3) team right now with a stadium capacity of about 38,000. I've gotten my fan interest up to 90 and come close to selling out almost every game. My ticket prices are league average.

[TGH-Adfabre]

Originally Posted by Cinnamon J. Scudworth

For any reasonable stadium size, market size doesn't really matter as far as attendance goes in my experience. I'm playing with a small market (value of 3) team right now with a stadium capacity of about 38,000. I've gotten my fan interest up to 90 and come close to selling out almost every game. My ticket prices are league average.

What is your Fan Loyalty? How many season tickets did you sell?
Just wondering?

[NoOne]

season ticket sales begin at the end of winter meettings. a new estimate will be given based on ticket price and the other factors highlighted in the first reply. about media revenue, you can just add it all to national media contract and zero out local media revenue box, if you want more financial parity. the quantity of ticket sales being larger the first day of sales is probably mimicing real life. the mad rush the first day you can do it, and then it trickles in after that. it's like a dam breaking. at first all the extra penned up water is released, but after that it's just the normal river flow (sans dam).

* i find when season ticket sales are roughly 1/2 of capacity i'm close to maximizing profit and attendance. if you focus on one or the other, you'll need to translate a bit of what i say in this post to your strategy.

some of this might be from last year's version, if it doesn't work the same way, now. also, it's based on a Ticket price that is as high as possible and still getting near max attendance. $33-$34 seems to be the value for me when things are maxed out or nearly max.

54k stadium
50-53k @ $33 average attendance, if ideal conditions.

i can tell you with a large market, excluding playoffs and opening day, you can't get much over 54-55k attendance, regardless of stadium size. if you also maximize profit while testing and you can reach similar attendance figures with a small market, you'll know with certainty that it has no influence on attendance.

stadium size can actually influence turnout, too. if you take that 54k stadium and make it 100k, you'll likely get less than 54k attendance you just saw, ceterus paribus.

test it out... this would be easy to do and know immediately. you can change settings in comiss mode and never advance a day while seeing the results in attendance.

you can click start game, but do not enter the game, to look at the attendance figure in the top, left of the screen. know there is fluctuation in attendance even if you keep the same settings, but not more than a 2-3 thousand people. so, exiting and checking again before changing settings might be useful at first to understand 'normal' fluctuation.

make sure it is not opening day, too early in the year, or a playoff game. i'd sim out to july or something and make sure loyaly and interest are set before testing a game's attendance, because early months are tougher to sell out for whatever reason. make a backup just in case at this point of testing. since we aren't advancing a day, all changes can be reverted anyway.

early months are tougher to sell tickets. not sure if a warmer climate is the cause or not...

so, you want to test various market sizes and ticket prices with various sizes of stadiums.

you can change ticket price, season ticket sales, tickets sold so far at the gate, and revenues with just a calculator. so, if you want to test different settings, you can do that quickly and easily too. none of this will require any simulation for the actualy data collection and settings changes.

some tidbits from screwing around last year or 2 years ago, whichever:

you can actually overprice your tickets to the point where only ~5,000 people show up, but you make more money than trying to max price/attendance by a significant amount. i think 1.5 to 1.8mill /game is typical, but with 5k attendance it was 2.5mill or thereabouts (sounds right, i think it was $500 tickets i didn't try many values and was just for sh*ts and grins and too long ago to clearly remember the numbers)...

back to my normal ticket pricing trying to max attendance and profit:
on opening day, you can bump capacity to 100k, give or take, and fill it. that was done with the det tigers with an editted market size. with playoffs, i believe by the WS you could do 100k-ish but the previous rounds were a bit lighter, while still being bumped up from 55k.

in comish mode, you can bump playoff ticket prices significantly and still fill stadiums. i think it was $33 for the season, then 45, 50, 55 for the three rounds in my playoffs and still maintain max attendance or thereabouts (53k out of 54k).

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Originally Posted by TGH-Adfabre

What is your Fan Loyalty? How many season tickets did you sell?
Just wondering?

Fan loyalty is below average (value of 4). Season ticket sales are about 14,000.

[Padreman]

I don't pay that much attention to minor-league's but I'm assuming that an affiliated minor league team their stadium size doesn't really matter because minor league teams don't make any revenue correct?

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by Padreman

I don't pay that much attention to minor-league's but I'm assuming that an affiliated minor league team their stadium size doesn't really matter because minor league teams don't make any revenue correct?

the don't make revenue and you can't set a ticket price, but it does keep track of your attendance totals in the history.

so, if that's part of what you like to influence, maybe you can edit those minor league stadiums. i don't even know if that settings page is available to minor leagues.

[Padreman]

Originally Posted by NoOne

the don't make revenue and you can't set a ticket price, but it does keep track of your attendance totals in the history.

so, if that's part of what you like to influence, maybe you can edit those minor league stadiums. i don't even know if that settings page is available to minor leagues.

I had to change some stuff on the stadium size for the minor leagues I had a fictional AAA league and I went by team by team and the stadium size where vastly different in size one has a stadium with 4,200 seats and in the same league one had one that was 55,300 so I made them all beeeen 11,000-15,000