Market Sizes in Pro-Rel Universe

FleetWalker · 12-31-2023, 12:16 PM

I have a fictional 8-level fictional pro-rel league. There are 20 teams at each level—160 teams in total.

I'm getting around to messing with the market sizes of the teams, and I'm wondering how these ought to be set to make the universe both semi-realistic and playable.

By whatever definition of market size, the teams in the lowest tier are "small market" teams with respect to the universe. But within any particular league there will be bigger and smaller market teams.

My question is whether the market sizes of all 160 teams should be set relative to each other? That would mean all the teams in lowest tier would have very small markets. But since the finances of this league are already low, if the market-sizes of the teams are also on the low side, wouldn't that make for even smaller revenue than the finances for the league would suggest? Alternatively, maybe I can have the finances the same across all leagues but make the revenue lower by simply making all the markets in a league tiny. Has anyone tried this?

If I set the market sizes in each league to some particular distribution, when larger-market teams get promoted they would be overpowered financially from what one would realistically expect. I understand that OP promotions are a frequent issue with pro-rel leagues, and I wonder if market size settings might be part of the issue.

Finally, what should the distribution of market sizes be overall? The scale is 0-20, but it seems from the standard MLB set-up like the average market size shouldn't be 10.5 but something lower. And should the distribution of market sizes be symmetric, so that about half the teams are at or above the mean and half are at or below. Or should it be left-skewed so that that most teams are at or less than the mean and there are only a few big market teams? I'm dismissing the idea of a right-skewed distribution with most teams better than average but with a few super-small markets.

Cod · 12-31-2023, 12:49 PM

This is an interesting setup and I'm very interested in hearing more about it as you flesh it out. I admittedly don't know enough about the game's financial engine. As a thought though, have you looked at how the English football league system (pyramid) works? You could model your universe in a similar way because there are some large market clubs in lower leagues that just don't perform for whatever reason.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englis...p_eight_levels

FleetWalker · 12-31-2023, 01:23 PM

[QUOTE=Cod;5063685]This is an interesting setup and I'm very interested in hearing more about it as you flesh it out. I admittedly don't know enough about the game's financial engine. As a thought though, have you looked at how the English football league system (pyramid) works? You could model your universe in a similar way because there are some large market clubs in lower leagues that just don't perform for whatever reason.[QUOTE]

LOL. You really don't. I've spent 100s and 100s of hours on it getting into the weeds of stuff unrelated to playing the game. The 8 league pro-rel circuit is just part of the universe. There are 28 other leagues covering the rest of the world. Each one has an exclusive draft region, and their financials are roughly based on the per-capita GDP of the league nation. The PCMs for each league are roughly based on how the national teams covered by the league are ranked. I even have a country whose name file is exclusively female names so that a small number of women players are randomly generated.

I'm still playing with things. It's kind of fun if nothing else.

Cod · 12-31-2023, 01:28 PM

My apologies, I misunderstood you original intent. I thought the entire universe was the league you mentioned. I didn't realize you were creating the league within a universe that contained different types of leagues (normal, pro-rel, etc.).

Statman5252 · 12-31-2023, 01:50 PM

are you using the league reputation option to differentiate between the leagues?

Charlie Hough · 12-31-2023, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FleetWalker

My question is whether the market sizes of all 160 teams should be set relative to each other?

I haven't played enough fictional leagues to provide a clear answer, but I want to make sure that you're aware of one key factor, which might affect how you set up your leagues. In OOTP, initial market sizes are determined based on the team's payroll. Teams with the highest payrolls will typically have the largest market sizes, and those with the smallest payrolls will tend to be on the lower end of market sizes.

Hence, if you start changing market sizes, that could disrupt the ability of teams to generate sufficient revenue to cover their payrolls. You can still do this, and I've done it at times, to give teams in larger-population cities and those with more loyal fan bases a larger market size. But it can eventually have a significant impact on finances, transactions, etc.

I just want to make sure that you're aware of this, so you can take it into account in deciding what to do.

FleetWalker · 12-31-2023, 02:15 PM

Yes; also the non-US leagues are all International Leagues which I believe makes them additionally unattractive

FleetWalker · 12-31-2023, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Hence, if you start changing market sizes, that could disrupt the ability of teams to generate sufficient revenue to cover their payrolls. You can still do this, and I've done it at times, to give teams in larger-population cities and those with more loyal fan bases a larger market size. But it can eventually have a significant impact on finances, transactions, etc.

Thanks; definitely a good safety tip. I've undermined some teams/leagues in the past by messing with the finances. In this case, though, the rosters are empty. I'm planning to generate players after the set-up is complete.

Rain King · 12-31-2023, 03:46 PM

The market sizes are not relative across leagues. They are relative to the league they are in. So, in my experience, you need to adjust the market level of any clubs that change leagues and also potentially adjust other clubs within the league based on the size of the clubs they have been added/subtracted.

Dutch Alexander · 12-31-2023, 03:50 PM

I have a 3 tier pro/reg league with 32 teams total. I tried to create a league with big and small teams. The size of each club is determined by stadium size and market size. The idea is to make it function like real life leagues with bigger clubs that spend most seasons in the top tier without real relegation worries and smaller teams that mostly play in the lower tiers. Below test results for 500 simulated seasons showing how many seasons each team played in each league. (from highest to lowest PDBL - HHK - EK.) Win - Loss records are for the highest league only. This clearly shows team with higher market sizes and bigger stadiums perform much better over time than smaller teams.

I just ranked the 32 teams and then assigned appropriate stadiums and market sizes to them and placed the 12 biggest clubs in the highest tier the next 10 in the second tier and the final 10 in the lowest tier. So initially the smallest club in the highest tier has a similar market size to the biggest club in the next tier. Reputation of the top tier is 10, the 2nd tier 3 and the 3rd tier 1. Finances adjusted so that average payroll goes up 3 times at each higher tier. See average finances below.

Another thing I do is set the Media Contract Baseline the same for each league and base National Media Contract on Market Size. This prevents newly promoted teams gaining large extra revenue allowing them to sign all the star FA. And if a bigger club with a big payroll relegates this prevents them from not being able to afford the payroll anymore.

In your setup you could assign each market size to 8 clubs (8x20=160). Within each league there would be little differrence in size between the clubs but the difference between the higher and lower leagues would be significant.

Bluenoser · 12-31-2023, 05:01 PM

Also keep in mind that Market Size isn't the only thing that drives revenue.

Fan interest and loyalty play a part. You can have a small market team but if they are popular and draw large crowds they'll still generate decent revenue.

FleetWalker · 01-02-2024, 09:11 PM

So I decided to test how Market Size impacts the four forms of revenue: Gate, National Media, Local Media, and Merchandising.

I set all the teams in a league equal to 50 Fan Interest and 5 Fan Loyalty. Then I eliminated all but one of the forms of revenue and incremented the market size to see how it impacted average team revenue. The chart below shows the multiplier applied to each type of revenue at each market size. So at Market Size 10, whatever value you have for National Media would be multiplied by 1.6 and the value for local media by 1.44. Again assuming Fan Interest is 50. Those factors don't form smooth curves so I'm guessing there is some rounding going on, but they are pretty good rules of thumb I think.

I did some testing of how Fan Interest and Fan Loyalty impact the numbers as well, but not as thoroughly.

1. Gate is not affected by Market Size
2. National Media is not affected by Fan Interest
3. National Media is only affected by Market Size up to size 12 (and obviously if you set the contract to be the same for each team it won't be affected by Market Size at all).
4. Gate, National Media, and Local Media are not affected by Fan Loyalty.
5. Merchandising is affected by Fan Loyalty

Note that it's possible that Market Size or Fan Loyalty will impact Gate revenue if you change the ticket prices away from the league baseline. That's not something I tested.

12-31-2023, 12:16 PM	#1
FleetWalker Minors (Double A) Join Date: May 2002 Location: Granby, CT Posts: 127	Market Sizes in Pro-Rel Universe I have a fictional 8-level fictional pro-rel league. There are 20 teams at each level—160 teams in total. I'm getting around to messing with the market sizes of the teams, and I'm wondering how these ought to be set to make the universe both semi-realistic and playable. By whatever definition of market size, the teams in the lowest tier are "small market" teams with respect to the universe. But within any particular league there will be bigger and smaller market teams. My question is whether the market sizes of all 160 teams should be set relative to each other? That would mean all the teams in lowest tier would have very small markets. But since the finances of this league are already low, if the market-sizes of the teams are also on the low side, wouldn't that make for even smaller revenue than the finances for the league would suggest? Alternatively, maybe I can have the finances the same across all leagues but make the revenue lower by simply making all the markets in a league tiny. Has anyone tried this? If I set the market sizes in each league to some particular distribution, when larger-market teams get promoted they would be overpowered financially from what one would realistically expect. I understand that OP promotions are a frequent issue with pro-rel leagues, and I wonder if market size settings might be part of the issue. Finally, what should the distribution of market sizes be overall? The scale is 0-20, but it seems from the standard MLB set-up like the average market size shouldn't be 10.5 but something lower. And should the distribution of market sizes be symmetric, so that about half the teams are at or above the mean and half are at or below. Or should it be left-skewed so that that most teams are at or less than the mean and there are only a few big market teams? I'm dismissing the idea of a right-skewed distribution with most teams better than average but with a few super-small markets. Last edited by FleetWalker; 12-31-2023 at 01:29 PM.

12-31-2023, 03:50 PM	#10
Dutch Alexander All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Amsterdam Posts: 711	I have a 3 tier pro/reg league with 32 teams total. I tried to create a league with big and small teams. The size of each club is determined by stadium size and market size. The idea is to make it function like real life leagues with bigger clubs that spend most seasons in the top tier without real relegation worries and smaller teams that mostly play in the lower tiers. Below test results for 500 simulated seasons showing how many seasons each team played in each league. (from highest to lowest PDBL - HHK - EK.) Win - Loss records are for the highest league only. This clearly shows team with higher market sizes and bigger stadiums perform much better over time than smaller teams. I just ranked the 32 teams and then assigned appropriate stadiums and market sizes to them and placed the 12 biggest clubs in the highest tier the next 10 in the second tier and the final 10 in the lowest tier. So initially the smallest club in the highest tier has a similar market size to the biggest club in the next tier. Reputation of the top tier is 10, the 2nd tier 3 and the 3rd tier 1. Finances adjusted so that average payroll goes up 3 times at each higher tier. See average finances below. Another thing I do is set the Media Contract Baseline the same for each league and base National Media Contract on Market Size. This prevents newly promoted teams gaining large extra revenue allowing them to sign all the star FA. And if a bigger club with a big payroll relegates this prevents them from not being able to afford the payroll anymore. In your setup you could assign each market size to 8 clubs (8x20=160). Within each league there would be little differrence in size between the clubs but the difference between the higher and lower leagues would be significant. Attached Images

01-02-2024, 09:11 PM	#12
FleetWalker Minors (Double A) Join Date: May 2002 Location: Granby, CT Posts: 127	So I decided to test how Market Size impacts the four forms of revenue: Gate, National Media, Local Media, and Merchandising. I set all the teams in a league equal to 50 Fan Interest and 5 Fan Loyalty. Then I eliminated all but one of the forms of revenue and incremented the market size to see how it impacted average team revenue. The chart below shows the multiplier applied to each type of revenue at each market size. So at Market Size 10, whatever value you have for National Media would be multiplied by 1.6 and the value for local media by 1.44. Again assuming Fan Interest is 50. Those factors don't form smooth curves so I'm guessing there is some rounding going on, but they are pretty good rules of thumb I think. I did some testing of how Fan Interest and Fan Loyalty impact the numbers as well, but not as thoroughly. 1. Gate is not affected by Market Size 2. National Media is not affected by Fan Interest 3. National Media is only affected by Market Size up to size 12 (and obviously if you set the contract to be the same for each team it won't be affected by Market Size at all). 4. Gate, National Media, and Local Media are not affected by Fan Loyalty. 5. Merchandising is affected by Fan Loyalty Note that it's possible that Market Size or Fan Loyalty will impact Gate revenue if you change the ticket prices away from the league baseline. That's not something I tested. Attached Images

12-31-2023, 12:49 PM	#2
Cod All Star Starter Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Fort Worth, TX Posts: 1,088	This is an interesting setup and I'm very interested in hearing more about it as you flesh it out. I admittedly don't know enough about the game's financial engine. As a thought though, have you looked at how the English football league system (pyramid) works? You could model your universe in a similar way because there are some large market clubs in lower leagues that just don't perform for whatever reason. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englis...p_eight_levels

12-31-2023, 01:23 PM	#3
FleetWalker Minors (Double A) Join Date: May 2002 Location: Granby, CT Posts: 127	[QUOTE=Cod;5063685]This is an interesting setup and I'm very interested in hearing more about it as you flesh it out. I admittedly don't know enough about the game's financial engine. As a thought though, have you looked at how the English football league system (pyramid) works? You could model your universe in a similar way because there are some large market clubs in lower leagues that just don't perform for whatever reason.[QUOTE] LOL. You really don't. I've spent 100s and 100s of hours on it getting into the weeds of stuff unrelated to playing the game. The 8 league pro-rel circuit is just part of the universe. There are 28 other leagues covering the rest of the world. Each one has an exclusive draft region, and their financials are roughly based on the per-capita GDP of the league nation. The PCMs for each league are roughly based on how the national teams covered by the league are ranked. I even have a country whose name file is exclusively female names so that a small number of women players are randomly generated. I'm still playing with things. It's kind of fun if nothing else.

12-31-2023, 01:28 PM	#4
Cod All Star Starter Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Fort Worth, TX Posts: 1,088	My apologies, I misunderstood you original intent. I thought the entire universe was the league you mentioned. I didn't realize you were creating the league within a universe that contained different types of leagues (normal, pro-rel, etc.).

12-31-2023, 01:50 PM	#5
Statman5252 Bat Boy Join Date: Jul 2022 Posts: 15	are you using the league reputation option to differentiate between the leagues?

12-31-2023, 02:15 PM	#7
FleetWalker Minors (Double A) Join Date: May 2002 Location: Granby, CT Posts: 127	Yes; also the non-US leagues are all International Leagues which I believe makes them additionally unattractive

12-31-2023, 03:46 PM	#9
Rain King Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 3,072 Infractions: 1/1 (1)	The market sizes are not relative across leagues. They are relative to the league they are in. So, in my experience, you need to adjust the market level of any clubs that change leagues and also potentially adjust other clubs within the league based on the size of the clubs they have been added/subtracted.

12-31-2023, 05:01 PM	#11
Bluenoser Hall Of Famer Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: In The Moment Posts: 14,143	Also keep in mind that Market Size isn't the only thing that drives revenue. Fan interest and loyalty play a part. You can have a small market team but if they are popular and draw large crowds they'll still generate decent revenue.