Financial Impact of Tournaments

dp06 · 02-07-2025, 04:43 PM

I’m a bit of a noob in setting up fictional leagues, and I’m running into something related to tournaments that doesn’t make sense.

As background: I’ve set up a handful of global leagues (e.g., leagues in US, Asia, Canada, etc), and at the end of the season, there is a Champions League-like tournament (round robin followed by a playoff with the top teams). I’ve set this up as a separate tournament instead of an Association-wide playoff – based on what I’ve read here, it seemed like this was the preferred approach. Also, I assume the tournament is held in a single city that is rotated every year. It seemed more realistic than expecting a team to travel halfway around the world to their opponent’s stadium for a game the next day. [Side note: a single city also turns out to be unrealistic as there are multiple games played at the same stadium at the same time].

If I compare a league’s financial report prior to the tournament to the report after the tournament, there is no difference in the revenue (gate revenue or overall revenue) for any of the teams in the tournament. This leads to two questions:

1) I’ll try adjusting the tournament so that each game will be played at the home team’s stadium (instead of a neutral city). But does anyone know if that will even make a difference?

2) Is there a way to manually assign bonus winnings to teams for their performance in the tournament?

niu354 · 02-09-2025, 01:37 AM

Excellent questions about tournament finances. I haven’t the slightest clue, but I’m interested.

I’m thinking about giving the winning franchise of my annual tournament a +1 market size or +1 fan loyalty. I figure the other figures (budgets, cash) get overwritten by the owner on the first day of the offseason.

dp06 · 02-09-2025, 11:26 AM

That’s a really good point about fan interest/market size. I’ve set the market size to be initially tied to the metro area population, so I want to see how that naturally progresses. But I will think about adjustments to the fan interest modifier.

I set up performance-based bonuses for the tournament, and I manually assigned them to each team as cash. When I looked at the two teams in the 2008 tournament final, their 2009 budget correctly factored in this cash as “other misc”. Both teams then took on a 20-25% higher payroll in 2009. At the end of 2009, one team used most of the cash to cover their budget deficit, so the owner didn’t take much. The other team had a much bigger surplus at season end, so the owner took what amounted to about half the cash winnings. So I might see how this continues to work moving forward…

02-07-2025, 04:43 PM	#1
dp06 Bat Boy Join Date: Jan 2024 Posts: 6	Financial Impact of Tournaments I’m a bit of a noob in setting up fictional leagues, and I’m running into something related to tournaments that doesn’t make sense. As background: I’ve set up a handful of global leagues (e.g., leagues in US, Asia, Canada, etc), and at the end of the season, there is a Champions League-like tournament (round robin followed by a playoff with the top teams). I’ve set this up as a separate tournament instead of an Association-wide playoff – based on what I’ve read here, it seemed like this was the preferred approach. Also, I assume the tournament is held in a single city that is rotated every year. It seemed more realistic than expecting a team to travel halfway around the world to their opponent’s stadium for a game the next day. [Side note: a single city also turns out to be unrealistic as there are multiple games played at the same stadium at the same time]. If I compare a league’s financial report prior to the tournament to the report after the tournament, there is no difference in the revenue (gate revenue or overall revenue) for any of the teams in the tournament. This leads to two questions: 1) I’ll try adjusting the tournament so that each game will be played at the home team’s stadium (instead of a neutral city). But does anyone know if that will even make a difference? 2) Is there a way to manually assign bonus winnings to teams for their performance in the tournament?

02-09-2025, 01:37 AM	#2
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 440	Excellent questions about tournament finances. I haven’t the slightest clue, but I’m interested. I’m thinking about giving the winning franchise of my annual tournament a +1 market size or +1 fan loyalty. I figure the other figures (budgets, cash) get overwritten by the owner on the first day of the offseason. __________________ New Players Framework for learning OOTP Managing your first game Customization Downloaded ballparks Sound effects Menu layouts Saves MLB launches promotion and relegation in 1903 Deciding the worst club in MLB history Curt Flood doesn't challenge the reserve clause The Continental League launches in 1961 Precluding the curse of the bambino Expanding the MLB Postseason to 200 teams The Champions League of baseball

02-09-2025, 11:26 AM	#3
dp06 Bat Boy Join Date: Jan 2024 Posts: 6	That’s a really good point about fan interest/market size. I’ve set the market size to be initially tied to the metro area population, so I want to see how that naturally progresses. But I will think about adjustments to the fan interest modifier. I set up performance-based bonuses for the tournament, and I manually assigned them to each team as cash. When I looked at the two teams in the 2008 tournament final, their 2009 budget correctly factored in this cash as “other misc”. Both teams then took on a 20-25% higher payroll in 2009. At the end of 2009, one team used most of the cash to cover their budget deficit, so the owner didn’t take much. The other team had a much bigger surplus at season end, so the owner took what amounted to about half the cash winnings. So I might see how this continues to work moving forward…