Understanding Fictional League Finances

[Cadieux39]

Hey community. Posting a thread to try and better understand how finances can be influenced modified when controlled and modified manually.

To start with, I have a fictional league started in 1946, currently in 1958.

I wanted a league with free agency and as much financial parity as possible.

My first challenge was the budgets of teams. From 1946 to 1958 budgets have blown up from 750 on average to 2 million. I've managed to keep budgets from ballooning out of control by stopping the growth of attendance, and fixing ticket prices.

Too keep financial parity i have a 40% share of ticket rev. with visiting teams. That way the smaller markets like Seattle and St.Louis can keep up with attendance rich New York and Chicago.

Issue i was having and still am having: Free agents salaries....

I've been adjusting and inflating suggested salaries of players in the league settings. usually increasing them by 20% year over year. The problem I have is that Free Agents rarely follow those guidelines.

In 1940's The top players had salaries around 40k a year. 1st year players had 6k. By 1950 the top players were already asking for 125k contracts... Only the richest teams could afford these guys. Balancing the financial competitiveness of the league helps the poor teams afford better players, however the Free agents are still booming.

In mid 1950s the suggested salary for top players was 80k yet the top talent still was asking for 150k.

Late 50's now 1958 the top talent and free agents are asking for 175k, the biggest offseason contract was 192k a year for 4 years. the suggested salary in the settings I've set at 96k

The effect it is causing, teams are paying a crazy amount for 2-3 star players. from there a handful of average players fill in the roster with salaries between 20-30k and then there are multiple players making the league minimum of 9.5k

Free agents sit out asking for contacts no teams are willing to spend or can fit in the budget.

Im wondering how i can curve the growth of the top level players. The salaries from the best guys have grown 5x in 12 years. the average players salaries have grown 2-3x and i have manually increased the league minimum from 6k to 9.5k in 12 years.

So here are some fun questions:

If i increase the league minimum... lets say go from 9.5 to 12k This will mean the league minim will double from 1946. Plus this 2.5k increase on average will add 30-35k to every teams budget. Or to go an extreme route, make the league minimum 20k increasing each teams salaries by 150k. Many teams will go in the red because of this... but will it cause the top players to lose their massive payouts. Teams would need to cut 50k from each of their star players.

Just out of curiosity if i cut ticket prices by half, causing every team to drop in the red and tank their budget, will this make every club re-evaluate how the A.i. spends its money?

Im wondering if the salaries of top players have ballooned out of control potentially crippling teams because i haven't kept up in raising the salaries of the weaker players.

Editing the financials manually is a fascinating balancing act to me. I do want as much realism as possible, so controlling those massive contracts is something I want to tackle.

Where does the A.i get its numbers to request salaries? My club only has 40k available for free agents and only 90k on extensions.

Yet a veteran 30 year old catcher, coming off a 65k salary wanted 9 years at 140k average. I could only bring him down to 7 years 135k. His 75k raise will come at the price of me releasing an average infielder making 30k.


In the future for my league, i want a few select teams to be financially stronger and consistently more competitive, to reach this goal i plan on ticking down the gate rev sharing to 35% and setting the stadium size of the big teams at 5k-10k more than the rest of the league.


Anyone with tips and explanations on manually adjusting the finances let me know.

I find it a fascinating world, and apparently i created one where the top % of my league make an exorbitant amount of money while the rest fight for the scraps.

[Honorable_Pawn]

This is a fun thread.

[slugger922cubs]

Free Agent demands are determined by multiple variables.
1. The baselines you set in the league settings
2. The amount of extra money floating around in the league. OOTPs financial engine is designed to gobble up extra money and self level. If you have ballooning salaries this is typically where something is wrong. Your teams are drawing more revenue than theyre spending so the engine is passing that money to the players. This will continue until a balance is reached which could be way higher than your baselines or until you lower your teams revenues.
3. Player personality such as greed, loyalty, desire for winner also affect demands

Also of important not for fictional (and MLB) finances for that matter is markets are mostly superficial. Unless you set the market size of a NYC, Chicago, or LA as large and the size of a Seattle, Milwaukee, or STL as smaller it doesnt really matter. Market size is controlled by the Market Size setting note the actual location.

I also suggest not importing the historical financial modifiers as they will reset every year. Youll constantly be trying to adjust using moving targets.

For myself i feel like the financial settings that give me the most financial parity is to set it so the projected profit for each team is slightly below 0. Teams will typically then over spend in some years and then under spend and rebuild in others. The lack of typical profits keep teams from being able to consistently build and maintain large payrolls too.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by slugger922cubs

Also of important not for fictional (and MLB) finances for that matter is markets are mostly superficial. Unless you set the market size of a NYC, Chicago, or LA as large and the size of a Seattle, Milwaukee, or STL as smaller it doesnt really matter. Market size is controlled by the Market Size setting note the actual location.

This part here I find very interesting. I have run leagues running it that way. But as far as I know there is no way for the human to control the on/off function for variable market adjustments. I have also run a fictional league controlling it, instead, on maximum attendance.

Both ways are good and each has merit. Ultimately, the choice is always up to the individual.

With that said, I think that controlling each teams maximum attendance is a much more efficient way to control "small markets". What I have noticed is that when small markets get good they are limited by the attendance figures. The AI does not have a defined supply and demand algorithm so it will not correctly raise tickets prices.

There is much to be said about the different ways that we all use to control small vs. big in our leagues.

I find attendance has merit.

[slugger922cubs]

Attendance seems to be the easiest way to control big vs small markets especially in historical settings. I have a league where I want extreme financial unbalance so my Association playoffs works like UEFA Champions League. Attendance is typically how ive achieved it. I also have a few teams set for 15+ market size. Occasioanlly a team i set in a "small market" will make the association playoffs but as i refine it im getting to like 50% of teams making multiple consecutive playoffs. Typically that means finishing top 3 or 4 in a 16-20 team league multiple years in a row.

[slugger922cubs]

The league I have set up like UEFA CL i have set in Australia with each State/Region having its own league but a national association playoff. Theres around 90 teams across the country. The last 6 or 7 years at least 1 team of the 5 team I have in Melbourne which is a huge market has made the Final Four some years its been multiples and I think I had at least one cross town Final. Also, Not lately But ive also had stretches where teams from Brisbane or Sydney have done really well. Although lately the league that the Sydney clubs are in hasnt been so hot.

[BigRed75]

Originally Posted by slugger922cubs

The league I have set up like UEFA CL i have set in Australia with each State/Region having its own league but a national association playoff. Theres around 90 teams across the country. The last 6 or 7 years at least 1 team of the 5 team I have in Melbourne which is a huge market has made the Final Four some years its been multiples and I think I had at least one cross town Final. Also, Not lately But ive also had stretches where teams from Brisbane or Sydney have done really well. Although lately the league that the Sydney clubs are in hasnt been so hot.

As an aside, I would be curious to see your league setup (leagues, cities, nicknames, etc.)

[TGH-Adfabre]

Media contracts are the easiest way to control salaries and revenue. We ran an online league for 20+ seasons and kept player salaries and demands at a stable level almost the entire time.
1) If all teams have the same media revenue then they will be more stable. Take a look at what % of your teams revenue is media. If it is a low % then you have to control through attendance (market size, fan loyalty and fan interest) and ticket prices which can be locked.
2) Your player contract demands are growing because you have unspent cash in your league. You have to get rid of the cash. You can do a "hard" change and delete cash form teams to lower it. I have done this, I would do it over 2-5 seasons so you do not crush the league.
3) I would lower your cash max. The default is $10 mil? (I think). That is for MLB with $250+ million team salaries. So... 5% of your average team salary? Maybe 10%? That allows a team to blow it and survive their mistakes.
4) You have to decide how you are going to handle market sizes. If you have a huge disparity between sizes you are going to have huge income disparities and huge budget disparities. If you keep your cash max under control it will help. OOTP, much like life, does not handle outliers and extremes very well. It may have a hard time handling too large of a disparity between top and middle or top and bottom.
5) If you set the league to manage revenue through media contracts the differences in team revenue are determined largely by winning.

[slugger922cubs]

Originally Posted by BigRed75

As an aside, I would be curious to see your league setup (leagues, cities, nicknames, etc.)

I started a Dynasty on the forums.
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...emier-cup.html
The league is still going I just went from a lot of time to post to like zero in the year since i started it. Also had a little computer Troubles

[TheMaus2]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

This is a fun thread.

... For an accountant lol

[Honorable_Pawn]

As I'm sure most of us are.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Here is an example of how I have controlled the Cincinnati market so far through attendance.



and New Jersey:



and Tampa Bay:



and Pittsburgh:



and Las Vegas:



You get the idea. They every once in awhile make the playoffs and have a legitimate chance.

[Honorable_Pawn]

But my big-market teams have higher attendance maximums. Let's see how they do:

New York:



St. Louis:



Chicago:



San Francisco:



Los Angeles:



As you can see my big market teams are having more success.

The only thing I toyed with was maximum attendance and I get results like these.

I only provide this as an example of what has worked for me. Obviously, there are several ways to control your preferred market. I would be amiss if I didn't at least present some evidence of success that I have had using this method. Albeit, a small sample size.

[Cadieux39]

Im back for part 2, thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions.

1958 has come to a close, my Montreal Wanderers team finished 1st in the entire 20 team league. Then in true OOTP fashion i was bounced in the first round of the playoffs by the wildcard NY Knickerbockers...

Dont worry a couple boxes of tissues and a few cuss words later im ready for 1959.

Financial Recap from 1958

So free agents and superstar player salaries were ballooning out of control. The first year player salary was 9k. Superstars baseline was 100k, and yet they were asking and receiving contracts for 175k-190k

Financial Setting for 1959

I've keep the growth stagnant, attendance will still be 16000 and ticket prices which are fixed are 1.80 They haven't changed from 1958.

Coach baseline is up 2k, Player Dev baseline raised 25k, Scouting baseline raised 25k.

First year / Minimum player salary is now 12k ( up from 9k ) and all other baseline salaries for players i've increased 20%. Average players should be asking for about 75k and Superstars baseline is 120k

in 1958 the calculated avg profit was 900k (I think this was my problem) now in 1959 with my adjusted salaries its down to 500k

I assume this will actually take a few years to start balancing out, and i should probably consider to keep the financial growth frozen for 1960 and increase yet again all salaries baseline by 20%.

Offseason Results with adjusted settings

This is an ideal offseason for me to test my numbers. On my team i have a player in the last year of his contract ready for an extension... a player who just so happens to be the batting champ of 1958 and league MVP with a war of 7.2 (Dollar signs popping up in my head, followed by more tears)

So lets start with this guy. Milani Seta. coming off 75k contract, 30 years old, as mentioned best player on my team and in the league.

Seta's Request : 7 years @ 210k, Seta got: 7 years @ 175k

Last season my star catcher asked for 9 years @ 140k and i took him down to 7@ 135k

So at first glace, even though the financials were stuck, Seta's demands were rather high. However he is more skilled than my catcher and that 40k extra is deserved.

How about the free agents pool? First glance... well it was a decent crop, with the best pro player ever... as a free agent, as i mentioned before, perfect time to test this.

Jackson, 32, in the leagues 13 year history, he is the all-time leader in G, Ab, H, Hr, Rbi and WAR. He was asking for 7 @ 200k

In 1958 the top free agent scored 192k per season... now 1959, Jackson, arguably the greatest of all time got 7 years @ 172k... That shocked me. I only had 120k to spend on free agents. Then it dawned on me, i must not be the only team now feeling the crunch.

In fact i offered an average player 3 years @75k, and for the first time i didn't have to deal with a bidding war. I got him for 5k per year less than he was asking...

Overall in a few months of F.A. I noticed players took longer to sign, fewer players have been signed, the biggest star signed for 172k, the highest F.A. contract so far is 190k for an over the hill veteran. Many players have yet to sign. I released my 1st basemen who had an 80k contract and was asking for 120k. He's still sitting in the F.A. pool

Looking Forward

I dont expect to increase the finances of my league. I should probably let the salaries catch up to the budgets. Superstar players are still asking for way over the Baseline, however i seem to have narrowed the gap.

I should probably also take it slow to let the league adjust. The rise of the minimum salaries and stagnant league financials have caused a handful of teams to feel the crunch.

My Montreal team budget did rise from 2.4 mil to 2.55 but i was a little surprised to see that my team went from 4th highest budget to 8th.

The top Budget is Minnesota @ 2.8 million and the lowest is St.Louis @ 1.7 million. In time i would like to tighten this up a little.

Finally, one setting I haven't turned on yet, is that owners control budget. As opposed to making the entire revenue available.

What are you experiences with Owner control vs entire rev budgets? My concern with that is what happens to a team with a high payroll who tanks and struggles. Attendance is the main revenu stream for my league, so if a team has a 20-30% drop in attendance it could have a devastating effect on its budget.