Fictional Finances Tool - Very Rough, Pre-Alpha Version

[Layton is my Homeboy]

I am working on a new utility geared mainly to fictional players (though it may have some applications for historical play, too). I am making it available at a very early, pre-alpha stage in order to get some feedback and, possibly, some assistance with data collection.


Background

I typically play fictional games in OOTP. I like to join the league as a manager in a modern setting, but I like to have a robust history for my league. As such, I usually create my league in 1876 and have it evolve in a manner similar to historical MLB until I join as a manager in the modern era. (The last game I set up in this way is available as a quickstart).

In order to have a realistic competitive balance throughout the history of my league, I tend to manually set each team's major financial settings (media contract, merchandising, cash, budget etc.) once every decade or so. The goal is to ensure that the large market teams have a realistic advantage over smaller market teams that will be indirectly reflected in the league's history (ie the team from New York should win more championships than the team from Portland).


Problem

In the past, I have used a spreadsheet with historical US census data to figure out the relative market sizes of each city in my league for each decade throughout the history of the league. This data also informs where I locate and re-locate franchises throughout history.

The difficulty with this method is that using city-limits populations results in a distortion of market sizes. For example, Phoenix has a city-limits population of about 1.5 million. However, when you count the other municipalities within the urban area around Phoenix, that number is closer to 4.2 million. By contrast, Jacksonville has a city-limits population of about 0.8 million, and an urban area population of about 0.9 million.

Using city-limits populations only, Phoenix appears to be about twice the size of Jacksonville. However, when the suburbs are counted, Phoenix appears to be more than four times as big as Jacksonville.

A realistic calculation of market sizes needs to incorporate these suburban populations.

A second problem that arises is when more than two clubs play in the same city or in the same urban area. In this case, each team's effective market is only half of the population of the shared urban area (all else being equal).


Solution

In order to address these problems, I've been working on an online finances calculator for OOTP. The calculator examines the historical city-limits populations of US cities and combines it in accordance with the 366 Metropolitan Statistical Areas as defined by the US Office of Management and Budget. The result is rough estimation of discrete urban areas for each decade from 1870 to 2010.

Using these estimated urban area populations, we can calculate realistic historical market sizes for various US cities and use those markets as a baseline for calculating realistic financial settings for each team in a league.

In addition, we can extrapolate future growth based on recent population trends so that market sizes can evolve realistically beyond 2010. For example, a city like Las Vegas, which is experiencing rapid growth, will gradually gain a larger and larger market over the next 40 years. By contrast, cities experiencing urban decline and population flight will generally see a decrease in their relative markets over time.


Development Status

This utility is still very much experimental and I am still toying with the formula which weights urban, suburban and state populations to calculate overall market size. In addition, I am still in the process of collecting all of the relevant census data - especially for municipalities smaller than 100,000. However, I am making it available to the community now so that I can get some early feedback and (hopefully) some assistance.


Instructions

1. Go to OOTP 12 Finances Calculator
2. Enter the year that your league is in and the number of games in your schedule
3. In the cities box, list each city represented in your league (one city per line). If there are two teams in one city, enter it twice. The list of recognized cities is here. Only enter the city name, not the state (for example, "New York", but without the quotation marks).
4. Click submit. The calculator will examine the relevant population data for each MSA and try to calculate realistic financial settings for each team.

Contributing Data

One of the areas where I still need to do a lot of work is in compiling all of the relevant US census data. If you feel so inclined, I would greatly appreciate any help the community can provide in this area.

The list of cities that have already been entered into my database is found here. As you will see, some of the cities have missing or incomplete historical population information. In addition, some cities are not listed at all. To help me fill in some of the blanks, please post a reply to this thread with the relevant data. Ideally, your reply should be in the following format:

City Name: City
State: State
Metro: Metropolitan Statistical Area
1870 - 100
1880 - 2345
1890 - 10341
1900 - 13220
etc...

A list of US Metropolitan Statistical Areas can be found here. Most of the MSAs listed in that table link to an article which contains a list of the municipalities within that MSA.


Feedback

I would greatly appreciate any feedback you have on this tool. Bear in mind, however, that the calculations may seem a bit odd right now simply because of the large amount of missing data.

[darkcloud4579]

I'll take a look at this, having messed around with my own market data mods for several years now. I like that it's web-based for sure.

[Layton is my Homeboy]

Thanks.

Noticing your avatar, I might add that at the moment there are some fairly pronounced gaps in the data. One of the most striking results is that Toronto tends to appear as a much larger market than it is in real life, while Boston appears much smaller. This is mostly because I have complete data entered for the GTA, while I am still working on the many, many smaller municipalities that make up Greater Boston.

[Questdog]

One point from me:

Metropolitan areas seem, to me, to be more significant post WWII.

Before WWII, with travel more limited, I don't think the suburbs matter as much.

[Charlie Hough]

Wow, I can't believe this hasn't gotten more attention. Great work!

[David Ball]

I would be glad to help out a little, but what's a good source for the populations of smaller cities in past decades? I have one that gives just the top hundred cities each year.

Originally Posted by Questdog

One point from me:

Metropolitan areas seem, to me, to be more significant post WWII.

Before WWII, with travel more limited, I don't think the suburbs matter as much.

Yeah, and in fact, I notice Layton's quickstart actually used city boundary populations up to 1950. It seems that might actually be more accurate and simplify the work considerably, besides.

There might be grounds for a few important additions, such as Allegheny, which until 1907 was an independent city right across the river from Pittsburgh, and without which Pittsburgh looks a lot smaller. Brooklyn and New York are actually a pretty close analogy, but in that case the smaller city had its own major league clubs coexisting with teams in the larger one and therefore needs to be treated separately.