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I was gonna add this question onto my other post but it is a completely different subject so I went with a new thread.

Is there a thread that gives out information on arena size?

What's the maximum seats I can get, is there a limit for each type of seat (bleacher/lower tier etc)?

What is a good arena size for each league?

First of all it matters more how you price your arena than the optimal size. With that in mind, review the pricing of top winning teams in Div 5. And price somewhat accordingly if you are a winning team.

The question should be how much is too much for any Div?
Maxes for Div 5:
Bleachers: 10,000
Lower: 1500
Court: 350
Box: 17
Maxes for Div 4:
Bleach: 12,000
Lower: 3000
Court: 500
Box: 27
Maxes for Div 3:
Bleach: 13,500
Lower: 4500
Court: 500
Box: 40
Maxes for Div 2:
Bleach: 13,500 (personal preference you can go higher obviously)
Lower: 6000
Court: 500
Box: 50

As for the higher Div, someone else can consult on that.

Also keep in mind if you win your division there is a huge bonus to seating the following season. So you want to review pricing before you head to Div 4. I am currently reviewing teams that advanced to Div 3 last season myself.

Last edited by lawrenman at 7/6/2013 8:05:20 AM

There are maxes for Courtside seats and Luxury boxes (500 and 50), and a total cap at around 22.000 I believe. The higher division you are, the more you'll want of your expensive seats. You need to keep that in mind when building now, because as soon as you reach around 12.000 bleachers, the more you build of that means the less you can build of Lower tier because of the total attendance cap. I read that a lot of high division teams wished they'd have stopped building bleachers earlier in exchange for more lower tier. I wouldn't worry too much about it now until you get to that 12k bleachers point.

As for how to get there, I always calculate the return on investment for your different seats. It depends on your prices. All seats have a standard return of $0.05 per dollar at standard ticket prices if you sell the seat. However, as you adjust prices to make sure you sell your seats, that return changes. I always build the seats with the highest return, until the seats aren't (close to) selling out anymore and I have to lower the price of those seats, making the return smaller. If you're not close to selling out a type of seats, you shouldn't build them until you've lowered your price for that type of seats.

Example:
Bleachers: $12 (sold out)
Lower tier: $44 (75% sold)
Courtside: $122 (sold out)
Luxury: $950 (sold out)

If this is the case, what would you build? Here are the returns:

Bleachers: $0.06 ($12/$200 building price)
Lower tier: $0.063 (44/700)
Courtside: $0.061 (122/2000)
Luxury: $0.059 (950/16000)

I'd build the Courtside, since it has the highest return of the seats that sell out. I'd lower my price for my Lower tier seats, and then for my next investment I'd calculate again.

+ 1 thank you so much this is great advice, I really appreciate it very much.

Anytime! Maybe others do it differently, but I feel this has been succesful for me.
I have to add that you need to take into aacount the difference in when you win the game before your home game or not, and how often this happens. In general you want your seats to almost sell out, but not entirely.

Last edited by Jeründerbar at 6/29/2013 12:48:53 PM

Okay firstly, there are hard cap maxes. If you wanna find them just type 9999999 into the # of seats to build and it'll tell you (in case you ever forget the numbers).

Generally I've been told bleachers and lower tier seats get more income, but that the more consistent ones are the courtside and luxury boxes.

I've been recommended this and I generally follow this

Start: 4500 450 50 0

Div 5: 6000 1000 100 10 (40% bleachers/20% more expensive seats)

Div 4: 8250 2000 200 20 (55% bleachers/40% more expensive seats)

Div 3: 10500 3000 300 30 (70% bleachers/60% more expensive seats)

Div 2: 12750 4000 400 40 (85% bleachers/80% more expensive seats)

Div 1: 15000 5000 500 50 (100% bleachers/100% more expensive seats)

Woodbridge>

I tend to think of expansions differently. At first I thought as you did that the higher the price the more you want of the seats. But then it dawned on me. If you sell 100 seats for $200 per that's 20,000. If you sell 200 seats at $120 per that's 24,000. So 4,000/100 =$40. So each extra seat from 100-200 = a profit of $40 per. It will take roughly 50 weeks to get back the initial investment if the seats cost $2000 each.

The only time when you get a better return on investment is when you are selling out. If you are going to have 2-3 more weeks before you can change prices, then when you build you will get an immediate return on investment for whatever price you sell for for a few weeks until the next price adjustment. So for example I added 1200 bleachers at 200 per. Because I was selling at 10 each, I was able to take a week where each extra seat earned 10. This is 1/20th of the original investment.

The predictability of courtside and luxury box seats makes it better to build these early IMO. That way you can set the price easier and be close to selling out or selling out which is what you want.

Arena expansions only pay for themselves if the pricing is accurate. If you over/underprice considerably than it takes a lot of the gains out of the expansions.

Overall if priced correctly, arena expansions have a slow payback period. Basically I have calculated the payback to be about 2% of the initial investment per home game. It is not going to make your team so much better than an average team in your league. In Div 4, I can average about 40K more earnings per week by having one of the biggest stadiums around. Let's say the average team has 1 M invested. I have 3 M invested. 40,000/2,000,000 = 2%

So overall the goal is to increase your Div first than expanding. If you are looking at this game from a financial perspective. But if you cannot increase your Div because a better team is in your way, expanding is a nice option to have.

Last edited by lawrenman at 6/30/2013 8:28:05 AM

That's one component of the evaluation, to be sure, but the thing I think is underappreciated is the relative cost of expansion as compared to your operating margin as you move up or down the levels. When in IV or V, it's much easier to both field a successful team and still have money left over for investing in infrastructure such as arena or scouting. The higher up you go, the harder it is to have much extra money left over and still be successful. The strategy you're proposing, aiming to expand after you go up, is perilous, as not only will you need to increase your payroll significantly in most cases to remain competitive, but you'd also have to find a way to expand the arena and to do all of this with a lower revenue base than your league competitors.

The way I've always thought about it is that since the seats are a fixed, one-time cost, it's easier to go ahead and get them earlier than later, within reason (i.e., there's no point to build up to a 20k arena while in IV).

I tend to think of expansions differently. At first I thought as you did that the higher the price the more you want of the seats. But then it dawned on me. If you sell 100 seats for $200 per that's 20,000. If you sell 200 seats at $120 per that's 24,000. So 4,000/100 =$40. So each extra seat from 100-200 = a profit of $40 per. It will take roughly 50 weeks to get back the initial investment if the seats cost $2000 each.

I don't really get your calculation, does it include the assumption that if you build 200 seats instead of 100, you need to lower your ticket price from $200 down to $120? In that case, yes the break-even point is far ahead yes, but it's also a pretty extreme situation. You don't regularly double the amounts of seat you have at once.

I have to say my theory had some assumptions too, but not as extreme as yours if I understand you correctly. My assumptions were that you don't invest huge amounts of money at once in your arena, more like max $200k each time. This way, the increase in seats is only a small percentage of the seats you have already, making it less likely you'll have to decrease prices right away for the seats to sell out. I already said that the return on investment only goes for seats that are selling out.

The point of the predictability of the more expensive seats is a valid one, though in my experience in the lowest divisions you'll quickly reach the point where you beat the majority of the league easily, making the bleachers predictable too, since 90% of the team you'll come of a win before a home game. But, if the Return on investment is roughly the same, you could use this point to decide to build the expensive seats first.

And if you reach the point where you can't sell many more seats because your arena is already much bigger than the opposition's, then you might want to prioritze strengthening your roster over your arena, but again that's an exception situation. I appreciate you adding these points to keep in mind, but I was just giving a simplified version of how I think about expanding your arena to help this guy out.

I agree with you to an extent. There is no reason to get into an arms race with a team that you know is going to advance before you. When gearing for a title, you need to have one of the top payrolls to make sure you both have depth and the best starting rotation.

In Div5 this might mean 70K payroll.
In Div4 this might mean 170K payroll.

So you are correct in that as you move up divisions its harder to be successful and still expand.

However, there are teams with a sub 80K payroll in Div4 that did not get demoted last season. I carried an average of 95K a week and made the playoffs. I made a jump from 70K to 95K = 25K increase.

Overall, you may be right in Div III to have a roster that competes need more cash. However in Div 4 the increase to needed to salary is not as great. So moving from Div 5 to Div 4 is ideal except in one circumstance...the draft. Unlike Div 5 Div 4 you can't get a super pick picking last.

Overall woodbridge the math works the same. When you lower the price of your seats it lowers the price of all seats. Therefore your return on investment lowers. I just used 100 seats vs 200 seats for simplicity.

What you are doing in your math is only when you are selling out. The ROI is better when you sell out and add more seats. But it falls when you later reduce the price. Its still net better than zero until you reach a point where you can no longer reduce the price to sell seats. Overall your math only works when adding seats where you cannot change price AND you are selling out.

My math dictates that it doesn't matter which seat you build. What matters more is the predictability of pricing. Therefore you should build up court/lux first. Then worry about lower/bleacher. Overall though the math is correct, when pricing is accurate the payback is about 2% of initial investment per home game during the regular season. So around 25% per season. But its also a low risk/high reward investment. Unlike buying trainees or starters which always carry more risk.