why on earth should i bury millions of hard earned cash to expand my arena to 20k or similar and make the same money as a 8k arena
Because past a certain point you need the seats to increase the revenues. The benefit of buying additional seats decreases as you approach 20k but it doesn't mean there is no benefit at all. Competing with a lower payroll is nice and all, mostly viable in weak leagues, but at the end of the day when you're competing against good managers the penalty to gates is going to affect you: you will be able to afford less salary, therefore you will likely win fewer games, your revenues will drop even though you have a smaller arena and you will not be able to close the gap. In the top leagues the difference between bottom and top teams in terms of gate revenues (arenas being equal) is massive, in the order of a few hundred tousand.
You seem to be in a relatively quiet league where you're doing ok with a sub 200k salary, in my D2 with a sub 200k payroll you wouldn't be able to compete for a playoff spot (but you would have bneen able to, a few seasons ago) as the playoff teams in my conference had an average 500k+ payroll last season. And of course if you don't make the playoffs your revenues will drop the following season.
Also, at any level you will find people with large arenas who set their prices inefficiently, so I wouldn't necessarily check others. After 15k seats I think it becomes less evident that you will benefit from expansion in D2, but clearly there are still benefits, just not as big.
Last edited by Lemonshine at 2/16/2015 6:50:26 AM