BuzzerBeater Forums

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.

Yes I understand your point and as I said, I've included that you need to pick a type of seats you're selling out. For a incremental change, which I assumed was the case and I later explained too, you don't have to lower the price to sell the couple of extra seats you built. Maybe afterwards you don't totally sell out, so the next time you invest you don't include that type of seat in your options.

I did not give advice on what is the best formula to calculate ROI. I was just giving some help to decide which seats to build first, and added a simplified theory with some conditions to help in that decision. That's all I wanted to do. It's all nice to be able to calculate your actual ROI in all cases, but I think that's not necessary when deciding what seats to build.

So if you're selling out both your Luxuy boxes and bleachers, luxury at $600 per seat and Bleachers at $15 per seat, you suggest just building more Luxury? I would assume not, but then at what point would you? Do you have a calculation for that? You need to strike a balance in ROI and predictability, and I think it's hard to calculate a point where one is better than the other. I suggest just looking at ROI the way I proposed for incremental increases in seats, and when the ROI is close then go for the more expensive seats.

I must have really lucked out to end up in my D5 league because I've got like a 38k salary and have far and away the best team due to computer players being awful, that's why I'm spending so much on my arena now because I have the luxury of not really having to worry too much about competing when the competition is so low.

When choosing between 600 Lux or 15 bleach...the return is the same. Except when you first buy the seats. If you are selling out both than adding more bleach is better. However, its a temporary gain. Overall the more weeks go by, the better adding the lux is because of predictability of sales.

So I always propose to add court and luxury to the max first than work your way up. Courtside are easiest to add because the price is higher and you get to max seating of 500 quicker (Div 4). Luxury takes longer before you reach max...because you reach minimum prices quicker (Div 2).

Personally I've already maxed my lux/court for Div 4. I have already maxed my bleachers at 12,000 (which I don't plan on adding to). So until I get into the playoffs I don't need more Lux. The only thing I need at this point is lower tier.

If you spend 200k on bleachers which you're selling at $15, you get 15k more income each home game. That's just 7,5k if you spend that same 200k on Luxury boxes that you're selling at $600. If you continue investing in Luxury/Courtside with such little gain, you're missing out on a lot of money. You might not get 15k each game, but maybe somewhere between 10k and 15k for those extra seats, but it's still more than the sure 7,5k with predictable sales of your luxury boxes.

I agree that the higher predictability is worth something over the bleachers, but there's a tipping point where that predictability isn't worth the lower income that you generate. I don't know where that is exactly, but it's certainly before the point that you get $600 for luxury and $15 for bleachers if you ask me.

What should be noted here is that a $15 bleacher seat in Div 5 would result in sub 3000 seats sold.

But lets discuss how this would work out.

Div 4 only:
Going from 13 boxes to 25 boxes in Div 4 (price from 600 to 400 avg) would result in $2000 per game.
Going from 3000 bleach to 3960 in Div 4 (price from 14.49 to 11.97 avg) would result in $4000 per game.

So your example is accurate. However, the gain is smaller than you think it is because the price would ultimately fall.

Also since Div 5 teams start with bleachers at a reasonable level, they are better off adding court/box. Even if they overbuild because the pricing is simple to manage.

Basically when the price gets to 80% of normal price it is better to build the lower sections without a doubt.

Note the pricing is based on USA offsite. Which normally is lower because of all the sucky teams that don't have a clue.

Last edited by lawrenman at 6/30/2013 9:05:56 PM

I don't know where you get those numbers from, since I thought everyone started out with 4500 bleachers (is that different for USA DIV 5?), but still those are big changes % wise. In that case, it might be better to do smaller increases or spread increases (like 100k on each of your best selling seats).

That 80% that you name is what I was looking for. I do wonder how you determined that at that point it's best to switch, or is it just a rough estimation?

I like to build one set of seats at a time to match up with the new pricing.

I would say that the best time to build bleachers is during or right before promotion bonus because of the price stability at a high level. So I plan to go from 12,000 to 13,500 bleachers. Next I will increase my box seats from 28 to 40 (to continue min pricing). After that I will build my lowers until I get to minimum pricing...somewhere around 4,000 seats or 1,800 more.

Total cost around 1.8 million. Since I already have a very large stadium, I should be able to rake in quite of bit of cash in Div III while I ready myself to promote in 2-3 seasons.

I may add an additional 1,200-1,500 bleachers...I haven't decided yet. The higher pricing at lower levels is really inviting and is more profitable until you get to Div 1. Overall though I will probably just stick with the 13,500 max plan with 6,000 lower tier later.

Last edited by lawrenman at 7/1/2013 10:13:40 AM

So, can any1 show an ideal arena size for D1 team?
I'm building my own so I can promote without being forced to battle against relegation.