BuzzerBeater Forums

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

OK, this is so wrong I need to show it so that those who don't know better won't be misguided by reading this:

the average income from arena attendance in my league is around 240k. mine will be 180k after my last expansion.

That's nice, that means the average income is around 244k without yours bringing it down. That's an extra 64k/week in profit - on average - your rivals are banking. Now consider that the teams that are above average are getting even more than that. Yeah.

Dollars per seat is a useless statistic in a long-term game such as this, because there is no maintenance fee for upkeep of the seats. Every extra seat sold is profit.

i can make 240k expanding to 7000/1000/150/0, which is a 8150 arena, 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?

This is plain wrong. Don't believe me? Go check out the Arena for the #1 team from your Blue conference in your division. He's spent the money to build a 14k arena, but made the stupid decision to set his ticket prices to max. Guess how much money he made last home game? 218k. And that's with a way bigger arena than your proposed 8k, and with his team winning more games than you. Fortunately for him, he seems to have realised his mistake, and lowered his ticket prices. Not by enough, but it should be an improvement anyway.

You're selling about all you can sell with your ticket prices maxed out. Each extra seat you add won't sell after a point, and yes your profit will be maximised. Until you learn to set adequate seat prices, you will never maximise your profit, and never reach your team's full potential.

To be the best, you must beat the best. Rather than comparing yourself to the average (and still finding that you fall short!), why don't we compare against some of the better teams from your league:

São Paulo Seekers made 287k in ticket sales last game, from a reasonable 14k arena (that guy should put some more LT in though, quick! And fix his prices, and his income will greatly increase).
Moikanos made 170k last home game in bleacher sales alone. So his bleachers is almost as good as your whole arena.
And even Mr. 32k arena - he made a whopping 348k last home game!

You're giving up anything from 107k-168k to two other teams in your league - per week - that they can then spend on better players and bigger salaries. Your weekly budget won't add up to a decent team unless you can first afford to pay for these players by selling seats.

To anyone still listening, take the advice of nearly every manager who bothers to read these forums and offer it - and invest in your arena. It will pay off big dividends in the long run - its why my team averages around 370k in gate receipts, and why I'm one of the most successful D2 teams in a decent country such as Australia (still aiming to make it to the top!)

I agree M.P5. The average attendance in my D2 league is 275k (15.2k average arena) and I get 340k gates (15.6k arena). I'm not too far off in terms of revenues from people who have 20k arenas, but I could make 360k-370k if I had a fully built arena. With extra 30k I could afford a very very solid backup or upgrade significantly one or 2 positions and still make the same profit. Alternatively, I could just bank it and use the extra 420k per season to source a good trainee in the offseason.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 2/16/2015 6:59:57 AM

oh, yeah, i was utterly wrong about the average arena attendance of my division. apologise for the basic mistake.

maybe i'll make a few more in my next lines. you are very welcome to point them out again, though.

i see you have a 20,050 arena. as far as i could figure, you spent 9,350,000 to expand it to the current point. last match you made $383,135. your arena wasn't full, even if you ask mere $26 (out of $70) for a bleacher. it was almost full, though, 19,456/20,050. you have a very nice fanbase to manage to get 19,456 people to your matches.

anyway, a guy who had an arena with 10,286 seats distributed as 8000/2000/270/16 and charging full price for the tickets would make $379,600, which is pretty much the same as you make with your 20,050 arena and current prices. the guy would have spent $2,396,000 to expand his arena, though.

if i had such a successfull and popular team that could attract 19,000 people to my matches, i would very certainly be able to attract 10,000 of those 19,000 who wouldn't mind paying full price tickets. having spent 7,000,000 less. but maybe i'm wrong.

I wouldn't go there, dude. Honestly 383k is a lot for D2, I've never seen such high gates for D2 in England.

guy who had an arena with 10,286 seats distributed as 8000/2000/270/16 and charging full price for the tickets would make $379,600

You're using the conditional and you're right in doing so because there is no way even with promotion bonus to fill that arena at full prices. I'm telling you this based on personal experience (and I think I got the prices spot on back in the day when I promoted, with a smaller arena and I could only charge close to the max for bleachers). You can't fill that 10.5k arena at max prices even by winning all your games.

but maybe i'm wrong.

Your conclusion is correct, but the premise is wrong. You can't fill a 11k arena in D2 at max prices. It's just not going to happen: the more you build the more you need to lower prices to attract more people: expanding has diminishing returns for a team (more seats, but you need to lower prices as you expand), there are positive returns up to slightly more than 20k seats.

This means that if you have a smaller arena, you can absorb part of the difference in seats with higher prices, but it you will not be able to charge high enough prices to be indifferent. So, if you want to compete to the maximum of your abilities, you will splash the 7 million you need to build your arena because that's the only way you can get those 380k from gates.

And since you don't have maintenance costs associated with how big the arena is, the optimal strategy would be to build seats sooner rather than later.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 2/16/2015 10:41:22 AM

As Sentinel and Lemonshine have pointed out, you are correct - if you can sell that many seats at max prices.
Which you can't.
I even showed you that with an example from your own league, with a 6-1 record and on top of his conference. 218k he managed.

An extra 150k/game = 1.65M over the course of a season. What you do with that (buy better players, promote, win promotion bonuses, fill more seats at a higher price in a higher div, make more money etc etc) is up to you.

ok, let's assume I'm overestimating the audience for div II. anyway, if you spend 7kk to build a 20k arena in order to get a profit of 1,5kk comparing to the dude who hasn't spent anything, this means that you will get your investment back in around 5 seasons! the other dude in the meantime could have spent the same 7kk on players and got much better results, prizes and extra $ rewards, not to talk about the fun!

...yeah and after 10 seasons the guy who enjoyed spending the 7 million and never built his arena will realise he can't break 250k gates while the top teams are at 350k and he will think: "I should have built my arena, I spent millions on low salary balanced players, but I'm nowhere near the level of the contenders and I can't compete against them because they have higher salary players, sigh. I'll have to start building now. Uhm actually rather than enduring another 4-5 seasons of mediocrity, maybe I'll just quit". That's of course assuming he doesn't demote, which is entirely plausible, if a handful of decent teams end up in his division.

There is no reason not to invest in the arena. As I said, since you don't pay maintenance like in Hattrick it actually makes sense to build until the max number of seats. After that, you will never have to pay an extra penny and you will just enjoy the extra money. Since you technically could enjoy the extra revenues forever, it makes sense to expand and to expand sooner rather than later.

In any case, mate, you're welcome to prove us all wrong. You'd be the first to accomplish such a feat and achieve greatness with an 11k arena. It will also help many others in their argument that you don't need a large arena to be competitive. However if I were you I'd just bank the profits and build for a few seasons.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 2/16/2015 7:36:36 PM

There is no reason not to invest in the arena. ...

...even on empty seats that is absolutely true, when you don't have something better to do with your money, and some weeks that may happen. On the other hand, since we're talking about buying empty seats here, consider that spending $75,000 on empty seats could represent an expenditure of one week's net for a higher division team, or 1/2 season's net for a bottom division team.

In any case, mate, you're welcome to prove us all wrong.

Bernspin, don't take the bait -- they don't listen anyway. I only speak up so that maybe some other newbies don't drink their Kool-Aid. Buying ahead so that your arena is producing pretty much optimally is a good idea, but buying thousands of empty seats, not so much.