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teams spend only 70% of their income on salaries.

My only question about this is if that stat is based on total income/revenue for the season or is it a snapshot of the weekly average during the season?

There are only 11 guaranteed home games but 14 weeks of paying players. Most teams don't make a lot of money in the PO's, usually only the teams that make the finals. So you have to take into account the 3 weeks you wont be making the normal attendance, if any at all.

In my original message I asked whether the differences between large/small countries has been considered when designed the global self-regulation system. That's my main point. I´m curious to know this and I did not see an answer to this clear question.
The question is not how many users come from a large/small country, but the amount of money they can make. The fact is that there are much more users in the top leagues of small countries than in large and competitive ones.
I don't have access to the data, but I´m sure that in Spain, those teams in D3 which spend only 70% of their income on salaries, don´t do it voluntarily. They are forced because if they really want to improve their team, they must save money to pay the transfer of new players. The competition is high enough at this level and we don´t need any imposed regulation.
A regulation is required in those small countries without real competition, because they can make money as easily as a first division spanish team, but without real competition in their local league.

Of course, we will survive to all these adjustments because in Spain we love this game. I´m not telling that the salary increase will lead most spanish D3 teams to bankruptcy. I say that in Spain we have to deal with a high level of competition (which does not mean a high level of player skills or team ratings), and we have to deal every season with these economic adjustment for which we are not responsible at all.

You know my proposal in the Small Countries Advantage thread. It was not considered because the BBs deny that such problem with small countries exists. But the BB economy is globally considered, and things happenning in other leagues are affecting to us.

I don´t know how hard is to manage the economy in your league, but in Spain we have to be very precise and you will pay with a lower competitiviness every mistake you make.

Last edited by Emilio at 3/26/2010 8:46:27 AM

this was based on a single week late in the regular season before the playoffs last season.

The weekly totals are a bit misleading for another reason. There are other sources of income/costs that do not occur on a weekly basis: profits from training and staff bonuses.

I think your argument is really part of the much longer standing debate about small versus large countries... which is another larger design issue. You could indeed imagine somehow scaling income more dramatically according to country size and league salaries... but we already do this to a large extent... Spanish D2 for example makes about 20% more than Hong Kong's D2. Now its still true that Hong Kong D2 teams spend even proportionally less than spanish d2 teams.... but this is a bit odd because its had to say Hong Kong teams have a strict advantage, in that spain has more money to spend on players, and clearly has the more talented players... but yes Korean teams clearly have it an easier time of competition.

So on one hand, Spanish teams are all on the same boat... i again would argue that we haven't made it impossible for a spanish d2/3 team to compete. On the other hand it has always been true that you need less of a team to win in Hong Kong than Spain.... then again, Spanish teams are going to beat Hong Kong teams from the same division.... so .... its hard to say that Hong Kong really has an advantage... though an equally skilled manager probably does have an easier time being successful within hong kong.

The best solution to this is not a dramatic re-imagining on the Buzzerbeater economy.. but rather growing smaller countries, and with increased competition, you'll get a balancing out of the competitive levels.

I'm sorry that my language was offensive, I should be more sensitive.

But, I feel like your first paragraph seems to indicate that you didn't really listen to my point about the best players in the world. Given that we have chosen to have a game with a tiered economic system, we cannot have players getting better over time, and getting paid more over time for those increased skills, and have a system where it makes sense for a team to have a "long-term plan to build a key player" because eventually if the team is in a lower division, that player will cost too much for them to afford.. regardless of the salary tuning formula... which again ... was 5-10% depending on salary level (lower for lower salaries/lower divisions). The vast majority of salary increases this season are due to training, not due to this salary formula adjustment.

So that's not really the best representative of what percentage of income is spent on expenses. Spending 70% per week during the regular might seem conservative, but if you include the offseason weeks that jumps to 90%.

2 things, 1... 22 weeks of regular season >> 2 weeks of offseason. 2 earlier in the season there are teams in the cup which are going to raise revenue, and actually 3 in the first week you also have promotion bonuses etc.. so yes.. during the offseason teams are losing money, but those couple weeks of lower revenue are offset by other factors throughout the season.

Last edited by BB-Forrest at 3/26/2010 10:37:53 AM

We cannot compare accurately the numbers of any spanish league and any other smaller league. Of course, you can, but the conclusion you will take may be wrong if you don´t do a deeper analysis. And this analysis is not possible without knowing what is really happening in the spanish leagues. This will not come out from the raw numbers.
For example, in the spanish D1, the last 3 seasons we had teams that sold all their players from the beginning of the season. So no salaries to pay, just scouting players for the draft and prepare the team for the next season. This strategy has proben to be succesful, as some of those teams are now back to D1. The statistics you can take from the spanish league those seasons are not accurate because of those teams, and any comparison with the Hongkong league will be rather useless.
I understand your plan for the global BB economy. But I think your diagnostic is focussed too much on those numbers without getting closer to the reality of the largest leagues, where the real BuzzerBeater is being played.

I think the spanish (italian, german...) economy is quite healthy because it is self-regulated by a strong competition, which is now too often distorted by the global economic measures you are taking. I am quite sure that we are not responsible of the problems of the BB economy, but we had to deal with, for example, a masive inflation created by the new TV contracts and merchandising revenues. Now the same with a very likely devaluation of the players. And at the same time, we have to hear that there is not such "small countries advantage". In the spanish league we are on the same boat, as you said, but the economic changes are giving a big advantage to some teams (i.e. those who bought player before the inflation, those who sold players before the new salary update).

In my opinion, most of the economic problems of BB come from a bad design of the economy in small countries from the very beginning of the game, and it makes no sense to take global measures to solve a local problem.

I agree that there is other income from cup games, playoff games, promotion bonus, etc. When I'm trying to plan for the season I don't want to count on those as income since they aren't assured.

For this season my salaries are up to 650k from 475k from last season. When I plot out a baseline of income based on 11 home games, and 14 weeks of all the other incomes/expenses (barring a drastic increase/decrease in TV money) I've come to the conclusion that to break even I need to:

- at least finish 2nd in my conference AND make it to the SF
- make it to at least round 8 of the cup

Those are realistic based on performance, but they are not assured. I think this is probably a good exercise for managers to take before they decide how much salary they can carry. I'm not saying it's wrong to be aggressive, but if you at least know what you're committing to then it won't hurt as much if you're forced to shed salaries in a declining market.

Last edited by brian at 3/26/2010 10:51:29 AM