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It helps some - I've consistently had merchandise at around 125-150% of the league average with an American-focused roster (and now that my Canadian player is gone, it's an all-American club). On the other hand, a lot of that is also that there are several players who play regularly for me who have been on my roster for seasons.

While there is a financial benefit, where it might really be useful is teaching patience in TL dealings. If you can make yourself wait for only American players you're less likely to make a bad impulse buy on a guy who's not nearly as good. Set high standards for secondary skills and try to focus on solely Americans and you'll rarely end up buying someone and immediately regretting it.

Ok, so from the experience that i have it goes something like this:

- own nationality NT player (the weeks that he actually plays) bring around 15k in merchandise per player
- other nationality NT players are at around 10k
- own nationality non-NT players bring a few thousands of dollars depending on the players salary
- other nationality non-NT players bring little in terms of merchandise, again depending on the players salaries.

Most of this is in a way a bonus over the regular merchandise that for the most part depends on the players salaries.

Worth noting:

- Winning improves the merchandise quite a bit in my experience
- Low salary players (backups) make very little difference
- Drafted players bring even more merchandise but i cannot give any specifics since unfortunately my own drafted players are among my scrubs not my key players
- The amounts may slightly differ due to both team's and players success during the week

Btw i am at usually at least 50% over the league average in merchandise and i have at least 80% of own nationality players.

So overall, i would recommend to have players from your own nationality as your key players, if possible. But it's not worth significantly overpaying for them. I guess for large BB nations, where there are plenty of player suitable for your team it's a lot easier to make an own nationality team. For smaller BB nations it's a bit more difficult due to the lack of appropriate talent on the transfer market.

Last edited by Xsago at 8/26/2012 7:43:11 AM

You are partially right i was just stating my experience. I assumed that most NT players have similar salaries. I realized that it works as a percentage as well, a while ago, but the percentages are definitely not that high. According to your percentagesm my 130k NT players for example should bring 25-30k in merchandise bonuses each, but they dont. The percentages, as i see them, are more like 10% for own nationality players and around 7% for foreign nationality NT players. Can't comment on home grown players (drafted) since i've never had a drafted NT player so far. Also i am not sure the same hold for the U21 team, but it might. The bonuses are definitely much lower but so are the players salaries. I've had quite a few U21 players in the past, but the gain was not noticable. They were all lower salaried players though, so if the 10% is correct the gain would be something like 1-3k, which is close to the regular weekly change, that happens due to various success related reasons, anyway.

Well, i think nt players should bring more bonus than own drafted non nt players. My 2 starters are own draftess and i think they earn me around 25% of their salary in merchandize. I am always having atleast 75% higher merchandize than my league average. I have had more than twice bigger last season when i was tanking lol cause i had like 3 to 5 own draftess starting:)

Last edited by Gajus Julijus Cezaris at 8/27/2012 8:03:37 AM

Well here are my examples:

My merchandise in the offseason when none of my NT players was playing

5/28/2012 Weekly Merchandise profit $ 97 847
6/4/2012 Weekly Merchandise profit $ 97 551

They all started playing within a few weeks (playing each week, as i agree playing is important, but minutes played has a far lesser impact if at all)
6/25/2012 Weekly Merchandise profit $ 135 020
7/2/2012 Weekly Merchandise profit $ 131 983

I have 3 NT players, 2 from my own nationality (Macedonia) and another one from New Zealand. My own nationality NT players total 200k in salary (130+70), whereas the foreigner was at around 135k. The total increase was at around 35k and i've been at the same number ever since.


One possible explanation could be this (from the game manual):

fans from around the country are particularly enthusiastic supporters of members of their national teams, and even more so when their national team is a successful one. So, if in a given week your player played in a national team game, fans from around the country will buy their jersey, typically in a quantity proportional to their salary. National team jersey sales will vary depending on the strength of the national team, but players playing in their domestic league tend to sell considerably more national team merchandise.

So maybe the success of the national team makes a huge difference?

Its a posibility.

Ok, so first of all i am only talking about the bonus received from having an NT player. I never gave you wrong information, you just look at the merchandise differently than i do. A 130k player would still bring you some merchandise regardless of him being an NT player or not. The way i look at things is:

merchandise = base merchandise + bonuses;

The base merchandise takes into account the total team salary.

The bonuses take into account all of the bonuses as stated in the game manual, most important of which is the NT player bonus. My evaluation shows how much you gain in merchandise when having an NT player as opposed to a non-NT player with similar skills/salary.

The goal of this extremely simple analysis is basically, quantifying the difference between domestic, foreign and non-NT players.

Not sure if i am clear in what i am trying to say, but all in all we both might be right, we are just talking about slightly different stuff. When you sold the 280k player you didn't just sell an NT player you also lost a player with 280k salary, thus dropping your total salary significantly.

Your edits are correct i do have 3 NT players, one of which (the guy from NZ) i actually bought during that span replacing a guy with slightly lower salary (i sold him during the same update).