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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.

I don't think there is one formula and only one formula for arena building, nor doing hardly anything else in this game. Competing factors must be balanced, and many managers can find balances that others cannot find, and vide versa. Circumstances present themselves and managers move suddenly to take advantage of those circumstances. I am still learning and would neither presume to say I am building my arena "right" nor that any other manager is doing it "wrong."

I have a loose plan for my arena, but if I should suddenly find useful players on the transfer market at great prices, then that might be a better use of my money at the moment. Conversely, I have not found such bargains lately, and so I inched my arena up again.

If I could build my arena again I would go heavier on the lower tier. At least 1500 more. Lower tier are the key. They are less volatile after a loss. Big arena cheap prices are also less volatile after a loss. My average gate is pretty decent for a D2 team and I rock a basic PR guy. Lots of seats cheap prices and I am considerably higher than league average.

D4 is the time to build. You can devote a large portion of your earnings into arena while maintaining league standing. Much more difficult to expand in D3 and painful in D2. This is of course referencing USA leagues.

well, i think i already took the bait...

so since i'm recovering from a weird flu and i'm home today, i did a bit of archeology and researched how i managed the arena with my old team (that existed from season 2 to season 22). too bad i cannot see how the seats were distributed, but i could find some interesting data.
as far as i remember, in the beginning i raised the ticket prices until it sold out often with full prices. than i started expanding it. i always let the prices in the maximum. when it was not 100% full it was usually at least 95%.

season 7 i was champion of II.2 in brazil, my arena was 7,590.
season 9 i was making playoffs on the I division and my arena was still 7,590.
season 11 i was finalist at brazilian cup. my arena had been upgraded to 11,312.
season 15 i was finalist of brazilian div I. my arena was still 11,312.
season 17 i won the brazil cup. my arena was 11,875.
season 18 i played B3 with a 5-3 record. my arena was still 11,875.
season 20 i unfortunately tanked and was relegated to div II. at some moment i upgraded to 14,487. i think it is the maximum size my arena got. season 22 i got stuck in div II and demotivated and left the game.

my arena was always the smallest of my league, but i always made enough money out of it to be competitive and achieve very nice things. i don't know if it was glorious or not. i think it was pretty decent. you to judge.

p.s.: i'm aware those were the golden days of buzzerbeater, when the game was played by more then 50k people. economy was on the raise, players weren't that developed, so tv rights and merchandise usually grew considerably each season, which is not necessarily the case nowadays. anyway, i don't regret anything. i bought the players i wanted and they never disappointed me. i had a pretty balanced and deep roster, with no bigshots and their ridiculously high wages.



Last edited by LA-Bernspin at 2/17/2015 5:26:03 AM

Well ultimately the team is yours. I think we're saying different things: you're saying I can enjoy the game and accomplish my targets with a smaller arena. We are saying, that's not the optimal solution for 99% of the users, who don't want to play against the odds. That's it.

I think the extra money from the larger arena is a very nice thing to have, perhaps it's even needed when competing in D2 against several 500k+ or in D1 against 850k-1.5m payroll teams (running a loss in the final part of the season).

I've seen more than one person quitting because of arena building.