BuzzerBeater Forums

I'm not privy to what your ticket prices have been in the past, but it seems you could expand your stadium, certainly in the bleachers and lower tier seats at least. You're coming very close to selling out every game, especially in those two sections, which means probably that there's room for growth. The fans won't fill the seats up overnight, but continued success and promotion will eventually grow your fanbase. A good reference point to consider is the arenas and attendance of other teams in your conference- you've a better side than Southsound Sentinels, but they draw more fans than you because they have a bigger stadium, and even though their ticket prices are lower, they're still at a higher per-game profit.

One of the things you have to consider is that you can't see the benefits of continuing to win games if your arena isn't big enough. If you build it, fans will sit in those seats eventually. I realize everyone in the thread is being a bit condescending, but there's some wisdom here. I'd also say that your ticket prices can only sell so high at each level- the benefits you're likely to see from promoting and winning are likely that you'll get more fans willing to buy $10-11 tickets, not that your current fans will be willing to spend much more on the ticket prices you previously had in place... heck, I'm 3 levels higher than your team and I struggle to sell above 90% of my stadium without near maximum prices, and I've been in the playoffs for multiple seasons now.

I'm not privy to what your ticket prices have been in the past, but it seems you could expand your stadium, certainly in the bleachers and lower tier seats at least. You're coming very close to selling out every game, especially in those two sections, which means probably that there's room for growth. The fans won't fill the seats up overnight, but continued success and promotion will eventually grow your fanbase. A good reference point to consider is the arenas and attendance of other teams in your conference- you've a better side than Southsound Sentinels, but they draw more fans than you because they have a bigger stadium, and even though their ticket prices are lower, they're still at a higher per-game profit.

One of the things you have to consider is that you can't see the benefits of continuing to win games if your arena isn't big enough. If you build it, fans will sit in those seats eventually. I realize everyone in the thread is being a bit condescending, but there's some wisdom here. I'd also say that your ticket prices can only sell so high at each level- the benefits you're likely to see from promoting and winning are likely that you'll get more fans willing to buy $10-11 tickets, not that your current fans will be willing to spend much more on the ticket prices you previously had in place... heck, I'm 3 levels higher than your team and I struggle to sell above 90% of my stadium without near maximum prices, and I've been in the playoffs for multiple seasons now.

Thanks for the feedback. One consistent message whether condescending or constructive like yours is that my stadium is too small. I'll start too work on that and hopefully will see some results over time. Thanks again.

1. Training. Your training example sounds really slow to me. Did he have full 48 min week in week out and what's his potential? These are the only reasons I can think of. By the way, you certainly don't need lv6 trainer at your level. They are for national team trainers or div I/II. lv 4 or 5 gives you more bang for you buck. I would get a 12k-15k salary lv 4 trainer (no special skill) if I were you.

2. Arena. Many players agree expanding arena up 20k pays out in the long term. Your arena is way too small. Start from the cheapest seat and then slowly add the more expensive ones when you move up. Unless you want to buy old/high salary players to storm your league and move up quickly. You should think long term.

3. Income. Try to win tv/rival/games before your home games and match your prices as you expand your arena. You will be rewarded if you get the ticket prices right. I think you are lucky that your team is born in US. You are blessed with a good choice of your countrymen. It should be very easy for you to maintain a roster of US players only and I am sure your merchandise will get a big boost. Even better if you keep your drafts and train them.

I think you should focus on training either guard/big men and buy those positions you do not train - they should have little training value, cheap and high salary (among your team). Then you should buy young trainees when the season starts. They are dirt cheap at that time. Try to get some bargains with good secondaries and potential that match you. If you do 2 position training, then you won't ever need pot 8 or higher. Don't waste your money on them. I personally recommend 1 position training with high potential. But don't ever pay big money for them. You are not there yet. Avoid those with high pot and 20 yo or higher. There is a very good chance you won't ever train them up to their pot. If they are well trained, you can't afford them yet. I got a pot 8 and 18 yo for 11k at season start. You might do the same. I would get 3 of them and get them trained 48 min every week. After getting the veterans and trainees, the rest of your money should go to your arena. There should be nowhere else to spend money and if you get these things right you should maintain a profit every week. Hope it helps.

1. Yes I usually get the 48 minutes per player as I scrimmage every week when not in the tournament. I'll look into a lower level trainer, was just hoping to get pops quicker with the more expensive trainers but it doesn't seem to do me any good.

2. Yep, I am starting to see the light on my stadium. Tooo small. I am going to start working on that.

3. I don't have a lot of USA players on my team. Usually I don't focus on that when bringing new players on. I always thought winning was more important but it looks like I need more yanks on my squad to boost merchandise sales. I don't know if I 100% agree with that but I'll work on it.

I usually do 2 Position training so that everyone on my team is pretty decent. Basically when my back-ups hit the court against my opponents my team will expand the lead or take the lead as they are similar to my starters and most teams back-ups are just that, back-ups. So far it has worked with playoff births in each of my seasons however it may be preventing me from taking that next leap as I don't have that one or two studs on my squad. Thanks for the advice on training, I'll look into it more.

Poor start to the thread, but it seems like you actually want to improve and are just a bit frustrated...

I may just be piling on here, but, no, upgrading your stadium is not a zero sum game. You can sell about 5000 seats at $12 ($60k), but could probably sell 6000 seats at $11 ($66k) or 7000 at $10 ($70k). There is an aditional $10k profit right there only counting lost money on bleachers. I have a rule that I try to keep my player salary under my average arena profit to make sure I don't get too far ahead of myself (and I have to plan ahead when training players for salary increases).

The next point is 2 position training. Your team is well rounded, but you have maybe 1-2 players worth training. Period. No need to train 5-6 players right now. Get some young players 18-19 to mix into your rotation, you are losing 30% effectiveness by 2 position training and probably an additional 40% effectiveness by training 25 year olds. There's not much left there. I would definitely recommend 1 position training 2-3 players.

Buzzer-manager.com is a great website for advanced statistics. I log into there just as often as here. You can see the statistics you described above plus much more. It is a lot of work for the creators to maintain the site and add new features while doing this in their spare time and making it free for the average user. The userbase has filled the void and made some nice products.

By the way, the whole country thing is to encourage and reward players who build through the draft. I personally enjoy having American players with the occasional foreigner instead of a hodgepodge of players with names I can't pronounce. But that is my perogative and individual bias. I do think it would be valuable to change it to benefit players who have been on your team for multiple seasons (fans know who they are and will buy their jerseys [Ginobli, Duncan, Parker]), but that benefit is built into the fan survey and thus arena attendance.

Promotion attendance "boost" lasts only for six home games. I also suspect that if your arena is the biggest in your league and the ticket prices are the lowest, you make it a bit harder for others to fill their stadia.
Merchandize is weird, and the advice I have seen is to not pay any mind to it, hope for anything or strategize it.
2-pos training means your team gets better faster for cheaper. You can sink to training starters that are cheap. You do not suffer from 48 mins of playing with a hole. 5 men 2pos training goes very smoothly. if you want similiar smoothness with 1pos you can only really train 2 players. 2x100 < 5x60.
1-pos training allows you to maximize players with higher potential, and if I drafted a worthy superstar, I would probably have switched to 1pos. For now I cap starters/stars doing 2pos.
Just get your players to playoffs with proficient GS and max. Enth. and hope for the best!

Poor start to the thread, but it seems like you actually want to improve and are just a bit frustrated...

Yes, looking to improve and this thread has given me some things to work on moving forward. I'll check out that web-site for the statistics as well- thanks! I agree on the american/foreign players. I'd think after a while my fans would warm up to any player whom has been on the team regardless of country of origin.

Thanks for the advice!

It's also your stadium.

I understand how you can think that adding to your stadium only brings the need to reduce ticket prices, and that, in turn, makes profit seem minimal. This is entirely accurate, though. The gain can be minimal yet can be very beneficial. If you manage ticket prices well, you can sustain a higher paid roster. A higher paid roster (not mono-skilled but balanced players) will usually get more Ws. More Ws means more seats filled.

You should also look into trading. A lot of people use it to build their bank balance.

You're completely right, the economy of the game is broken and so is the training.
HELLO, when people don't want their players to improve because they'll become to expensive, that's when you know there's a problem! When $500,000 salaried players sell for less than a mill because no one can afford to pick up that salary, there's another problem!~
And the other issue of training, it's so brutally slow. It isn't as serious as the economic system of the game though.