BuzzerBeater Forums

I've never had trouble competing for the title and making $100k+ per week.

+eleventeen

And this is what I keep trying to come back to on the occasions we come back to this topic. The number of seats, the amount of money spent on players, etc. is all situational. What is most important, and what separates the better managers from the rest is the ability to be competitive and profitable at the same time. If you can do that, you can build your arena up tremendously, and then at some point you can compete on an even financial footing when you're already able to compete at a lesser footing. Likewise, if a manager never develops the capability of competing without having to outspend the competition at the level they're at, unless they can accumulate significant financial advantages in other ways, they're pretty much at their wall.

I think my as needed and your as needed differ a little bit. I feel "as needed" means when you are selling out or close to selling out a certain type of seats at your current price then that's when you should build.
Unless I've read wrong I believe you're in favor of higher prices and a lower number of total seats.

Yes, the part I bolded is one very good example of timely arena building. I agree with that.

I am not in favor of higher prices and low arena capacity, necessarily. I am in favor of putting fannies in the seats or the seats bring you no return. I am in favor of right-sizing an arena to prepare for imminent promotion. I am in favor of buying that critical player to fill the hole in your roster when he becomes available at a good price. I am in favor of judiciously increasing your arena when you have nothing better to do with your money at the moment and in the immediate future.

In short, I am in favor of being flexible and sensible with your money, not charging ahead and building the biggest arena possible as fast as possible as the recently silent expert from Japan advocates.

When you tank you will have to consider that if you end up demoting you will make less money the following season (both the lower league and demotion will hit your income). That's a risk or a certainty if you are too far from anyone else's level and I think you need to factor that in your assumptions.

If you build "as much as you can as fast as you can", you don't run the risk of demotion. You're at the lowest league trying to learn the fundamentals of the game. You could decide a smaller arena at higher priced seats makes more sense and invest in it when you have more income at the next level. How long do you think a recently promoted team who stretched the limit of their finances to get there will last at that level trying to build arena as well as their roster? All that eventuates is that you spend all the money you had on promotion, then you spent your higher income on trying to keep it, then you end up back where you started.

you don't run the risk of demotion.

Yeah and you don't run any risk of beating any other human manager either. I honestly believe believe suggesting that someone new to the game to spend all his money on arena encourages no effort in learning the game because basically you have no chance to beat the other human managers and you need no effort to beat bots.

Also a chronic lack of cash in the bank to improve the team and staff, at a time where you have no knowledge about training either, sounds like a really good way to enjoy the game right off the bat. Is this what you would suggest so that new people stick around? Build for a few seasons, log in every once in a while, instead of try and win the games you can win, learn and enjoy the game?

How long do you think a recently promoted team who stretched the limit of their finances to get there will last at that level trying to build arena as well as their roster?

This is not the point: you've seen above that a 10k-12k arena is perfectly capable of giving you 190k per game (2 of those teams have a 4-6 record). The max I've seen is around 230k for D3. Now why would you wait 5-6 seasons of building arena and nothing else for those extra 30k-40k a week?

I'll tell you another thing. Being able to set the prices is more important than the size of the arena itself.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 9/11/2015 8:37:08 PM

Build for a few seasons, log in every once in a while, instead of try and win the games you can, learn and enjoy the game?

Build for a few seasons, log in daily and learn from experienced players in the forums, instead of wasting money making mistakes like competing for a promotion you're not ready for, so you don't waste your resources and fail to progress in the game.

"Build as much as you can as fast as you can" doesn't mean build spend every cent you earn on seats. My first season with this team I was against bots only, so I spent enough on the players i needed to promote, built a few seats, then banked the rest of my $100k weekly income for a couple of trainees and trainer (investments, not buying wins). Since then, I have invested millions in seats as my number 1 priority. Why? Because I'm not ready to promote. Why would I spend millions trying to get to a level I can't sustain, when I can invest millions to be sustainable at the next level while being competitive at this level?

I make $150k weekly in div 3 (which is now the lowest div with only 2 bots) because I'm 9-1 for the season spending less than the salary floor. I don't need to promote, so it would be foolish to waste money trying. I'd make slighty more at div 2, but ultimately would have to spend millions (on top of the millions I spent to get there) just to avoid relegation. Where would I find the millions that I've invested already in arena and training at this level while trying to keep my head above water and avoid demotion at the next?

Thanks to all for the advices

I will stick to upgrading my arena. I also got a hint about http://www.buzzer-manager.com which helps you in finding better prices.

I think overall the prices seems not to be too bad except the luxury. There i will lower the prices to 400 but with the rest of my money i will upgrade my arena a little bit. I found some goods adives here

So you have around a 18k arena that is pretty much selling out your bleachers every week at near max prices. Aren't you giving up money every week not having those extra seats?

"Build as much as you can as fast as you can" doesn't mean build spend every cent you earn on seats.

Actually it means exactly that. If building is the winning strategy then you should maximise it. This is completely logical. Otherwise you will have to admit that at some level of arena and at some level of competition investing in something else like staff (cheaper but equal or better level staff...another thing people never think about) or players could give you higher returns. If investing in the arena has the best return on investment at any time then, logically, you should build until this is no longer true, which means when you can no longer sell more seats (20k+ arena). So, although you don't realise it, when you say the first thing you also say the second.

So maximising your investment for you guys means spending every penny on the arena. But you know what? Every single one of you guys, who are so sure that building is the optimal investment, have invested in players and staff which should be subpar investments....

I've had a bb-mail conversation with Trainerman about this and we completely disagree. I have a question for you people who can't think beyond the cash coming in every week: would you rather have a team worth 7-8 million more (i.e. by selling all players you will make 7-8 million more) or 6k extra seats (even if they weren't mostly bleachers)?

Last edited by Lemonshine at 9/12/2015 11:56:52 AM

Why people should think not beyond cash coming in every week? If you want to build the most competitive DI team possible you need at least a 20k arena. The more cash coming in every week, the more salary you can afford, and the better team you can have.

Can you compete with less than 20k, sure. But you can't build the best team possible.

Last edited by Phyr at 9/12/2015 1:29:26 PM

Surely that's a huge concern for people in D4 who need to win at least 3 promotions before even setting foot in D1...

The arguments in favour of building are as follows:
- by lowering prices you can always fill more seats up to 20k-20.5k in total. This means that the combination of more seats and lower prices always yields higher returns. It implies that the attendance is modelled in such a way that lowering prices by x% increases the attendance by more than x%. I would like to see proof that it works at any level (D4 for example) and given any circumstance (tanking teams v leading teams), but without this assumption we would not even have this conversation
- if and only if the previous point is correct, by investing 100k in arena you can make more money (from the higher revenues) than, say buy a trainee or an undervalued player or a cheaper staff for 100k. Now you need to consider if over one season making extra from the arena is more or less than the price you can receive for the players or the money saved by the staff
- finally to win at the top level you need the largest arena you can fill at that level. Well this is not true, since it's clear that the highest payroll teams don't always win even in the BBB. Let's just say that at the very least you would make more money while also being still able to win the title, but this is not really a big concern for most of the managers.

Again would it be better to have invested and accumulated assets worth millions (read: trainees) or having spent the money on expanding the arena immediately? This does not have a clear answer, it depends. However if you put 1 million in trainees and they are worth 7 millions 4 seasons later, are you really sure that by expanding the arena with that million you would make more than 6 millions in extra revenues? Tough isn't it? As it happens, if you have the trainees worth 7 millions you would have had fun seeing them grow and when you sell them you can spend 6 millions on the arena and buy new ones with the remaining money. And at that point in time, you will have no fewer seats than the guy who invested only in the arena and died of boredom from having no perspective whatsoever other than having a hige arena after 4 seasons.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 9/12/2015 2:41:45 PM

Why shouldn't it be? Everyone plays this game for different reasons but you are going to spend a couple real life years getting yourself up to DI, you should also put yourself in the best place to compete when you get there. You don't need a 20k arena before you promote from DIV to DIII but going from DIII to DII that 20k arena definitely helps you. This means most of the building before you get up to DII/DI occurs in DIII/DIV.

Your analysis is also colored from your experience in the English leagues. You guys about 200 active teams in England where the USA has nearly 1400. A little under half of your active teams are in DI/DII where as only 5% of all active Americans teams are in DI/DII. Those numbers are significant because if you assume the same proportions of elite, good, average, and terrible managers in both USA and England, its easy to see that the competition is going to be much fiercer in the upper divisions of USA than it is in England. This also means that the margin between relegating, making the playoffs, and competing for a title are much smaller in bigger countries. If you don't have your team, and arena optimized and ready to go by the time you wind up in DI/DII, you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage that most team won't survive.