BuzzerBeater Forums

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.

I don't understand why you can't invest in trainees and look to build your arena as much as possible. Most of the arena building advocate are not saying you shouldn't train.

Look: I think top teams can make 230k in D3. I've seen it, so it's nothing new. But $ 206k with better record and roster still compares very unfavourably to $ 191k from a 12k arena, because it means that the marginal gain from building those extra 8k seats in D3 is very low (and therefore making back the money spent on are will take quite a while).

Edit: Trainerman makes 230k with a less than 17k arena in D3 in Utopia so I suppose the max could be between 240k-250k

They totally can surpass $230K. My highest non-playoff income in DIII was $259K with 16,988 seats (12600/3850/500/38)
I averaged $251K my final season in DIII, and $235K in my second to last season there. The primary difference between seasons was that I built more seats, which required me to at times lower prices to fill those seats, but pricing elasticity is such that when you lower prices (so long as you have more seats to sell), your increase in tickets sold will make up for your decreased average ticket price, thus increasing revenue.

Well then. Can investing in players be more profitable than expanding the arena?

I don't understand why they have to be separated. Anyone who is arena building should be training as well (I think everyone should be training all the time period unless you need to GS train your way to a title or B3). Your arena building period is the best time to train because match outcomes matter less, so you can play weaker trainees in league game and out of position in lower division very easily.

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.

By this brilliant thinking:
a) Italian managers should have the most authority and the most difficult leagues overall
b) All your arguments about large arenas only apply to 5% of American managers
c) Poland and Serbia and Canada winning all those BBB titles while the mighty US and Italy have zero sure is some kind of miracle
d) last time I argued about the length it takes to build the arena, I had to agree with hrudey that the majority of NBBA teams didn't have, in fact, 20k arenas
e) in fact NBBA is so tough and impossible to win with such a big competitive disadvantage that just last season it was won by Golden Horde who had slightly less than 18k seats if I remember correctly. That hasn't happened in England since I started playing this game.

you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage that most team won't survive.

And some other teams won't bat an eyelid. True it looks like "only" twice every 6 seasons you have teams with small-ish arenas (certainly lower or much lower than 20k) winning the top league in that great 1400 team country of yours...I'm sorry, I will have to believe you now.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 9/12/2015 3:44:10 PM