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Maybe there should be a mechanism that prevents low league teams from buying ($200K salary) players. Maybe linked to the salary floor of a league or whatever...

Here's my idea for this mechanism: set a maximum salary a team can bid for, based on their current profitability and cash reserves. A team may not bid on a player whose added salary would bankrupt them in 5 weeks. Here's the formula:

HighestSalaryPurchasable = TypicalWeeklyNetIncome + (CashOnHand/5)

The above formula lets you devote a maximum of your current profitabilty, plus one fifth of your cash reserves, to your new level of weekly expenses. All other things being equal, this level of unprofitability would exhaust your cash in 5 weeks. Any player who would consume all of a team's cash faster than that is a player that team can't afford. (NOTE: CashOnHand reflects your current bid for the player. If you have $300K and you bid $120K on the player, your CashOnHand would be $180K in the above formula.)

For example, here's what my team's limit would be:

HighestSalaryPurchasable = TypicalWeeklyNetIncome + (CashOnHand/5)
HighestSalaryPurchasable = 32366 + (287549/5)
HighestSalaryPurchasable = 32366 + 57510
HighestSalaryPurchasable = 89876

Which feels like a correct ceiling for my team.

And that's assuming I could get the player for free. Again, the money you have bid for the player is deducted from yur CashOnHand. So, in practice, my HighestSalaryPurchasable would be lower. Which creates an interesting side effect: the more you bid for a player, the lower your CashOnHand is, which lowers the maximum salary you are allowed to take on. This would filter high-salary players towards higher-level teams, or at least better-managed ones.

What I like about this system is that it drives the right behavior, and never punishes it. If a team can't quite afford a player it really wants to buy, what will it do? Cut expenses to drive up their TypicalWeeklyNetIncome: transfer list unused players, cut scouting costs, get cheaper staff. On the flip side of the same coin, lower-level teams will not be prevented from buying players they can afford, as they would in a system tied to the level of play or salary floor. Furthermore, it makes no distinction between less wealthy but profitable teams, and teams who run at a loss but have built cash reserves. Those both reflect good management, and we don't want to reward one type of good management at the expense of another.

There need to be some caveats, of course. And you can argue whether the threshhold should be 5 weeks, or 4, or 10. But I think this is a reasonable fast-and-dirty formula for determining if a team is buying a player they can't afford to keep.

This doesn't take into consideration the owner's motivation. Perhaps he views the player's transfer list as significantly under priced and will sell him in a week or two. Or more likely, that the player he is bidding for will replace a current starter which will allow the owner to list the replaced player to both reduce his weekly salary and produce income from the sale.

Everyone is free to go bankrupt if they want. It will teach them a lesson, plus bankruptcy forces the sale of all of their players which will generate income and give them a fresh start in buying new players more appropriately.

Maybe, but aren't they in that situation bc they bought high salary players? Those should generate a little bit of money. Anyway, even at a deficit, with no players they'll be running a weekly profit and will be on their way to being out of the red - at worst a few weeks with no money to buy new players.

Everyone is free to go bankrupt if they want. It will teach them a lesson, plus bankruptcy forces the sale of all of their players which will generate income and give them a fresh start in buying new players more appropriately.

Even the owners/commissioners professional sports leagues put in rules to save the owners from themselves.

The problem with new owners going bankrupt is I'm guessing that a huge majority of them never return to the game. And that doesn't help it grow.

True. But a lot of owners leave when they can't win games. Even in DIII we've had 1 team go BOT and another tell us that he's leaving because he hates to lose and can't figure out the economy - though we did convince him he should stay and rebuild again when he relegates to DIV.

I see a lot of owners leaving because they consistently lose games, have less and less fans show up to their home games, and then earn less and less money. This seems hopelessly demoralizing. I would think that not having such a penalty for fickle fans when you lose would be helpful also in keeping owners around.

You hit the nail on the head.
That's the reason why we lose the managers,when you start your team with a bunch of losers you have on your roster.
You even lose games against bot teams,and if you also have to play against "real teams" you wil will lose the game with 50 points difference,and if you have lot games ending up losing big time ,then people lose their patience,and wil leave the game.And thats the reasons that managers are buying players which they cant afford,because they want to win a game,and end up with no money on the bank.I play almost for 3 seasons now,and I know that all managersgame takes a lot time building up your team and expanding your arena and all that kind of stuff.Iam doing OK now ,still in a low division,little unlucky that I started in a division which has some great teams,so I must be happy to reach 4th place and reach the play-offs.I have that patience ,and I love buiding on my team and get better very slowly without buying players which I cant afford.But most new managers they want to do this in fast way ,and thats never a good thing..

Last edited by primoss at 4/19/2012 12:48:24 PM

What's the point in winning more games if your $200,000 player bankrupts you in the process?

We're not talking about keeping low level managers from buying good players, we're talking about keeping them from buying players with weekly salaries they obviously can't afford.

If buying am overpriced player is going to financially cripple a team, any positive that you can derive from that purchase will be wiped out rather quickly.

Last edited by Beener not Beanerz at 4/19/2012 3:51:29 PM

Arbitrage is a viable strategy in this game. And, perhaps, the fastest way to progress.

While I agree with you on that, I don't see what that has to do with this discussion? Low income teams can't play the arbitrage game with these expensive players anyways. This went out the window when the rule that you have to pay a new tranfers salary for at least 1 week came into play a couple of seasons back. This rule means that high salaried players now eat into their own transfer profits. The higher the salary, the worse it gets.

Last edited by Beener not Beanerz at 4/19/2012 5:30:35 PM

This doesn't take into consideration the owner's motivation. Perhaps he views the player's transfer list as significantly under priced and will sell him in a week or two

Everyone is free to go bankrupt if they want. It will teach them a lesson

Okay, but I thought this discussion was about new players getting frustrated and losing interest in BB. New players wouldn't be able to an identify an underpriced transfer (not correctly, anyway). We don't want to teach newcomers harsh lessons, we want to give guidance. Taking on too much salary is a common rookie mistake. This would help prevent it, which makes the game better for everyone.

Or more likely, that the player he is bidding for will replace a current starter which will allow the owner to list the replaced player to both reduce his weekly salary and produce income from the sale.

That would be one of the caveats I mentioned but didn't elaborate on. To expand the formula:

HighestSalaryPurchasable = TypicalWeeklyNetIncome + (CashOnHand/5)+ AverageSalaryOf5HighestPaidPlayers + SalariesOfOutgoingTransfers

AverageSalaryOf5HighestPaidPlayers is a way to account for the new player replacing one of your current players. It adds to your salary ceiling by a reasonable estimation of a current starter's salary. In other words, if I can afford a $80K player, and my typical starter makes $20K, the formula will let me buy a $100K player: the $80K I can afford, plus the $20K I'm assumed to be shedding. This should be plenty of headroom to allow for talent upgrades without having to sell the replaced player first.

Also, salaries of any outgoing transfers would be added to TypicalWeeklyNetIncome. Those are expenses the team will soon not have to pay, thus raising net income. (We might need a rule that they must have a bid placed, or be priced within transfer price guidelines, to prevent abuse of the system.)