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We have a discussion about this in ACBB forum (124836.28) (in spanish, sorry). Here my opinion: (124836.68). I will try to resume it in my poor english:

The Economy

As you said, 1st division is 1st division. But I'm not agree. Here in Spain, If you want to say in the 1st division you must be better than 6000 teams. In other countries, you only must be better than 50 or less. So, I can not understand how the TV/merchandising/arena incomes are the same in Spain and in a country with only 23 teams. This is the least realistic part of this wonderful game.

This is why a new team, with no too mutch experience, has enough money for buying players that an old team from Spain, Italy or USA can not buy. Maybe the team from big country has been playing for 5 seasons with two promotions, but it is still at IV division and there the incomes are ridiculous comparing with 1st division.

The small countries are little economical paradises in this game.

RANKING

Now I am the 285th in the world. Past season I lost the semifinals of Spanish 1st division and I started in V division some seasons ago. A team from a small country can be the 50th of the world because has won the league in the 1st division of a contry with only 25 teams. I have proved that I'm better than 6000 people. The winner of this country only has proved that he's better than 25 people. I think that the raking is not very realistic as well.

B3

The 12% of the teams from Cymru play the B3. The 0,0003% of the teams from Spain do it. I think that this is not fair and this is not good for the B3.

Now the B3 is full of teams without experience in the game. They have a lot of money because they play in the 1st division of their countries. Sometimes they haven't a lot of hard rivals, so they can think only in the B3, playing relax they competition and going hard in the B3. At the same time a team from a big country can not play at his best because his competition is harder than B3. And this is why the B3 has no interest for the comunity.

Last season, the winner of the B3 was a team from a country with less than 50 users. He is a great manager without any doubt, but he has an advantage: he comes from a small country.

¿Solutions? It's hard. But I think that an economical regularization could be the first step. And to have more teams playing the B3 from big countries and less from the small countries. For example, 8 teams from bigest countries can play the B3 while the teams from smallest contries must play a previous match between them for beeing in the B3.

Sorry about my english. :P

So, I can not understand how the TV/merchandising/arena incomes are the same in Spain and in a country with only 23 teams.

It's not, TV contracts are way lower. Merchandise income is lower as well.

You are playing with maxed out prices in a sold out 11k arena in Spain, I guess that's where you lack of income comes from. You might start to expand your arena.

I also do not know why there are no teams from Spain in the top 10 of the world. Sure, competition is tougher, but the USA got 2 teams, also being one of the best and largest countries. Germany got one, Hellas got one. Portugal got one. Those are all big countries. Maybe it's not the system, maybe it's the manager's culture. We saw Italian teams being dominant a few seasons ago, but then their competition got tougher. This lead to managers strengthen their line-ups, instead of expanding arenas. Germany was doing the opposite, and increased their revenue by a lot, they caught up with Italy in no time.

If small countries really were that easy, I'd expect to see many new teams from small countries dominating the scene. Sharman is here from season 3, Toroo from season 1. Where are the teams from the other small countries? I don't see them.

Last edited by BB-Patrick at 1/27/2010 10:16:54 AM

As you said, 1st division is 1st division. But I'm not agree. Here in Spain, If you want to say in the 1st division you must be better than 6000 teams. In other countries, you only must be better than 50 or less. So, I can not understand how the TV/merchandising/arena incomes are the same in Spain and in a country with only 23 teams. This is the least realistic part of this wonderful game.

but you don't have to play those Teams, so the higher income didn't really affect you.

RANKING

Now I am the 285th in the world. Past season I lost the semifinals of Spanish 1st division and I started in V division some seasons ago. A team from a small country can be the 50th of the world because has won the league in the 1st division of a contry with only 25 teams. I have proved that I'm better than 6000 people. The winner of this country only has proved that he's better than 25 people. I think that the raking is not very realistic as well.

i think you could get lot more "points" for cup runs, so that teams in big countrys normally get more Points for achieving the same succes then in smaller countrys if the system is in somekind similiar to the NT ranking. But yes it is easier to promote there to good rankings then in a big country through the div 1 games. But how you want to decide such things, because it is hard to compare it in formulas - if you make it depending on the size of the country purely a great manager in a small country can not achieve something.

The 12% of the teams from Cymru play the B3. The 0,0003% of the teams from Spain do it. I think that this is not fair and this is not good for the B3.

Now the B3 is full of teams without experience in the game. They have a lot of money because they play in the 1st division of their countries. Sometimes they haven't a lot of hard rivals, so they can think only in the B3, playing relax they competition and going hard in the B3. At the same time a team from a big country can not play at his best because his competition is harder than B3. And this is why the B3 has no interest for the comunity.

It is a cup of champions, and the champs are playing there ;) And maybe the only good competition you could get in small countrys, but you mentioned it with the focus on this tournament. So without it, maybe those teams haven't a reason to play BBB anymore because most games are boring which won't help BB to grow in this countrys.

But here is maybe the only competition betwenn small and big countrys, where the econic sitution is an advantage for the small ones, but to make them uncompetive and aren't giving him the possibilities to earn the same like his opponent won't be a solution either.

Finally we agree in something :)

Now merchandise: I have 2 players that are playing in my NT (1 starter for U21, the other for the NT, who is playing always). My half players are Cypriots, 1 of them is with my team since i started, 3 came from the draft, 1 from the market. All those are getting playing time with my team (plus 1 player for the friendlies). With all that my merchandise profit varies from 97-117k max.

Mode-MOS is playing since season 3. I am playing from the half of the season 6. My arena is 18500 sits. Every season i am investing more than 800k on my arena. Yes my profit is very good compared to other him but i am sure that except from my arena (your choice to expand it) my income is much lower than larger countries 1st div.

They are lots of things that i dont like on the game and i would like to change, but not this one. I think that is pretty fair.

Okay, I didn’t want to write anything on this, since it’s always bothered me but I’ve gone with the “that’s the way it is so just deal with it” attitude. So…

So to begin, let’s just look at the real world a little bit. If there is a professional sports league, the league (i.e. the teams in the league) needs to support itself by selling tickets to matches, selling merchandise, etc., if player salaries are to be paid. A team cannot exist where there is not a sufficient fan base (WiKi Montreal Expos if you must). The more interest there is in a team, the more money it can make (and the more it can pay for salaries) since there are more fans spending money on the team. In a place where interest in the sport/teams is very high, there will be a demand for more teams, and fans will even go to games at lower levels of competition, such as with Minor League baseball teams in the U.S. And since there is more money and a greater number of fans (mind you, I don’t necessarily say “better” or “smarter” fans, just more of them in total), all that money that is generated attracts the best players, even from around the world. Other countries may also have leagues, but without a whole lot of money they will not be as competitive as the wealthiest leagues in the world. But never lose sight of the fact that money is generated from (to put it VERY simply) two main sources: Local economic potential, and fan interest generating sales. If Dubai would have decided to create competition to the NBA and league minimum salaries would have been $50 million per season, and LeBron James would have been offered $500 million for a season, I think Dubai would have had one very successful league! But realistically, very high fan interest coupled with the fact that the U.S. has the third largest population in the world (and this is without even getting into the spending potential of U.S. residents) means that a U.S. league will have the advantage of tapping into a large fan base that ensures the world’s premiere league with the most cash for as far as anyone can see. The only reason why soccer (non-American football!) teams in the U.S. can do anything to attract players is because of the relatively high spending potential of U.S. residents, but without fan interest coming close to equaling interest in the rest of the world, there will never be a top-notch soccer league in the U.S.

Now, to start translating this in BB terms, I think we find that the basic economic model is rather inside-out. How can BB get a grasp of fan interest in a country? Well, the closest thing we probably have is from looking at the total number of teams registered in each country. Baseball fans in Japan are very dedicated to the game, perhaps more “interest per capita” than in the U.S., yet the U.S. baseball league is larger and generates much more revenue. (I’m not going to start a debate on where the best baseball players are playing these days as it related to Japan.) So it should make sense that countries with more teams should generate more revenue in total, especially in the top leagues in those countries. However, in BB we find that a team in a country with only a few teams can make as much money as a team in country with thousand of teams. Where is the logic in that? Now I understand that to make countries with fewer registered teams “poor leagues” may discourage participation from those countries, particularly with regard to international tournaments and private leagues. But what negative side effects could this create? Well, for one, it means that teams in large countries that need to kick and claw their way into the top leagues (it really ain’t easy!) just to make those big top division gate receipts that come so easily in countries with few teams in them, have a really difficult time participating in the Transfer List auctions. Every time a D.II team from the U.S. or Spain or another country with many many teams loses a bid to a team from, say, Panama (no offense to Panama, where there are 40 teams, and more than player one with a $140k salary!), like has happened to my team many times, I wonder how hard that other team worked to stockpile the cash to outbid my team with only my D.II income. And if the worst that could happen to some teams in these countries with fewer teams is to relegate as far down as a D.II (while in the U.S. a team could sink as low as D.V), it’s a fairly quick recovery for these teams back to elite status and being able to bite back in to the TL again.

So maybe this whole post gets morphed into the Suggestions area if we come up with something. I would suggest there should be a country modifier to every league’s attendance, merchandise, and TV revenue, one that should reflect the overall interest in the BB leagues in the country, as measured by the total number of teams. (It should be an exponential formula to temper the modifier so that the larger countries are too extreme in augmentation of revenue.) The goal isn’t to bankrupt the smaller countries, but rather to make sure that a team in the 10th percentile in one country is at the very least on par in terms of revenue with another team in the 10th percentile of any other country, and for revenues to be a little closer to reality while blunting the negative affects the current system has on the Transfer List.

Okay, folks, let’s find ways of constructively agreeing or disagreeing with my thoughts on this matter. I’ve been thinking on this stuff for a while, and I don’t think my thoughts are fully cooked, but I wanted to get them out there while the subject is heating up here in the Forum.

They must keep some balanced. Already the bigger countries have more income. But if that deference be larger then the small countries we are in a big trouble. The prices of good players will go even higher, and the small countries will end up with worse players in general. So rich getting reacher. You know in NBA how the draft works. They are giving the chance to weaker teams to get the best player and be some kind of balance.

An other benefit that large countries have is the draft. As Cyprus we have 16 players 18 y/o in our database, and 3 of them with save them from the bot teams inviting them to our NT. So for us is harder to find local good players,(less merchandise income) and our NT is much weaker than the bigger in general.

I dont think that you want the game to be a game for USA/Germany/Greece/Italy and 3-4 more countries with strong base.

You have to think of the model in a different way. Think about it more like: the level of fan interest is about the same in every country. There is only enough interest in every country to support 16 division I teams, 64 division II teams, etc. The only difference is that more people want to own teams in Italy and the USA, for example. Maybe that's because they get tax breaks for owning teams or something. Lucky bums. ;-)

merchandise, and TV revenue,

There is already something like this in place for merchandise and TV revenue to some degree. Perhaps you would like to see it pushed further, but that's another story. There is also an advantage for bigger countries as they have a bigger pool of home grown talent to pick from, which gives another bonus to merchandise.

However, it should not really be a big issue for you. Unless you play in the B3, you are only playing against teams from your own country and only have to compete with them to get to the top.

To be honest, I’m not so sure that wouldn’t be so bad, to have the countries with the largest number of teams also be the source of most of the wealth. It certainly would add a bit of reality to the situation, no? I think that if players were less likely to play abroad (i.e. the salary difference for a player playing in his home country vs. playing abroad should be much bigger than it is since I think the average player should want to either play where there is potential to make a whole lot more money or to stay home), then player development in countries with fewer teams would also be more in line with reality.

Another way to look at it in terms of reality is that a country where there is fan interest in a particular sport would develop more players for that sport. The U.S. can develop many basketball players since many people in the U.S. follow the sport and so they like to play the sport, too. But there aren’t so many soccer fans, so good athletes in the U.S. do not become soccer players, hence the U.S. does not produce so many great soccer players. However, there are enough U.S. soccer players to get a decent league going (MLS), and even some players from outside of the U.S. who maybe can’t get a job that pays better or has better prospects in a better league will play in the U.S. league, too.

If a country has just a few teams, but they are all on par with each other in terms of income, then that would create a competitive league, which should be plenty interesting. If income is reduced, so what if the teams there can’t attract the world’s most expensive players, the league will be just as competitive. In fact, they’d be more competitive since the older teams won’t be able to stockpiles hoards of cash and pricey players ready to stomp newer teams. The only negative is that teams will be disadvantaged in the international tournaments. But these teams then are more likely to develop local players and this actually could help the national teams.

Think about it more like: the level of fan interest is about the same in every country. There is only enough interest in every country to support 16 division I teams, 64 division II teams, etc.

I disagree with this. I think the number of teams that are registered does reflect an abstract metric of fan interest relative to BB.



Last edited by JohnnyB at 1/27/2010 2:02:58 PM

Yes but again the champion/tournament winner playing on BBB too. Why not have the chance to be competitive?

About the reality. Hellas is relative small country (around 10-11M) but Greek NT's (youngsters too) are very successful internationally. (Last summer where 2nd on U18 world, 1st in Europe U19). Dont forget that Greek NT has won USA in Japan without having a single NBA player on the squat.

Actually the best team in Europe last 15-20 years (Euroleague winers, Final 4 etc) its a Greek team (Panathinaikos).

So the reality its not what you are saying.