BuzzerBeater Forums

The first team to win Utopia didn't have that much arena seats. He was basically investing money into veterans, won games, hence filled small(ish) arena with big prices.

Of course, he knew what he was doing. A not so skilled manager would not profit from such a tactic, and should build arena instead.

What I'm saying, let's say you have a hypothetical league. If 8 teams go arena, 8 teams go full force, 1 team will win a promotion, but other 7 teams will be in a weaker position than those 8 who prepared for the future.

Basically, if you want to be a tough guy, you better be the toughest guy, or you're screwed :)

Once you pay for the seats they're a valuable commodity that will (within reason) always generate profit.

Unless they're empty, of course, in which case they return nothing.

I honestly didn't expect opportunity cost to be such a difficult concept for everyone to understand, but I guess it is.

I didn't think you would suddenly get it, but that's okay. carry on.

Mike your big assumption is that building a large arena in say DIV with empty seats is like burning money which is just not true. The managers that truly understand how the BB economy works, knows that you need to do two things before you promote to the next division: 1) Have your arena up to standards the higher division and 2) create a core of players needed to not only promote but be able to keep you from relegating.

While it may seem counter-intuitive to build an arena in DIV that may not sell seats but it is an economically sound decision. If you promote to DIII with a small arena, your opportunity cost is giving up all of the money that you could have been making once you promoted to DIII with the bigger arena. Basically, you do not maximize the promotion attendance bonus if you don't have a big arena when you promote. You will never be able to recoup the lost money, you could have been earning. In DIII, you can sellout a 20k arena so it makes sense to build a 20k arena in DIV.

As wolph stated above, this game does not reward you for almost winning. Building an arena makes a lot of sense before buying the players you need to promote. The opportunity cost of buying a player on the TL, is that you lose the cash you could have been making every week on their salary.

The only exception I would have would be to spend money on a trainees before building the arena. Arena building time is a terrific opportunity to train while you are not really focused on promoting. But unless you are spending money on top tier trainees, you aren't really going to spend more than a couple 100k on trainees. With proper planning, you finish arena building, get your trainees to the point that they can compete in the higher division, and have the cash to buy the players you need on the TL all around the same time.

Phyr, thanks for your message. I agree with most of it.

However, "your big assumption is that building a large arena in say DIV with empty seats is like burning money " completely misstates what I am saying. Wolph insists that building as big and as fast as possible is the way to go. He insists there is no cost for that. Those are opinions I have questioned, as they clearly do not take into account the opportunity cost of building empty seats.

Your example of an opportunity cost related to promoting with too small an arena is reasonable, but it is not the only opportunity cost in play.

Thank you.

Bulls eye :)

One think im lacking is an arena where we see someone that has built and are sitting on a lot of empty seats. And for it to be a really good example it would also need to be at minimum prices.

I'm currently experiencing that with my lower tier, but after an 0-22 season and demotion that's not entirely unexpected. Even then, you can see the last few games of last season I was still selling every one of those seats. Courtside and luxury boxes are still doing pretty well, too - I actually undershot my pricing on courtside quite a bit, and I'm a little surprised I don't sell even fewer luxury boxes.

I of course also underestimated how much easier it is to be competitive in III now than it was when I was coming up. I still haven't gotten up to the salary floor yet and still managed to win one game and other than my first game, I've been within 6 points in the final minute every other game. I know I'm not getting everyone's best effort either, but I was expecting another 0-22 season and now I think I might have an outside chance of avoiding demotion to IV.

On the general issues being discussed, today's money matters, tomorrow's money matters, and you've got to know what you're going to do. While I'm fond of investing in the arena, I think the real key advice I'd give to anyone listening is that the best thing you can do is try to learn how to compete with lower salaries than your opponents. If you can do that, when you can get your arena built up you'll be able to be even more successful when you can afford the same or greater salaries. Alternately, you need a plan to be able to afford to outspend your opponents all the time, which gets harder the higher you go.