BuzzerBeater Forums

PR-managers have no effect on merchandise revenue.

That statement both confuses and interests me. To start with, this contradicts your previous posts in the QA thread:

Notes: as stated, PR-Managers are in charge of getting people to show up, buy tickets, and buy merchandise

-GM-RiP(144856.18)

PR manager’s levels are also taken in to account at the time of the financial update for merchandising income.

-GM-RiP(144856.20)

This also seems to conflict with others observations. Here are a couple of recent posts from folks who indicate that PR manager levels impact merchandising revenues:

I notice a small drop in merchandising when I lowered PR managers, however attendance didn't change at all because I was selling out already. And the difference in salary between level 2 PR and level 4 PR was bigger than the drop in merchandising, so I was making more money with a lower PR manager.

-Naker Virus(155187.31)

A PR Manager is involved 3 times a week. He is involved in your fan survey, which affects attendance, as well as merchandising.

-BB-Jason(151690.17)

I understand the benefit may be outweighed by the salary, which is a topic I have previously discussed. I'm not talking about the amount of impact, but rather your statement that there is none. Even if the PR did not have a direct effect to fan surveys or merchandising revenues, it was my understanding that a PR manager specialty can help gain advantages that can win games. Winning games has an effect on your fan surveys and should therefore impact merchandising revenues, right? I'm curious as to whether or not you have developed a conflicting opinion on the subject, or if there some facts that led you to this conclusion? This is a topic that interests me, and I would appreciate any insight. Thanks.

Edit: Looks like Naker beat me to the punch, before I could quote him

Last edited by bonespawn at 10/18/2010 8:32:38 PM

I only recently discovered that PR-managers do not have an impact on merch. For the majority of last season I averaged a merchandise revenue of around 90K with a level 5 (superior) PR manager. Right after my last playoff game ended I decided to fire him in an effort to save money meaning a level 2 (minimal) PR manager replaced him. Then came the economy update on Monday and much to my surprise, I put up a 105K merchandise revenue. The highest I had all season.

That's not really a proof to anything. At least not for "PR-managers do not have an impact on merch" as that would indicate that lowering your PR-manager would raise your merch, hence affecting it... ;)

Between your last PO game and the following economy update you have apparently bought a NT player which makes most of the difference (4141165).

Between your last PO game and the following economy update you have apparently bought a NT player which makes most of the difference (4141165).

Nope, he was bought after.

Am I missing something?

9/29 Your last PO game
10/1 You bought the player
10/4 First Monday after the game (Economy update)

GM-RiP, Thanks. I agree more info is needed on the subject, and this subject peaks my interest too much to pass up the excuse to discuss it! I believe there is limited yet compelling evidence supporting some kind of a connection between PR managers and merchandising, and your observations further support that. You seem to be trying to support a different idea that rewards do not always scale with the purchase of a higher level PR manager. I'm trying to keep an open mind about how PR managers work, but I think what has already been observed is important.

As I recently discussed (155171.3), I had increases to my merchandising week after week. Then on one week, I decided to make no other changes but to downgrade my PR manager. Immediately after the next financial update, I began to experience drops in merchandising that continued even though I maxed out my fan surveys and had a very good league and cup performance. Others have reported merchandising adjustments when changing PR manager levels, which gives me a greater confidence that there is likely to be an impact tied to this change. Although observations regarding the changes seem to vary, one thing that I have seen consistent in discussion is that people observe some kind of change to merchandising when changing PR managers. You just said you observed an increase to merchandising after downgrading the PR manager. Would you not agree that either a negative change or positive change is still a change?

Edit: Sorry, my post was long so I missed the follow up about the NT player which could reasonably have an impact. I can state however, that in my example no other changes were made, including purchase of players or anything before I observed my merchandise to drop.

Again, if we go by the game manual, the specialty of a PR manager can influence whether or not a game is won or lost. The manual also states that fan surveys affect both attendance and merchandising. It is therefore logical to conclude based on this additional evidence that there is at the very least, an indirect impact to merchandising by PR's with specialty. I can think of sensible reasons why we may be observing effects, but I won't speculate. Just because something isn't written in the manual or seem to be sensible though, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" - Carl Sagan

I think we would agree that there is a risk to investing in more expensive PR managers when so little is known on the topic. I don't mean to confuse the discussion here. I am just genuinely interested in anything more that might be discovered about PR managers. Thanks for your comments.

Last edited by bonespawn at 10/19/2010 12:49:39 AM