Back from moving house and fixing my connection, time to take a short time out to think up the objectives for this season.
Rich, that would be disputable. Take a look at the Team Transfers and compare the results, I think the Stuporsonics are pretty high up there in terms of total net transfers.
I think I can safely say the top teams are NOT earning 300k in merchandising, not even close. They are running on a negative budget, covered only by their training programs. It's okay to leak a couple hundred thousand if you make up for it with a 3-4 million transfer at the end of the season.
The proposed strategy of having negative income every week and funding it through transfers every season is a possible strategy but will only be possible for non-top teams. Because they cannot afford to be fielding backups as starters in their league games. So at most they can train 1 player (During scrimmage), which at best will usually gain about $2M per player per season training.
Another way to check is as per your proposal to check team transfers. If they were sustaining their teams with the profits they make from the market, their nett transfers should be positive. So I went again to check the same 4 teams on nett transfers since 1 season ago (1st Feb 2010) and even 2 seasons ago (1st Nov2009)
Team Name.............1 Season (# of transfers)..........2 Seasons (# of transfers)ESV Laim...................-$5,288,400 (4 transfers)........-$15,786,500 (13 transfers)
Sharman Globetrotters..-$2,614,729 (23 transfers).......-$1,101,758 (43 transfers)
BC Törööö.................-$3,852,400 (8 transfers)........-$8,395,100 (15 transfers)
Ampang Stuporsonics....-$4,161,600 (1 transfer).........-$4,150,600 (4 transfers)
Based on the information above, it is obvious that:
1. None of the teams are making any profit from their training programs
2. Sharman Globetrotters makes a lot of transfers (about 20/season) but the negative nett transfers will mean that he uses the money to buy better players and not to fund his negative balance sheet
It is also interesting to note that all 4 teams need to be having positive income in order to be able to buy these players.
On average all 4 teams need to make $4M/season in order to be able to fund for these players.
Since 1 season has 14 weeks, this will mean they will have a nett income of min $285K per week.
From the previous table I posted the losses from arena vs player salary was about -$300K.
So, in order to have a nett income of $285K/week, the merchandise will most likely be $585K/week.
This or their TV contract is a lot higher than our $146K.
Either way, total income from TV Contract and Merchandise need to be more than $725K for them to be able to bid $4M on players every season with their current player salary and arena income.