Asunto: Is it time to pack it in?

Starting to struggle with reasons to stay. Played a league home game with another rubbish gate of 177k...similar league home gate 2 weeks ago. Played 11, won 11...not much more I can do there.

This week's finances read.....loss: -30 830 AU$....with some luck may break even or make slight profit with a midweek gate.

Last week saw a loss of 200k without any home games. Salaries aren't any more than previous years in div1/2 (400k for players & staff).

Leaking money when you're winning every Sunday hardly puts you in a situation where you can harbour ambitions to go higher. Not surprised it's difficult to keep managers in the game.

It's a difficult situation not helped by a number of experienced teams calling it quits and new teams promoting too quickly as a result of the lack of decent competition. You've probably got 10x the fans of anyone in your league and so your expectations are always you must crush this opposition by more than humanly possible to raise your fan mood.

Sponsorship stems off fan base and so if your opponents have no fans, then you get no sponsorship.

Your team is in a position where given our 2nd tier teams having packed it in so to speak it leaves a huge hole that you now need to be in the A League to reap any sort of reward.

Yes, & this is where the SK engine is severely flawed. Sponsorship should not hinge on opposition climate...not to the over inflated point SK seems to calcualte this.

Nor should match day attendance for home games be so weighted to the opponent fans' mood etc. It's as if SK is saying 50% of attendance is reliant on away supporter mood/base...certainly not the realistic 10% or so in which it should base such calculations.

Currently I need to cut my outgoings by about 120k/week. The only way I can do this is to sell 4 of my best players....& this is to break even....whilst then risking not topping my league.....& there is no way any of the other teams in my league have the capacity to promote (if they did, they'd get slaughtered every week).

It's fine for the likes of Poland, Czech R et al, as their leagues are competitive down to div 4/5 at least....still amazes me how some of the teams there can afford the players they have when you see the mini arenas they have. However, for countries like Aus...unless you're in the AL, almost impossible to improve as we don't keep the managers....& it's little wonder why.

Whilst I doubt I'll leave totally....I'm seriously considering winding down & just training for the U21 setup.
(editado)

I'm with you, I've been through this fight before but unfortunately I get the impression greg really doesn't care about the smaller countries and they are just there for show. As a result I'm not too surprised our userbase is almost entirely dead either, we have so many disadvantages but because we don't have 20000 users we're not really even looked at. It's a shame because the game has some really good grounds for being exceptional but it falls over when issues are always turned away.

At this stage your best bet is to try and get to the A League and then hold your position down there, which should be achievable these days.

yep, need to find new (decent) tactic(s), but that's the issue at the mo'....finding the time.

I was making money in II.
I took a drastic step which doesn't help the NT.

If you want cash you can make cash... just saying...

It sounds to me like your losses are ok! Mine this week with no ticket income:
profit/loss: -365 077 AU$

I was losing bucket loads of money in II. You have to suck up the losses to give yourself the best possible chance on getting to A-League. I think there is lots of chances in the next few seasons of coming up to A-League and staying. There are a few managers up here losing interest and there isn't any competition in your league at all, so there are benefits in terms of training flexibility and the age of players you field (young) and still win.

I hated playing in II though. 1 important game at the beginning and end of the season and then 12 weeks of wasted time. I play another soccer game which has 3 league games a week. Faster season would go a long way to making the low activity leagues bearable. Even playing in A-League is tediously long with a 4 month season.

Apparently I'm making better than a quarter of a million a fortnight.

Can't say the fan base has been too happy with recent results though...

Div II used to be interesting. Now it's boring, has been for a while.
Come back to the A-League. If you can't do it with the current squad, do some planning for the next 3 seasons to grow some new talent. That's always fun.

There are quite a few things which keep me interested in the game, despite not playing with tactics any more (I would if I had time). Training youths, having a crack at the Cup, planning to win the A-League and seeing success in the NT & U21 NT.

If you want a greater challenge, have a crack at an NT job. My stint managing the U21 NT was some of the most fun I've had in Sokker.

Don't really have time for new tactics (apart from the odd, rushed, new one), so managing an NT team is out for me. Although my U21's are the only thing keeping me interested - aside from constant injuries there.

I too made profit in div II....until this season. Something has changed...don't know what though. Fan mood has been at same level pretty much all season (satisfied)...but sponsor level keeps dropping every week...now under 300k.

However the real killer is home gates....atrocious to say the least.

However the real killer is home gates....atrocious to say the least.

Would be interesting to know your distribution of home attendances by section of the stadium (assuming you've kept the ticket price much the same) as it could well be that since you've got benches at such a high price, people who would have come and upgraded now stay away strictly because of the high bench price (even though logically your seat prices are cheap). Even when I was in div II with new teams I was still having more fans show up then what you've been having recently.

Failing that, have a look at it yourself and consider actually doing the opposite. Dropping bench prices to being cheap and bumping up your seats under cover to around the $22-23 mark and seats to around $18-20 and see if by having cheaper benches more people come and upgrade to seats despite the cost.


(editado)

My understanding is that most fans want worst seats i.e benches, if there is no room left they may go to the more expensive seats, but if the "cheap" seats are too expensive they just go home. I think your pricing has sent all your fans away.

good spot cometer

Benches are filled before anything else....at ridiculously high prices. Plenty of home games where I've filled all benches & nowhere near filling seated sections where seat prices are less than 40% of benches. Current prices are pretty much what I've had for a season & a half....the odd up & down on seats to see if any chance but it hasn't mattered squat.

I delberatley left benches in when the devs changed the attendance formalae as it was suggested by many experienced managers you were better with a stadium that had a spread of seats/benches etc.

I get the feeling I could make seating prices $1 & it still wouldn't matter.

Uber
Not sure how my prices could sent fans away if seating is so cheap...if this is the case, it's totally illogical & a massive flaw in the game.

(editado)

Try reducing it and see how you go.

I beleive they don't look at the seat and bench prices and decide. They want a bench and its too expensive so they go home. If you reduce the price and they get totally full, they want a bench, they are sold out so they look at seats then.

Obviously it's a flaw, greg hasn't gotten around to fixing it yet but it's not really illogical from a coding perspective (definitely from a realistic approach it is)

Basically ignoring prices, the old code would have had more preferring terraces/benches etc and then willing to upgrade but that was compensated by the price.

Now I'd imagine the initial code is still embedded but they've extended it by including ticket price as a way for variability.

Therefore the carry on effect is that benches still drives more people and if benches price is too high you lose people willing to upgrade to seats (perhaps, I've always just used seats and seats under cover).

It would appear therefore that people still don't look at whats cheaper, they are still programmed to believe benches are cheaper and then the actual price you set just weeds out those who wish to come, the higher the price the fewer come (less people need to upgrade, so net effect you sell your benches out but get no-one in seats). The lower price, the benches still sell out gifting you smaller income from benches but more decide to upgrade.

At least that's my guess at what could be happening.

Edit:
Solutions:

(a) drop your bench prices and raise your seats and see that effect.
(b) build an all seater stadium forcing people to come to seats rather than benches.
(c) promote to the A League
(editado)

Previous attendances show filling benched sections (2000 & 2000) at $35-40...yet seats remain unfilled at less than half those prices. Therefore, when no benches are available they aren't looking at cheaper options....they simply don't bother.

I'll tweak prices so see what happens, but I'm expecting it will be the same as when I had benches at cheaper prices than seats...benches fill/seats far too empty. The reason I upped the bench prices so much is I noticed some other managers who had areas of benches in their stadium filling at massive prices (compared to seats), even when seats where filling as well.

Another option, I guess, is to make the benched sections a greater capacity.