For the love of glob raise your ticket prices!

[Ted]

This is a very useful page from stats+

Sort by ticket price. Then look at the bottom five teams. Yikes! Okay, so here's why these teams haven't won. You can't compete like this. You just can't. It doesn't matter how much drafted talent you hoard. You are cutting yourself off at the knees if you leave things like this. First priority for every one of these teams this offseason is to RAISE ticket prices. Immediately.

[edit = upon further analysis I'm wrong about the next part. It looks like $15 might scare away too many fans for truly bad teams)
By A LOT. Like to at least 12-13. Personally, I'd go straight to 15. Yeah, you'll take a big Fan interest hit (and maybe a loyalty one too, I don't remember), but you simply HAVE to raise them eventually if you want to compete, and it will ALWAYS piss your fans off. May as well do it now. Your fan interests are all terrible anyway. Just do it once and get it over with. Peel that band aid off. You can recover. Why are your interests so low? Oh right, losing over and over. So lowering prices to temporarily boost interest/attendance when you are bad is NOT a good strategy. It only gives you a temporary respite, then cripples your ability to compete in the future by strangling your income.

Look at it this way, doubling the prices of your tickets would have to cause HALF your fans to not show up for you to lose money doing it. Not that many leave. And even if they do, who cares? You're bad. But now you're bad with a future revenue stream that could actually be competitive if you start building the team and fan interest up. Edmonton can build whatever team it wants. With an 80 mil budget, and even LESS revenue because of $5.50 tickets, it will be dog shit.

[Ted]

Don't believe me? Look at Vancouver. Has ticket prices TWICE AS HIGH as Des Moines with the same fan interest and makes the same amount of money. Less than half the home attendance of Des Moines. If you think that sounds bad, you're wrong. The difference is, when Vancouver starts to win (by which i mean hang round mostly about .500, their fan interest will get up to 70 or so), they will make truckloads of money filling those empty seats. When Des Moines starts to win, their revenue potential will be only marginally higher than it is now. Unless they raise ticket prices incrementally, which of course will sap fan interest over and over, negating some of the benefit of starting to win, which is when you NEED to make money so you can add pieces via free agency and aren't forced to make tough decisions about extensions.

[RonCo]

I advocate moderate incremental changes over several sims that are designed to find the revenue sweet spot for where you are. My goal is always max revenue so that my next year improves budget.

Personally, I consider ticket price changes up and down almost every sim.

[RonCo]

Mine have ranged between 16 and 21 this year.

[agrudez]

I agree with the premise Ted.

That said - a question. Raising ticket prices doesn't cause fan interest or loyalty drops, does it? It certainly causes less people to come to the game, but those actual numbers aren't influenced as far as I know (which, as has been mentioned before, isn't as much as it used to be for the newer versions of OOTP). If that's the case then there is even less reason to not 'rip the bandaid off' and raise prices. Worst case you make the same as you did before (as you mention: 2x ticket prices + 0.5x ticket sales = neutral revenue). Best case is you squeak a little more out since the knee in the curve is really only ever observable by tweaking until you get it (as Ron mentions).

Speaking of Ron's mention, I, too, adjust ticket prices pretty constantly. It always seems like when the team is in a slump there is a temporary dip in attendance and when they are playing well the fans come out more (as you might expect in real life). For example, we were a little sluggish in April and attendance was ~75% capacity. Once we started playing better it went straight to 100% and I raised ticket prices from where they were in April and attendance has still been at 100% even with higher prices.

[RonCo]

Attendance also seems to be dependent on who you play and when you play. Weekend games draw better, for example.

[GoldenOne]

I cant see Stats+ at work but I'm assuming the Goats are one of the teams Ted was ranting about. I am one of those teams that tweaks his ticket prices, almost every sim. I dropped my ticket prices over the winter in the hopes that I could somehow increase season ticket proces. (Didnt work.) I do pay attention to what teams I have on the schedule for each sim, how the Goats have been faring of late, etc. Personally, I think when you FI is in the low 50s to high 40s (where I started the year) I cant imagine that you are going to build a fan base off from crazy ticket prices and a stinky team. Not to mention that other revenue is not necessarily something that can be relied upon and cash/bonus cash isnt necessarily pouring in. Instead, I tweak ticket prices and try to find players that will help the Goats win while also bringing in extra fans and increase FI. If Ted's plan of attack is an absolutely proven strategy (but much like everything else in the game, if it was proven we would all be doing it and we would all win the Landis every year), I'd happily adapt. Or, people could just make it easier for me to trade with them and take their most Nationally Popular players I would be happy to double ticket prices. Until then, I'll keep tweaking, as appropriate, and gathering up wins and increasing my attendance and FI levels.

[Ted]

Well, as always, I'm prone to hyperbole. You can really raise them however you want. Ron, you and Kyle, may be scraping out some extra cash by micromanaging your revenue. But that pales in comparison to what these teams are throwing away. There's literally no reason to have 5.50 prices for tickets. Or really anything under 12 or so. The point is, the prices have to go up sometime. And trying to actually compete with ticket prices lower than half of what the other competitors are running is a really bad idea. You just don't have the financial clout to do it.

I know what you guys are getting at with the micro changes. When I have a 15 game run of .500 ball, my team stops selling out, despite being in first. I could lower the prices a tad to fill a few of those empty seats. But I'd have to then raise them again when I won more and I don't want to pay that kind of attention. If you don't know that you will win more games eventually, and a lot more games, lowering prices to get more fans is a bad idea. Especially if you just keep lowering and lowering just to get fans to show up.

I really don't know what would happen if you went from say 8 dollar to 16 in one sim. It might really tank your attendance. But the effect will only be temporary, as it will gradually move back to what your combo of fan interest, fan loyalty, talent, and win loss record/pattern dictate. If I had prices this low, I'd just bite the bullet and get at least one huge increase over with if my team was losing anyway. Reset the revenue floor so to speak. If that messes up by budget for one year, so be it. I'd have the hard part over with. Going forward, I'd know that I was working with a realistic revenue model as I added players, raised my fan interest and attendance, won more games, and thus made more money.

When I had fan interest in the 30's when I scrapped my team back in 2020 or '21, (also had poor fan loyalty) I NEVER got my prices under 12. I don't even think I got to 13. It worked just fine. By the time I was an 80 win team I was up to 14 or 15 again. Those tickets are still cheap compared to the rest of the league. (I don't know if that matters). Again, I point to Des Moines and Vancouver who have nearly identical revenue info despite having tickets prices that are half or double of one another depending on how you look at it with similar fan interest (although if I'm remembering correctly Vancouver may have a bigger market). There's just no advantage to having prices that low, AND if you win a handful of games in a row and more fans show up, or a big name team comes to town, you don't get any benefit from it. The model of "I'm not drawing, I lower ticket prices again and again and again" is a bad one. It just puts you in a hole. The biggest driver of attendance is wins and losses. Juggling the ticket cost is just a temporary modifier.

Regarding Kyle's question about whether changing prices affects FI and FL, I could swear it did, but I don't ever do it in season. I would imaging you guys would be noticing something. But I feel like I remember fans getting pissed in the offseason when I'd move it up a buck or so. They didn't get any more or less pissed off when I changed it by $2. I also haven't changed my prices for a couple versions so things may be different now.

Regardless, however you come at it, trying to compete in this league with tickets that are 60% or less of what the other teams in the BOTTOM third of the league are charging is a bad strategy. If you want to believe that the teams doing so haven't managed to make any headway turning their franchises around while so many other have is NOT a result of being unable to afford keeping their own players, signing arb eligible guss to extensions for sweet sweet fan interest bumps, or signing any free agents because they don't make any money, well I guess you're free to do that.

[Ted]

I cant see Stats+ at work but I'm assuming the Goats are one of the teams Ted was ranting about. I am one of those teams that tweaks his ticket prices, almost every sim. I dropped my ticket prices over the winter in the hopes that I could somehow increase season ticket proces. (Didnt work.) I do pay attention to what teams I have on the schedule for each sim, how the Goats have been faring of late, etc. Personally, I think when you FI is in the low 50s to high 40s (where I started the year) I cant imagine that you are going to build a fan base off from crazy ticket prices and a stinky team. Not to mention that other revenue is not necessarily something that can be relied upon and cash/bonus cash isnt necessarily pouring in. Instead, I tweak ticket prices and try to find players that will help the Goats win while also bringing in extra fans and increase FI. If Ted's plan of attack is an absolutely proven strategy (but much like everything else in the game, if it was proven we would all be doing it and we would all win the Landis every year), I'd happily adapt. Or, people could just make it easier for me to trade with them and take their most Nationally Popular players I would be happy to double ticket prices. Until then, I'll keep tweaking, as appropriate, and gathering up wins and increasing my attendance and FI levels.

Look, I run my mouth a lot. It could be that a huge increase like I suggest would be temporarily disastrous. But you know what is and ABSOLUTELY PROVEN STRATEGY? Trying to compete with gate revenues that are a third of your competitors makes you doesn't work. It's about so much more that payroll. It's buying IFA's. Buying out bad contracts. Being able to offer deals with huge incentives because you make 30 mil more than you can spend very year. Making money in this game drives winning. Not the other way around. Make money first, win second.

Let's look at simple math. If you drop you ticket price from $11 to 10 and you are drawing 30k fans, you'd have to entice 3000 more fans to show up with that price adjustment to make it worth it. And those fans would have to keep coming. And coming. They don't, at least in my experience. Especially if you are a sub .500 team. If you adjust your prices, you do it to projected REVENUE. NOT to how many fans are showing up. You shouldn't care how many fans are showing up. You should care about per game revenue.

Either way, this has been really long winded and like I usual do, has strayed from the point. That point is, there is just no reason to have a ticket price under 12 buck or so in this league. It gains you nothing. There are literally 20 of us that have gone through rebuilds that never got that low, certainly not Edmonton's insane 5.50. If you don't think making a big price move is a good idea. Fine. Make a five year plan. But get them up somehow.

[Ted]

Mine have ranged between 16 and 21 this year.

Ron, that just seems a bit large to me. YS has drawn 54,475 per game this year. Assuming you're at 21 for your 60k sellouts, you make 1.26 mil in a sellout. Let's say 35k people showed up on a Wednesday day game against a last place team and you'd just lost 5 of 7. At a 21 price point, you'd make 735k that game. A 16 price point would have to get you an extra 10k fans to show up to make up the difference. I've NEVER seen a ticket slash make that big of an impact. You probably were already lower than your 21 dollar price point anyway if your attendance got that low, so in reality, you have to draw even more fans with a less significant price slash to make up the lost revenue. If your low water mark for attendance is higher, well then it makes even less sense as you can't have the overall attendance swings are probably smaller as well. I've just never seen attendance swings as a result of ticket price changes that would merit a $5 price swing. If your team can handle a 21 price point when firing on all cylinders, it can probably handle 19 all the time, maybe even 20, which just seems like it would make more money in the long run that trying to micromanage. If we could make day to day changes, I might agree more, but with the length of sims, most of the time my attendance pattern changes more rapidly as a result of hot/cold streaks than I could ever try to do anything about.

Anyway, you typically have really good methods for stuff, and I've never bothered to micromanage my ticket prices, so I'm willing to admit that I could be totally wrong.

[GoldenOne]

When I have a 15 game run of .500 ball, my team stops selling out, despite being in first.

I would kill to have that problem. Getting there this year and still not getting any sell-out games.

I really don't know what would happen if you went from say 8 dollar to 16 in one sim. It might really tank your attendance. But the effect will only be temporary, as it will gradually move back to what your combo of fan interest, fan loyalty, talent, and win loss record/pattern dictate.

The same could still hold true for you. You can afford to test things out more than some others, feel free to double your current ticket prices for the rest of the season and see how things work out.

The biggest driver of attendance is wins and losses. Juggling the ticket cost is just a temporary modifier.

Working on it - its not always that easy, especially not a quick thing, if you want to try and sustain that quick fix.

Regardless, however you come at it, trying to compete in this league with tickets that are 60% or less of what the other teams in the BOTTOM third of the league are charging is a bad strategy. If you want to believe that the teams doing so haven't managed to make any headway turning their franchises around while so many other have is NOT a result of being unable to afford keeping their own players, signing arb eligible guss to extensions for sweet sweet fan interest bumps, or signing any free agents because they don't make any money, well I guess you're free to do that.

This is not at all what I am saying. I'm saying that there seems to be many strategies to many aspects of the game out there and not everyone's is the perfect, "you absolutely MUST do it my way or your an idiot," strategy. I dont doubt that if I upped my ticket prices from $10-something to $16 that things would eventually work themselves out. However, I have noticed that I've changed it $0.15 in a sim and my FI went down 2 points while everything else stayed the same and I had a winning sim. All I am saying is that I take into account the big picture of everything, yes, The Plan, and go from there. (And dont forget, I also have to pay for almost $5M a year in stadium costs because of the situation I came in under.)

Now, if you'd be willing to pony-up something to prove me wrong, I'd be willing to listen to your guidance.

[Ted]

By the way Ron, I just realized I'm looking at this wrong. You sold 35 k season ticket at whatever your price was then, so you are only modifying prices for the additional fans showing up. I think that narrows the variability based on additional sales at games even more, but I need to rethink this. Anyway, just seems like its more trouble than it's worth.

[GoldenOne]

If you don't think making a big price move is a good idea. Fine. Make a five year plan. But get them up somehow.

They were down around $9 last year. In the $10s, up and down a little here and there, this year. Winning this year. Well, more than the last many, many years. Ticket prices will keep going up. The small FI hits usually work themselves out - when the team keeps winning. I'm getting there, just trying not to drive everyone away at once. Bump up costs, let the FI settle out, keep winning, get more revenue, get players that can help win and bring in fans, bump up costs, let the FI settle out, keep winning, get more revenue, etc., etc., etc. Its working, slowly, so I'll stick with it for now. Maybe next season when the Goats are in the playoffs, that's when things will take off and ticket prices can change drastically with minimal effect overall.

[Spiccoli]

When I have a 15 game run of .500 ball, my team stops selling out, despite being in first.

I would kill to have that problem. Getting there this year and still not getting any sell-out games.

I really don't know what would happen if you went from say 8 dollar to 16 in one sim. It might really tank your attendance. But the effect will only be temporary, as it will gradually move back to what your combo of fan interest, fan loyalty, talent, and win loss record/pattern dictate.

The same could still hold true for you. You can afford to test things out more than some others, feel free to double your current ticket prices for the rest of the season and see how things work out.

The biggest driver of attendance is wins and losses. Juggling the ticket cost is just a temporary modifier.

Working on it - its not always that easy, especially not a quick thing, if you want to try and sustain that quick fix.

Regardless, however you come at it, trying to compete in this league with tickets that are 60% or less of what the other teams in the BOTTOM third of the league are charging is a bad strategy. If you want to believe that the teams doing so haven't managed to make any headway turning their franchises around while so many other have is NOT a result of being unable to afford keeping their own players, signing arb eligible guss to extensions for sweet sweet fan interest bumps, or signing any free agents because they don't make any money, well I guess you're free to do that.

This is not at all what I am saying. I'm saying that there seems to be many strategies to many aspects of the game out there and not everyone's is the perfect, "you absolutely MUST do it my way or your an idiot," strategy. I dont doubt that if I upped my ticket prices from $10-something to $16 that things would eventually work themselves out. However, I have noticed that I've changed it $0.15 in a sim and my FI went down 2 points while everything else stayed the same and I had a winning sim. All I am saying is that I take into account the big picture of everything, yes, The Plan, and go from there. (And dont forget, I also have to pay for almost $5M a year in stadium costs because of the situation I came in under.)

Now, if you'd be willing to pony-up something to prove me wrong, I'd be willing to listen to your guidance.

I was in your boat about 4-5 season ago. I've been steadily raising ticket prices every season, about 10%. When I took over, I think the previous manager (I think it was you Niles), had prices around $7 and team interest was below 50. Things looked bleak.

That's why I was so inquisitive back then about what people were charging because that seemed so low, but I couldn't really find what everyone's prices were. But I was blessed with some young great talent that I inherited and I would sign an extremely popular Veteran FA each season (Eisenhower, Tavio, Antonio Sanchez)...

I've had fan interest pretty high this season and even with the team having a sub .500 season, we're pretty close to selling out... Which I guess means I should have raised prices already. lol. Live and Learn I guess. But I had raised prices 20% from last season after that playoff run. The game seems to really punish if you make a mistake with the fans. But maybe I'm too worried about, I'm still learning this game even after 5 seasons with TWC.

It's really great you posted this Ted, I didn't know StatsPlus had this info.

I have to say that StatsPlus is a huge upgrade from OOPTOU. I really digging it.

[Ted]

Interestingly, Brett, you mentioned a 2 FI penalty for raising prices 15 cents. That's what I believe I paid last time I raised them a dollar. I could be that bigger changes are less impact, or maybe there's a min impact or something. I'm going to go mess around with this a bit. (edit: it turns out that I'd have to make too perfect of a test league with identical players so every played exactly .500 ball to get this right. I don't want to do that right now.)

[bcslouck]

Interestingly, Brett, you mentioned a 2 FI penalty for raising prices 15 cents. That's what I believe I paid last time I raised them a dollar. I could be that bigger changes are less impact, or maybe there's a min impact or something. I'm going to go mess around with this a bit. (edit: it turns out that I'd have to make too perfect of a test league with identical players so every played exactly .500 ball to get this right. I don't want to do that right now.)

Probably has to do with loyalty. You probably have a more loyal fan base than him right now.

[Ted]

Interestingly, Brett, you mentioned a 2 FI penalty for raising prices 15 cents. That's what I believe I paid last time I raised them a dollar. I could be that bigger changes are less impact, or maybe there's a min impact or something. I'm going to go mess around with this a bit. (edit: it turns out that I'd have to make too perfect of a test league with identical players so every played exactly .500 ball to get this right. I don't want to do that right now.)

Probably has to do with loyalty. You probably have a more loyal fan base than him right now.

Nope. Also, I haven't raised my prices in at least five years, at which point I KNOW my loyalty was lower than his current rating. "Good loyalty" is the highest I've ever had, and it's only been that for a few seasons.

[GoldenOne]

I've got a couple more mid-week home games this sim and then 10 straight games on the road. When that road trip is over, I have Vegas and Jacksonville at home for a week. Depending on how the next 2 sims go, maybe I'll raise prices by $1.50 or $2 for the Vegas-Jax sim and see how things go. That'll get me into the last week of August so it shouldnt really screw things up too much by then, or at least give me a month to re-adjust, as necessary.

[GoldenOne]

Interestingly, Brett, you mentioned a 2 FI penalty for raising prices 15 cents. That's what I believe I paid last time I raised them a dollar. I could be that bigger changes are less impact, or maybe there's a min impact or something. I'm going to go mess around with this a bit. (edit: it turns out that I'd have to make too perfect of a test league with identical players so every played exactly .500 ball to get this right. I don't want to do that right now.)

Probably has to do with loyalty. You probably have a more loyal fan base than him right now.

Nope. Also, I haven't raised my prices in at least five years, at which point I KNOW my loyalty was lower than his current rating. "Good loyalty" is the highest I've ever had, and it's only been that for a few seasons.

I know my Loyalty is either Good or maybe even Great, I forget right now. My FI has been in the 57-59 range since I traded for Harold Smith in the beginning of July.

[niles08]

When I have a 15 game run of .500 ball, my team stops selling out, despite being in first.

I would kill to have that problem. Getting there this year and still not getting any sell-out games.

I really don't know what would happen if you went from say 8 dollar to 16 in one sim. It might really tank your attendance. But the effect will only be temporary, as it will gradually move back to what your combo of fan interest, fan loyalty, talent, and win loss record/pattern dictate.

The same could still hold true for you. You can afford to test things out more than some others, feel free to double your current ticket prices for the rest of the season and see how things work out.

The biggest driver of attendance is wins and losses. Juggling the ticket cost is just a temporary modifier.

Working on it - its not always that easy, especially not a quick thing, if you want to try and sustain that quick fix.

Regardless, however you come at it, trying to compete in this league with tickets that are 60% or less of what the other teams in the BOTTOM third of the league are charging is a bad strategy. If you want to believe that the teams doing so haven't managed to make any headway turning their franchises around while so many other have is NOT a result of being unable to afford keeping their own players, signing arb eligible guss to extensions for sweet sweet fan interest bumps, or signing any free agents because they don't make any money, well I guess you're free to do that.

This is not at all what I am saying. I'm saying that there seems to be many strategies to many aspects of the game out there and not everyone's is the perfect, "you absolutely MUST do it my way or your an idiot," strategy. I dont doubt that if I upped my ticket prices from $10-something to $16 that things would eventually work themselves out. However, I have noticed that I've changed it $0.15 in a sim and my FI went down 2 points while everything else stayed the same and I had a winning sim. All I am saying is that I take into account the big picture of everything, yes, The Plan, and go from there. (And dont forget, I also have to pay for almost $5M a year in stadium costs because of the situation I came in under.)

Now, if you'd be willing to pony-up something to prove me wrong, I'd be willing to listen to your guidance.

I was in your boat about 4-5 season ago. I've been steadily raising ticket prices every season, about 10%. When I took over, I think the previous manager (I think it was you Niles), had prices around $7 and team interest was below 50. Things looked bleak.

That's why I was so inquisitive back then about what people were charging because that seemed so low, but I couldn't really find what everyone's prices were. But I was blessed with some young great talent that I inherited and I would sign an extremely popular Veteran FA each season (Eisenhower, Tavio, Antonio Sanchez)...

I've had fan interest pretty high this season and even with the team having a sub .500 season, we're pretty close to selling out... Which I guess means I should have raised prices already. lol. Live and Learn I guess. But I had raised prices 20% from last season after that playoff run. The game seems to really punish if you make a mistake with the fans. But maybe I'm too worried about, I'm still learning this game even after 5 seasons with TWC.

It's really great you posted this Ted, I didn't know StatsPlus had this info.

I have to say that StatsPlus is a huge upgrade from OOPTOU. I really digging it.

Wasn't me...Indy is the only team I have ever had.