Does the BBA Have and Attendance Problem?

[RonCo]

After several seasons of increasing business, and with continued growth on the minds of the league’s (dare we say greedy?) big-wigs, the BBA dipped into two new markets in 2035, and the results were…not what everyone was hoping for. Despite adding Boise and Wichita, league-wide attendance rose only 916 thousand people, meaning the average attendance for existing teams dropped 5.7%.

It all adds up to a situation where, as the BBA heads into the heart of its post season extravaganza, leading pundits and—more importantly—advertisers are questioning whether the league has a PR issue.

“The BBA is growing,” said a member of the league’s press corps, “which you can see by the fact that the league itself added almost a million fans, and that in key markets like a resurgent Huntsville and Seattle our numbers were off-the-charts.”

Admittedly, that paints a rosy picture. Noting the report (attached below) both Huntsville and Seattle saw interest skyrocket, while clubs like Mexico City and Edmonton saw a solid increase of a half million fans or more. Edmonton and Vancouver’s modest increases are perhaps a sign of good times to come in those cities. That said, even many of the good numbers have foreboding clouds gathered around them. San Fernando, looking to get a big bump from their move, gained only 350K. Though the team may be on a down-turn, attendance increased in Las Vegas. And though the River Monsters were in contention for a division title, their numbers barely moved.

And the downside is particularly ugly as three clubs (Louisville, Valencia, and Madison) lost over a million fans each, and four more losing more than a half million apiece. These are numbers that the expansion clubs were unable to overcome.

In addition, the facts here are that hot, and highly competitive teams like Rockville, Jacksonville, and Calgary lots ticket sales year-over-year, a fact that should make the more pragmatic of the league’s bean counters take a second look.

REVENUE STREAM UNCERTAIN

And equally interesting question can be asked around the team’s actual revenue, which reflects, of course ticket prices and merchandising generated by the clubs. It’s not bad business at times to charge more and draw less, and this might well explain some of the variance. Or not.

For example, we can say for certain that Yellow Springs, despite bumping attendance by 110 thousand people, did so by gently dipping ticket prices—and suffered a resultant draw-down in overall revenue. Other team’s mileage may vary.

STARK DIFFERENCE IN EXPANSION EXPERIENCES

The league’s stiff upper lip aside, this result has to come as a bit of a shock given the league’s four-team expansion in 2029, which saw attendance rise just under 30% (from 70.3 million fans to 87 million).

A rising tide, it seems, raises all ships. Except when it doesn’t.

[Spiccoli]

Sure looks like some spoiled fans who rapidly jumped ship when typically successful teams had a small drop off for one season... especially Madison.

I mean they did almost make the playoffs

[RonCo]

Madison did go to a smaller ballpark...so there is that. Still, that's a big drop. They played to a fair amount under capacity if I have my numbers right.

[Spiccoli]

There's another unknown as well.

Ticket Prices...

For whatever reason, the game keeps these hidden, except for your own team.. Which seems dumb since there's no way in the real world to keep these secret.

Anyway, I've been slowly raising prices each season, but there's always a decent drop at the beginning of the season due to it. Now, if the team performs well, it'll pick back up.

But a Combo of a too big of a ticket price increase and a team struggling early in the season seems a recipe for disaster for attendance. However, we can't track that variable because you don't know if the team with big attendance drop also increased prices.

[agrudez]

There's another unknown as well.

Ticket Prices...

You can sort of back that out from readily available information, though. (Gate Revenue+Season Tickets)/Attendace from the financial report. Doing this gives me 16.17 for HSV which seems pretty accurate (I fiddle with mine up and down constantly, but I'm pretty sure I started around 15 and ended around 20.

Doing the same exercise for Madison gives them 15.944. If they have appreciably worse market size/fan loyalty than HSV (which is pretty close to max in both for HSV, last I checked) and/or fan interest (which is in the upper quartile for HSV, last I checked) then it makes sense that they wouldn't have sustainable attendance at the same ticket price.

[scottsdale_joe]

There's another unknown as well.
Ticket Prices...
For whatever reason, the game keeps these hidden, except for your own team.. Which seems dumb since there's no way in the real world to keep these secret.

Totally dumb. Another one of my pet peeves with OOTP.. Other leagues I am in allow viewing some financial information including ticket prices for all teams through Statslab. I think it requires Statslab modification, but its a nice feature.

Btw, Vancouver dropped ticket prices from 2064's $20.66 (Wierd, yes - not set by me) to $18 in 2035. Attendance went up despite a pretty shitty year.

[RonCo]

Yeah, you can do some estimations. Another piece of math you need to take into account to figure revenue streams is the 35% gate sharing we use--which means big revenue teams are under reported and smaller ones are over-reported as far as dollar generation is concerned.

[RonCo]

I've already made my semi-annual request to the development team to show us all the league's financial data in v20...as well as create an ability to slice and dice it in views. There is a small argument that things like development budgets (which we don't use) could or should be hidden because teams don't divulge that in real life and it's hard to find in the public. But that's a tiny argument.

[Ted]

On the subject of ticket prices, have you guys really found that messing with these makes much of a difference long term? I haven't. I have seen a short term revenue bump from a big slash, but usually the only reason to do that is poor attendance, which generally only happens for bad teams. By the next season, fans still don't show up even at the new price. And then there's the fan loyalty penalty from building them back up when you are good.

The only things I've really seen affect ticket sales in a notable way are: 1) fan interest for season ticket sales, 2) fan loyalty for in season sales when in a slump, 3) WINNING (in caps because it seems to matter more than anything else) for in season sales.

I'm currently slowly building mine up by a dollar or so every other year with a goal of 21-22. I'll eventually try to just leave it there and hopefully have max fan loyalty by that time so I can sustain a down season or two at that price if/when that eventually happens.

[RonCo]

I don't think ticket price adjustment is a magic wand, but I've found that due diligence in adjusting to your situation can result in what feels like a couple million $ in revenue either way in any one year--which goes straight to next year's budget, really. So I guess, to me, the question can be put this way: If it's mid-year and my budget is projecting to $90M, would I rather stand pat and wind up with next year's budget at $88M or do some adjusting (which can even be upward on declining attendance) and wind up with $92M to spend next year?

[Spiccoli]

I've already made my semi-annual request to the development team to show us all the league's financial data in v20...as well as create an ability to slice and dice it in views. There is a small argument that things like development budgets (which we don't use) could or should be hidden because teams don't divulge that in real life and it's hard to find in the public. But that's a tiny argument.

Limited info should definitely be available. It would help newer players like me. I know Twin Cities tickets prices were way too low when I took over. It just hamstrings the team. I've slowly raised prices to avoid too much negative fan loyalty. However, the Stadium was practically sold out for the entire season this year and we still didn't break $105 Million in total revenue. I need to eventually get prices another 75%-80% higher and/or increase stadium size.

lol at $20+ for California. I only wish we were close to that. We're at $11 right now and that was after a 10% jump from $9.69 last season. Ticket prices were $7 when I took over a few seasons ago. My fans were pissed at first, but luckily they started filling the stadium about a month.

Without that ticket/attendance info being available to all teams, most of us are shooting in the dark when setting prices. I wouldn't be surprised if there was one or two successful teams that has around $30.

Like Ted said, I bet there's little upside to cutting prices. Any bump in attendance is going to get steamrolled with how well the team performs.

If the team is losing, the fans will stop coming anyway
If the team is winning, the fans would flood the stadium anyway

Then you're faced with the potential negative fan loyalty if you try to raise prices back to where they were.

At least, that's my guess. Anyway, $20 is nice eventual target I think, but I'm just guessing. I think it'll take me another 5 seasons or more to get there.

[RonCo]

I generally don't think of Fan Interest itself as specifically valuable. Fan Interest works with ticket prices to create revenue, and I want to optimize revenue, not fan interest...because revenue creates budget. So when I'm running a small budget team losing money, I'll sometimes even raise prices. Yes, it hurts interest, but I need the extra budget more than I need interest.

But, yes, it would be great to know ticket prices. At one point a few years back I estimated Las Vegas was probably up at $28-$30...though that might be an over-estimation. For the past year or two, YS9 was at $22, with small adjustments. I dropped prices to $18 in maybe May this year because it was obvious that attendance per team was down across the league. This brought my cash stream back to the point where I almost made money this year before playoffs, and where my budget will still be up in the $144M range through the off-season. I brought ticket prices back to $22 in late August, and then bumped to $24 in the last sim with home games just to see what it would do.

[RonCo]

To Ted's point, though, you eventually have to win. Everything else you do is really just creating a series of temporary waves to keep you moving forward.

[ae37jr]

I had to drop my ticket prices from $19 to $15 in order to draw more fans. We had a little fan interest issue though.

Part of my irrational spending this season was in effort to get things right. You have to spend money to make money. So while I'm still on pace and will most likely lose some amount money this year. I feel I'm atleast pushing the budget in the right direction.

[RonCo]

You can sort of back that out from readily available information, though. (Gate Revenue+Season Tickets)/Attendace from the financial report. Doing this gives me 16.17 for HSV which seems pretty accurate (I fiddle with mine up and down constantly, but I'm pretty sure I started around 15 and ended around 20.

As an aside, which I assume you know, but I'm talking to the crowd here so I'll risk being pedantic...due to our gate revenue sharing, I think this method of estimation will be fairly accurate for teams with ticket prices close to the mid-range for most of the year, but will result in numbers that are too low for teams at the higher ranges and too high for those with prices on the lower end. I say this because, for example, the 35% of gate that comes from YS9 is being sent out at $22/ticket (or whatever), whereas the revenue I get back is being built by teams with mostly lower ticket prices. So that artificially lowers my apparent ticket price.

[RonCo]

I had to drop my ticket prices from $19 to $15 in order to draw more fans. We had a little fan interest issue though.

Part of my irrational spending this season was in effort to get things right. You have to spend money to make money. So while I'm still on pace and will most likely lose some amount money this year. I feel I'm atleast pushing the budget in the right direction.

You can always get away with losing money for awhile if you're winning in the process. Bottom line to me, excess budget left on the table is revenue lost. Your owner might get a little prissy if you're losing too much, but really they want you to create revenue. Think of it as if you're spending a year behind, or like your revenue goes into a trust fund that you can't touch until next year...in other words, you get to spend next year whatever money you brought in this year.

[RonCo]

You can sort of back that out from readily available information, though. (Gate Revenue+Season Tickets)/Attendace from the financial report. Doing this gives me 16.17 for HSV which seems pretty accurate (I fiddle with mine up and down constantly, but I'm pretty sure I started around 15 and ended around 20.

As an aside, which I assume you know, but I'm talking to the crowd here so I'll risk being pedantic...due to our gate revenue sharing, I think this method of estimation will be fairly accurate for teams with ticket prices close to the mid-range for most of the year, but will result in numbers that are too low for teams at the higher ranges and too high for those with prices on the lower end. I say this because, for example, the 35% of gate that comes from YS9 is being sent out at $22/ticket (or whatever), whereas the revenue I get back is being built by teams with mostly lower ticket prices. So that artificially lowers my apparent ticket price.

As an example, here is my YS9 ticket price history. I can guarantee you we were not at $15/ticket in the mid-to-late 2020s as this is calculating. But you can see the calculation drops as I actually raise my prices. I could be wrong, but I think I got up over $15 in 2031, and maybe up to $18-$20 or so in 2032. The past two year's I've been mostly at $22...which, with our gate sharing, is effectively lower...and which I think this chart is reflecting.

YS9-Ticket-History.PNG (25.06 KiB) Viewed 844 times

[usnspecialist]

For what it is worth I kept my tickets at $15 both last year and this year. Moving from a 45k stadium to a 55k stadium I was hoping for a bigger bump but at least I'm moving in the right direction (and had a lot better attendance in 2nd half).

[RonCo]

For what it is worth I kept my tickets at $15 both last year and this year. Moving from a 45k stadium to a 55k stadium I was hoping for a bigger bump but at least I'm moving in the right direction (and had a lot better attendance in 2nd half).

I'm going to guess your season tickets were set a buck lower at some point?

[usnspecialist]

For what it is worth I kept my tickets at $15 both last year and this year. Moving from a 45k stadium to a 55k stadium I was hoping for a bigger bump but at least I'm moving in the right direction (and had a lot better attendance in 2nd half).

I'm going to guess your season tickets were set a buck lower at some point?

not on purpose.