The Brewster

Owner-Controlled Budget: In my opinion, this is the biggest source of confusion among all OOTP/BBA GMs. There was a time when this item mattered, but it no longer does.

Read that again.

The line item at the top of your Accounting page that is labelled “BUDGET” literally does not matter. This is because we use the setting that allows us to “Access All Available Revenue” (rather than “Owner Controls Budget”). With that setting, rather than the owner telling you what you can spend and what you cannot, the game uses “Projected Revenue” as if it is the owner’s budget. Ultimately, the number given as the owner-controlled budget will adjust over the year, not because your owner is capricious, but because circumstances have changed your projection of revenue.

If, for example, you look at the “Budget” Widget in the Finance Screen, you will see that the term “Budget” does not appear. There is only “Projected Revenue” and Expenses (that add together to give you your 1-season operating profit or loss), and then the addition of other cash you have at your disposal.

This is all made more confusing because the game will keep telling you that the “owner” is doing things. The owner emails you to tell you what the budget will be, and the “owner” emails you in mid-off-season to make an adjustment. Sometimes the “owner” will tell you that you can’t put $X into one of your GM controlled budgets because you are over-drawn. This is the game lying to you. The owner has not done anything at all. What has happened is that your desired expense will put you over the sum of your Available Cash and your Projected Revenue.

The end.

This was not always the case, meaning there was a time when the game operated differently while in this mode. And this could change if we ever decide to use “Owner Controls Budget” setting. But with our settings as currently coded in v25/v26, the owner does not exist except as a figure of your Team News imagination. Or, better put, every owner operates in the exact same fashion.

GM Controlled Budgets: In OOTP GMs control three budgets: The Draft Budget, the IFA Budget, and the Development Budget. Your owner (the base algorithm) will never change these budgets, though obviously their size is limited by how much we can spend.

Once we set the final Development Budget, we should consider it spent. There is no going back.

But the Draft and the IFA Budgets are there to earmark funds. Putting a number here means the game will subtract that number from the amount you can spend this year. Once they are set, you can’t change them. But if, at the end of Draft signing period, you have not spent that total, the remaining will be made available to you. Also, if at the end of they year, any part of the IFA budget is not spent, it, too, will be returned to you in the form of adding to your “Final Balance.”

At the end of the day, this is the right question. Our maximum annual operating spending limit--what I will call our Operating Limit (I'm tempted to call it our Effective Budget, but we are already using the term Budget too often)--is always this:

Operating Limit = Starting Balance + Other Cash + Non-Playoff Projected Revenue

and

$ Left to Spend = Operating Limit – Projected Expenses
Our GM-controlled budgets sit inside Projected Expenses. If we set them, our Projected Expenses go up. If we zero those budgets out, we incur no Projected Expenses, but may need to remember to keep our spending down if we want to afford IFA or Draft Picks when the time comes.

Note: There is an exception to draft picks in that teams can always offer picks up to slot, regardless of their $ Left to Spend—but cannot go over slot.

The difficult thing about this, as noted earlier, is that those revenue and expense projections will change all year long because our attendance and ticket prices can change all the time. Much of the time this doesn’t matter. Most teams have wiggle room and make profits, so the fluctuations don’t get in the way of things. But if your revenue stream is low to begin with “budgeting” is fraught with danger.

What follows is opinion born of experience and basic math.

My old saying is that while some say cash is King, they are wrong. In OOTP Revenue is King. Cash is maybe a Prince, but revenue is more important. When your team is low on the revenue spectrum, you do need to find ways to keep cash coming in, be that by selling assets or spending PPT, or whatever. If your cash drops into negative, the equation for Spending Limit ( Effective Budget?) gets really ugly, really fast.

If, for example, you project to $90M in revenue, but you’re at -$10M in cash, you can only spend $80M. If your payroll is low at $70M, and you’re paying $7M for your staff, well…your money is almost gone and you haven’t even allocated money to your GM budgets.

So cash is really important for the moment.

But a steady stream of revenue is the nuts. So, what drives revenue?

Winning—eventually, anyway. I’ve seen a few teams win and still not make buckets of revenue, but that is unusual. And signing popular players, of course. Making the postseason. All these things drive fan interest, and fan interest creates revenue. One also needs to pay attention to ticket prices. That seems to be a balancing act. Sometimes higher prices bring fewer fans but make more money. (There’s also the argument the lower prices bump fan interest…I suppose there’s a logic to that, I just don’t know,)

I should note that dollars made in the postseason do not affect your projected revenue for next season. Instead, think of postseason revenue as if it is cash you created by PPT but didn’t need to spend PPT for. Postseason cash is a one-time infusion of cash that goes straight to your bottom line. It will not adjust your Revenue Projections, but can help bump what I’m calling your Operating Limit up until your next year’s Starting Balance is $20M, at which point the rest goes to your Bonus Cash fund.

There is at least one cost that BBA teams have that is not covered inside the game, and that is building and maintaining stadiums.

It is important that BBA teams operate mostly in the green so that our Bonus Funds stay … um … funded. Otherwise, as your cash position falls off stadium spending will come out of your in-game Starting Balance. Alternatively, as a team runs in the red far awhile, a GM can subsidize stadium fees with PPT conversion. That can work well up to a level, but if that’s the plan a life roll that strips your time and motivation can really foul up your team.

The financial goal of any BBA team is to create a steady stream of revenue strong enough to first hit the $20M Cash Max and then push a steady stream of cash into the Bonus Cash fund. Make that happen and the game becomes a bit less stressful.