Stadia, Supporters, Tickets, and Match Revenue (Draft)
From Olmec Jaguar
Please determine the attributes of stadia (and how they can be improved), a team's supporters (and how they increase/decrease over time), ticket costs (and the impact that has on attendance/revenue), and how match revenue is shared by teams in different types of matches...
In terms of guidelines, I'd like to see stadia start small (8-10,000). I'd like to see them build more slowly (not go to 100,000 in a couple years) and have this done in an interesting way (the North Stand section 1 is improved from 250 to 500 seats for instance).
There should be a weekly stadium maintenance cost. How much?
What should the gate share look like for the home/away teams?
What are the ticket costs? Is there simply a "division 1 v. 2" differential?
-Al
(begin editing here)
- Stadium size
Well, I can see the point of having stadia start small. Over time there will, obviously, be a difference between stadia, according to success and management decisions. How capacity is developed could be a problem. Not so long ago, stadia in the higher divisions were developed in large chunks, often a complete stand at a time, but then the money available for this development had suddenly become available with the advent of sky-high television rights deals.
I think 10,000 is a good starting point for all stadiums, with a cap of 10,000 maximum expansion each year, but expansion is limited based on average attendance. We used any attendance over 80%. So, if you averaged 90% capacity, you could expand by 10%, for season 1 that would mean a maximum 1,000 seat expansion. Mikemorton 11:22, 1 December 2007 (CST)
- Development
These days, clubs tend to relocate rather than develop beyond a certain level, as many grounds were originally sited in residential areas that can't accommodate the necessary or intended size. Doing it piecemeal within the game could be done, obviously, and it may be possible to set a maximum for each side of the ground and then develop within that limit. It might also be a requirement to develop in a balanced way, rather than maxing out one stand at a time. That could impact on revenue if different stands had different seat prices, as in family stand, away end, etc.
I like the idea of different stands. Like seats vs terraces. Terraces could be cheaper to build, but the ticket prices would be lower. I can see a family stand, could that possibly generate more income via concessions, souvenirs (if I bring my family to a match, those things all end up getting bought, where if I was solo, I am not going to buy souvenirs). Away stand, if the away team is good, potentially more income for your club as away supporter fill this up? As far as North Stand, North East corner, I guess those ticket prices would vary. East and West would demand higher ticket prices vs North/South with corners being in between. But I guess we have to force some type of symmetry. I think 5,000 seats in the West stands and 500 in the North End isn't realistic. What about supports section? The bigger the section, maybe a home morale boost? Mikemorton 11:22, 1 December 2007 (CST)
What about setting development time to be a fixed time, say 6 sessions for example and income actually drops during that time while that stand is out of commission during development and expansions. Graham 15:20, 29 November 2007 (CST)
- Maintenance cost
In terms of weekly maintenance cost, there might be occasional costs, but most of these would be related to matchdays, such as pitch preparation, fuel bills, etc. Other than that, most stadia are built to be pretty sturdy so probably wouldn't have bits falling off regularly. You might want to set maintenance costs as a percentage of the revenue, before any sharing.
I am thinking things like security/vendors also for maintenance cost and should be charged per match, but should be a fairly low number, but obviously the bigger the stadium, the bigger the cost. Mikemorton 11:22, 1 December 2007 (CST)
- Revenue sharing
As far as I know, the gate is not shared in league games. The home club does have to meet the reasonable travelling expenses of the visiting club, but I don't think clubs in the higher divisions need to worry too much about that. In FA Cup games, the split used to be a third each to each club and the FA, with the home club also getting any live broadcast fees payable and the winning club in each round getting prize money. I've never thought much about League Cup games, so I suppose the revenue could be split the same way. Alternatively, you could say that all games played on neutral grounds are treated like FA Cup games, with other cup games treated like league games.
No basis on realism, but we used to split all matches 75/25 home team/away team. The reason if a club played 2 away matches in a row, they'd have some income to work with. Of course if they played 2 home matches in a row, they'd get all the income. We did it so a club would always have some money coming in during matches. In the end, it kind of balanced out. Mikemorton 11:22, 1 December 2007 (CST)
- Ticket price differentials
Ticket prices vary considerably, both from club to club and from match to match. For example, the top clubs will never be able to meet the demand for tickets, so they can charge that much more, both for the quality on offer and also in line with market forces. The most successful clubs tend to have more season ticket holders than the less successful, so their ticket revenue is more predictable. Lower clubs have to pay more attention to supply and demand, especially dependent on success and expectation. It ought to be possible to link fan expectation to the previous season's final Morale level, while success could be linked to league position rather than current Morale. There is also a tendency to grade matches according to how attractive they are perceived to be. So, a match against a top club or local rival is more expensive than a game against relegation fodder.
We used set prices for tickets for simplicity for all clubs in SFLSL. I think ticket prices should be set at the beginning of the season and stay that way for the season. We should have ticket prices for League games and Cup games. Maybe we should have limits on ticket prices so clubs don't go crazy. For example terraces can be as low as $5 a ticket and a maximum of $25, West Side seats, $12 minimum, $75 max, etc. Could we have a preseason query to predict how the tickets would sell based on ticket prices for the managers as a help? I just don't want to see Rich get richer problems. Mikemorton 11:22, 1 December 2007 (CST)
- Marketing
Clubs from lower divisions sometimes run ticket promotions, offering cheaper tickets related to a theme, such as free child admission with an adult, or something like a mini-season ticket for a fixed number of matches but which isn't a season ticket.
Perhaps a number of free tickets given away (attendance boost, no revenue), with a boost in sales the next season based on that? Free bus trips for away matches that will increase away support (assuming we do something like the 75/25 revenue split). Discounts for supporter club members (for a supporters section) Mikemorton 11:22, 1 December 2007 (CST)
Andybushby 11:02, 27 November 2007 (CST)
- Attendance Calculations/Fan Expectations
I really liked our old SFLSL calculations for this. First, I think that Derby matches should be automatic sellouts. Also, promotion/relegation matches should be sellouts or least be boosted over their normal attendances. These calcs were based on a total stadium, we'd have to figure out how to use it based on stands, differing ticket prices, etc.
The number of tickets sold (i.e., attendance) depends on the morales of the teams competing, the home bonus used by the home team, the home team at-home record and the visiting team away-game record. So, if the away team was a good road team, attendance would increase, etc. The specifics are as follows.
First, take the home team’s morale, and add .05 for each home bonus point over 7 (so a home bonus of 9 would add .10 to the home team’s morale). Add that figure to the visitor's morale, giving a number called the morale number. As a example, the home team has a morale of .450 and used a home bonus of 10. The visiting team has a morale of .550. The morale number would be 1.15 (= .450 + .15 + .550). Then, take the home team’s HOME points (the total number of points it has earned while playing at home) and divide it by the total number of games played at home. Divide that number by 3 (so that, for a team with a perfect record at home, this calculation would yield a value of 1). Then do the same thing for the visiting team, except the calculation is based on their AWAY points and the number of away matches. Then, add the Home number to the away number, giving a new number called the standings number. As an example, the home team has 9 points at home from playing 5 matches at home; ((9 / 5) / 3) = 0.6. The away team has 4 away points in 5 away matches; ((4/ 5) / 3) = 0.26. Adding these two together gives a standings number of 0.86. Finally, multiply the morale number times the standings number and divide that by 1.55. In our example, ((1.15 * .86) / 1.55) = .63. This is multiplied by the home team’s stadium capacity giving the attendance. In the above example, if the home team has a 40,000 seat stadium, the attendance would be 40,000 * 0.63 = 25,200 attendance. Multiply that by $10 (we had set ticket prices) and the home revenue for that match is $252k.
The above calculation will give average attendance for 2 average teams. If the two teams had high morales and/or the home team had a strong home record with the away team having a strong away record, attendance would be boosted. The home team can also boost attendance by increasing its Home bonus.
In addition, attendance for a match will be modified by Fan Expectation. Fan Expectation works as follows. At the beginning of a season, For each division, start with the average TEAM SL (over all teams in the division). Then, for any given team, take that team’s current SL and subtract from that the division average (this is converted to a decimal format). The converted number is added to the team’s starting morale and that becomes the fan expectation for the year. So, if a team has less than the league average SL, his fan expectation would be lower than normal, if higher than average, the expectation is greater than normal.
Then, during the season, for any game, attendance is affected as follows: take current morale and subtract the fan expectation and the difference is added back to the current morale in the attendance formula above. So, if you are playing above fan expectations, your attendance will be higher than it would have normally been, if you are below your expectations, the fans stay away.
For a match at a neutral site (i.e., for Cup matches), the calculation is basically the same, but both teams split the gate and a 40,000 seat Cup stadium is assumed for the neutral site. Also, instead of home points and away points, the total points (and, correspondingly, all matches) are used in the calculations. Mikemorton 11:22, 1 December 2007 (CST)
