BuzzerBeater Forums

The next time you are allowed to change ticket prices is Feb. 11, the first day of Season 19. I need some help setting my ticket prices.

I'm currently Div. V but expect to promote to IV for S19.

My arena size to start the season will be

5715 Bleachers
503 Low Tier
126 Courtside
6 Luxary Boxes

I've looked around Div. IV and I think the below prices are in line with what they should be and fair enough to keep the seats 90 percent full. What's your opinion? What should I change? If you're a Div. IV team, what are your ticket prices?

Bleachers $11
Lower Tier $40
Courtside $100
Luxary Box $1000

It's hard to tell as it depends on several things. If you win every game in Div IV, sure, the prices of the tickets can stay pretty high. But if you lose some games, your fans might not be that interested anymore.. Which can lead to collapse of the average attendance amount. Then the fans might not attend the games even if your tickets were 25% higher than they are at the start of the season.

You have to understand that you're now in div V, where your wins and losses are 19 to 2. So you've won nearly every game of your regular season schedule, therefore being eligible of setting pretty much the price for the ticket you please. But as you go higher up the ladder, there's more and more competition to reach the last ladder. So most likely, even if you were to buy a few good players to try to compete with the harder competition, you will not be having such a good winrate the next season.

Therefore I'd suggest you to make it to the higher division first, then comparing the prices the prices other managers have set for their arena + evaluate your changes for the season. Then set the prices of the tickets.

The Luxary Box can be set at the price of $1600, but in my opinion 6 boxes for a Div V is over limited.
the Courtside can be set at 160$ no matter what level are you in.
Lower Tier can be set at 60
and Bleachers can on your on, this place is flexibly depend on the result and the stars, I think 20$ at first is ok.

I'm also a newbie here, but I got some advice from old players, this is just my opinion, hope can help you a little.

Just to be honest with you, I believe expanding the arena drastically right now in anticipation for the move up is over-rated. With what other Div. IV teams are getting for seats, it takes two full seasons of home games to just get back the money you spent on each seat. You pay $200 to build one bleacher seat, and then you sell it for about $10 or $11, meaning it takes you 20 home games before you start to see a profit for that seat. And with 11 home games per season, that's nearly two full seasons.

Now, I fully understand that long-term, it's a completely different story and the seats are invaluable long-term. But for the next season or two I don't know that expanding the arena in a major way will be a priority. I think I'm going to take the best of the best of my team and add a couple of stud players (stud for the league I am in) and try to win again in Season 19. I understand that won't be easy, and I understand that I'd be crazy to expect to repeat the 20-2 I've went this current season. But I fully expect to compete with the best in my league next season and make the playoffs with a chance at making a deep run in the playoffs.

i had promoted last seazon from v to 4th div, and i kept my arena full at

13 for bleetchers
37 mid tier
110 low tier

used to get 135-138k incomes, cause more than half a seazon fans were exctatic cause i won league last year. but after that their attendance dropped and now all i get is like 100k per week, also lowered prices at the moment.

Yeah, the courtside can be set to $900 if you please, it doesn't yet mean that they are selling. My price for courtside is $120, and it seems to be on the edge of too expensive and "cheap". Also, my lower tier is $40, and not selling every seat even tho my record for the season is 21-0 + I made it to top 32 in the cup. $20 is way overpriced. If I were to set $20 for bleachers, my seats would only sell maybe 10% of its capasity. Even the Div I - teams don't have that high bleacher price.

I think this is drastically wrong, and I'll tell you why: Cash Flow. Having a positive cash flow is important in order to sustain growth and position yourself for further improvement. If you buy studs now, and it takes up all of your income in order to pay them their wages, you'll never be able to grow your arena in the future, thus limiting yourself to being a constant division 4 team. But when you invest in your arena now, you'll be able to build a positive cash flow for the future, thus allowing you to then buy the stud players you need to destroy division 4 and position yourself for division 3. You need to invest in your arena not because it's going to make you money right away, but to give you the cash flow necessary to move up into the next division.

True!! +1 from my side

I think this is drastically wrong, and I'll tell you why: Cash Flow. Having a positive cash flow is important in order to sustain growth and position yourself for further improvement. If you buy studs now, and it takes up all of your income in order to pay them their wages, you'll never be able to grow your arena in the future, thus limiting yourself to being a constant division 4 team. But when you invest in your arena now, you'll be able to build a positive cash flow for the future, thus allowing you to then buy the stud players you need to destroy division 4 and position yourself for division 3. You need to invest in your arena not because it's going to make you money right away, but to give you the cash flow necessary to move up into the next division.

I agree with you and am going to expand my arena to around 6500 Bleachers, 503 Lower Tier, 150 courtside and 6 luxary boxes between now and my first home game of S19. I'm already 3 days into an expansion of 550 seats that should finish during the playoffs.

It's just tough for me to not expect my team to compete right away at the next level, so I'll also spend some money on players once I get a look at my new league. With the players I have now, especially my trainees, I'm probably not all that far behind where I need to be to compete at D4.

I expanded my arena quite a bit in the beginning, so I couldn't set too high prices. But even after expansion the first 6 games, you can get 15 for bleachers. The fans are euphoric after promotion, then when the hiss stops, 11 would be more reasonable if you lose most of the games.
It'd make sense to set the seat prices proportionally to their costs i.e. if
15 bleach, then
53 lower (15*(700/200)) and so on..

Say you only fill 6000, *15=90000. That means there's no point setting prices lower than 90000/6500=13,85 and even then, you'll only get 14*6500-9000=1000 more. I do believe you could fill 6000 bleachers à 15 for the first 6 home games regardless of your results.

Good Luck!