BuzzerBeater Forums

I just checked the ticket sales of my arena, and my team is being boycotted at the beginning of the season.



As you can see, for instance, my bleacher capacity is 12,000, and when the boycott is 6%, 9%, and 12%, my actual sales were 12,000*(1-6%)=11280, 12,000*(1-9%)=10920, and 12,000*(1-12%)=10560.

This means that the sales rate is hard-capped by (1 - boycott %)

I feel this is not reasonable. First, the user manual did not reflect this fact. Second, in reality, suppose that my ticket is cheap enough to be sold completely even after the boycott, then it should happen. I feel from the current implementation that I am being doubly penalized.

Thank you for checking things out!

I probably did not polish my post enough when I used the term "doubly punished". But what I meant was that the formula I observed truncated my attendance twice, which was counterintuitive both from the manual and intuition.

As an example, suppose my bleacher size is 10000, and 11000 fans will be willing to purchase the ticker at a certain price.

When there is no boycott, the attendance should be hard-capped to 10000.

Suppose there is a 6% boycott. If my understanding of the formula is correct, then it will first truncate to 10000 (the first punishment in my original post). After that, the 6% boycott will come into effect and make it precisely a 9400 attendance (the second punishment). The effective boycott ratio will then be about 14.5%.

From intuition, I feel that in this case, we should first account for the boycott, (11000*94%)= 10340, and then truncate to the arena size 10000.

The formula seems unreasonable. It seems as if there were fans bringing a counter outside the stadium, and even if the price was attractive enough to fill up all 100% of the seats, as the fan observed that 9400 fans are on the bleacher seat, they will just claim to the crowd outside the arena: 'Hey there are already 94% fans on the bleacher seat. We should not enter the arena anymore!'

But how do they know which fans are going to the bleacher seat?


Finally, this was beyond the intended scope of my original post, but since you mentioned my team, let's talk about it. I feel that you might have a negative impression of tanking. So do I, and probably the drafting system should be adapted so that the worst team does not have a 100% chance to win their first pick. The second pick team got their 2nd win relatively early, and I had about 8 games to pursue a win. I was simply not tactically strong enough to make it, especially when I was in a conference where the 7th seed got their 11th win in the first 18 games.

My boycott period will be done in a few days, and I will move on with whatever I had. But I still believe that the formula has to be reconsidered. Thank you for your reply again, and hope you can take a look at the formula.

Last edited by Feizai Passing by at 8/1/2021 7:20:06 AM

Thank you for replying after a busy day!

Yes, I do think it would be great to have some change that makes the leagues more fun for teams that are neither champion candidates nor 1st draft pick candidates. The draft lottery might be one of them, and I believe there are many other threads discussing that.

Skipping all the numbers, I would just conclude that I feel that the boycotting formula is implemented in a way that selling out home tickets completely is impossible, even if the prices are set to the lowest. It seemed more to me that it was not the fans who decided not to enter the arena; it was the ticket booth staff who decided to sell x% fewer tickets.

This somewhat conflicts the reality. For instance, the tanking Chicago Bulls after the retirement of MJ are still selling their home tickets completely for more than two seasons, until the game versus NJ nets on Nov. 3, 2000.


To verify my findings, there is one experiment I can do. Next Tuesday is my final game with a boycott (3%). I set my ticket price to the lowest possible. If my findings are correct, the attendance should be 97%: 11640, 2425, 388, 24.

Doing so should cost me about 30k. But I believe this is something that deserves a change, and I will just try it out.

Last edited by Feizai Passing by at 8/1/2021 10:33:48 AM

To verify my findings, there is one experiment I can do. Next Tuesday is my final game with a boycott (3%). I set my ticket price to the lowest possible. If my findings are correct, the attendance should be 97%: 11640, 2425, 388, 24.

Here comes the result.

Under the situation that my arena is not fully occupied, I reduced at least 20% of my ticket price, my fan boycotting rate reduced by 3%, and the result is...

My attendance raised by 3%, to 11640, 2425, 388, 24, and the arena is still not full.

So, this justified my original claim:

It was less like the fans are boycotting, it was the arena being downsized, or simply the staff refused to sell some of my tickets.

Or, is there a better explanation?


Finally, I just want to comment that, the original post was not about tanking or whether a fan boycott should be implemented. But as a GM, you dug out my record which is not relevant to the data, made the criticism that does not completely reflect the truth. Although I thank you for the attempt to read the post and make a reply, I do not think that was appropriate.

Last edited by Feizai Passing by at 8/3/2021 7:07:17 PM

Hi, thank you for noticing!

First, I totally agree with you that tanking should be countered in some way, and fan boycotting should be an effective approach. Although this is not the intention of the post, the penalty is probably too light... But let's leave it behind in this thread.


What I mean is, the way the fan boycott is implemented is counterintuitive, and the description from the manual might be misleading.

From your interpretation, when you say "the number of tickets is reduced", there could be multiple explanations when the tickets would have been fully sold if there were no boycott.

Suppose there is no boycott and the size of the bleacher is 10000. Suppose that the tickets were fully sold. Then there are two numbers involved.

1. (The supply) The actual tickets being sold. This number is always the size of the bleacher, 10000
2. (The demand) The number of fans who are willing to buy the tickets at that price. This number is hidden from the managers, but let's assume that it is 12000.

Now, suppose that there is a boycott of 10%. Assume that all other conditions are kept the same. How many tickets should be sold?

Let us apply for the two numbers in the previous paragraph.

1. If we use the actual tickets sold, then it will be 10000 x 90% = 9000.
2. If we use the actual demand, then it will be 12000 x 90% = 10800, but then restrict to the size of the arena, so it will be 10000.

After testing, the implementation used the first number, but in reality, the second number is more intuitive and realistic.

1. If the first number is used, then the outcome is that 10% of the arena will be never sold, which means that, equivalently, the arena is downsized by 10%. Even worse, it will mislead those managers who do not know the implementation. They might just feel that the 10% vacancy is caused by overpricing. They might try to lower the price, but it will not help filling up the vacancy because of the way it was implemented.

2. If the second number is used, it implies that 10% of the fans refused to show up, but a portion of the 2000 fans who were not able to get a ticket might have a chance to get a ticket and fill up the 1000 vacancy caused by the boycott.


So which is more realistic? I believe that boycott happens quite often in the NBA, and if the managers are willing to give a really big discount, they should still be able to sell up the ticket. Of course, if they decide not to give the discount, they won't sell out.

This is the reason that I think the second number (the true demand, not the arena size) should be used when calculating the fan boycott.

Last edited by Feizai Passing by at 8/3/2021 8:34:27 PM