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The exponetial rate of people who would attend your games seems to be higher with more seats and lower prices than seats with higher prices. When prices reach the $17-20 range, there is a big drop off in people willing to come and pay that.
For example 6000 people would be willing to pay max price of 20 for bleachers while 13000 would be willing to pay it at $10 dollars.

Pricing higher is important, I would agree. Selling tickets at the standard price and still expanding your arena seems foolish. But the fact is that arenas cannot be built overnight either. Therefore expanding the arena at intervals of needs is neccesary. What it really comes down to is the amount of money on hand with which you pay to expand.

To put it another way:

At a given time, there is a group of people willing to come see your game. Each person carries a different amount of money. For example out of 5000 people and 1000 Bleachers with a smattering of other seats (and assuming that the pool stays the same, IE that you're undefeated):

50 have $1000
150 have $150
200 have $50
400 have $20
700 have $15
1300 have $13
2200 have $11

Let's say that promotion builds the pools of each of those prices by 20%. So from D.V to D.I in the US:

D.V - 400 / 1000 seats
D.IV - 480 / 1000
D.III - 576 / 1000
D.II - 691 / 1000
D.I - 829 / 1000

We'll simplify and say that you promote every season and have 10 Home Games a season. So our overall Arena Proceeds will be - 80K + 96K + 115.2K + 138.2K + 165.8K = 595.2K from simple growth and not building any more seats.

We'll take case study 2, the builder. We'll use the same 5000 people and 1000 seats to start. He's going to grow his Arena by 10% a year and place his tickets at $15. For simplicity, we'll say he grows his Arena only during the offseason. His attendance chart looks like:

D.V - 1100 / 1000 seats
D.IV - 1320 / 1100
D.III - 1584 / 1210
D.II - 1900 / 1331
D.I - 2280 / 1464

This guy will make: 150K + 165K + 181.5K + 199.65K + 219.6K = 915.75K. His outlay for Arena expansions cost 200 per seat x 464 seats = 92.8K. Total profit of 822.95K. He's not only making more per year, but making more as an overall ratio, starting by making 53% more in D.V compared to making 75% more in D.I.

In short, growing your Arena at lower prices given the overall curve of game attendees will be by far more lucrative over a longer period of time when compared to max prices.

I am not going to go into specifics but from my experience raising prices has a diminishing returns. At a point you start driving away more of your fans than the xtra income from the raised prices will make. You are in division 3 just like I am but I bet with my 3k more seats and lower prices I am making a lot more money than you.

^of course you are making more...you have 3k more seats. if you take away the 3 k seats, we are generally making the same or i might be higher. Do the math. But the difference is you invested a lot more money in your arena than I did, which leads back to my original problem which you dont seem to understand.

im not arguing FOR any profit maxing tactic. Im simply wondering which one is better in the end since i havent seen a discussion about it. Notice I'm not saying to not expand, Im just saying it might make sense to raise ticket prices to as high as possible first (while keeping the attendance high) THEN expand.

I kind of got the answer I was looking for, with that being said, I think theres only two people in here that actually understood the problem lol.

Last edited by Bauss at 6/3/2011 8:37:58 PM

Actually I do understand your question and or problem as you see it. And I believe more than the 2 people understood they just didnt agree with your point of view. I actually decided to upgrade my arena very early on so I could maximize my income later and not have to worry so much about it. The great thing about this game is there isnt any one way to play it.

You are right that I am making more than you with my xtra 3000 seats, I dont know if that proves your point or mine more. But I do know that If I didnt have those xtra seats i would be charging more for the ones I did have because it wouldnt be as hard to fill them up.

This was the main point of my post. In lower divisions there comes a point when you charge yourself out of fans coming to games. With your idea you would have to expand before you hit that point but your way would work just like my way has worked for me. I have a huge arena for div 3 and a huge payroll for div 3.

Actually I do understand your question and or problem as you see it. And I believe more than the 2 people understood they just didnt agree with your point of view. I actually decided to upgrade my arena very early on so I could maximize my income later and not have to worry so much about it. The great thing about this game is there isnt any one way to play it.

Ill say it once more, Im simply advocating. I dont have a subjective point of view on this subject since I dont have anything conclusive other than what i have stated.

You are right that I am making more than you with my xtra 3000 seats, I dont know if that proves your point or mine more. But I do know that If I didnt have those xtra seats i would be charging more for the ones I did have because it wouldnt be as hard to fill them up.

This is the point of this thread and you just proved it. What you just said shows that WITHOUT THE EXTRA SEATS, you will charge more. In the end, around the same revenue but no expansion fees.

This shows that you never understood the problem.

Last edited by Bauss at 6/3/2011 11:33:27 PM

In the short term your idea earns you more money, there is no question about this. With the differences in size in our arena I have to spend $2,001,000 to upgrade from your arena to mine. If everything remains the same it will take me 5 seasons to make the xtra to over come this difference keeping that i maintain a $30k a week advantage over you which is about where we are now. After 5 seasons I will have made an xtra 2,100,000 which puts me about 3weeks income ahead at that point.

I pretty much did that (small arena, high prices). It worked out really well to be honest. Especially in lower divisions.

Even when i got to DII, it wasn't that big an issue. Sure other teams had *huge* arenas. (some over 2 1/2 times bigger than mine). Yet, with proper pricing, I still manage to get around the league averages in attendance revenue.

^of course you are making more...you have 3k more seats. if you take away the 3 k seats, we are generally making the same or i might be higher. Do the math. But the difference is you invested a lot more money in your arena than I did, which leads back to my original problem which you dont seem to understand.

The other way of looking at it is: are you ever going to expand the seats? If so, whether you do it now or in five seasons, you're out the same amount of money, but the sooner you do it, the more benefit you get from your investment. Of course, expanding well beyond your capacity to fill the seats would be absurd, and sometimes you may need the money more in the short term.