I think winning does have a big factor on merchandising, but its not just whether you won this season (although that is part of it) its more are you generally a winning team or not, do you have a large base of support of people who buy your jerseys.
domestic players do have a big influence, we said quite specifically how big an influence they would have two seasons ago, we felt we had to stick with that size effect because we promised it and people should have adapted.
I don't know if its original team or only one owner team... I will need to ask charles, but it would have been easiest to code and most literal to code up whether the player was originally drafted by your team, and so you would get an advantage if you bought him back.. .but i should ask charles.
I believe that scrimmages do count.. charles coded it though so he is the definitive word on this.
I will point out that the political pressure on NT coaches is likely to increase, and there will be a whole set of interesting intra-country political decisions that NT coaches will be facing... they will have many more good players being developed for them by their countrymates, but also a lot more responsibility to put the best players on the team, else their constituents will be angry and boot them out for favoritism.