PART 6ArenaAlthough not originally listed as a topic to explore, a brief note on building your arena might be helpful.
Every team in BB, HG or otherwise, needs to build their arena in order to increase their revenue. Increased revenue allows for higher-salary players, better rosters, the purchase of better staff, and being able to build infrastructure like that mentioned above. Therefore, regardless of whether you are a HG team or not, building up your arena is essential.
I am including the value of arena building here as I think this can take on more importance for a HG team, especially in the early seasons. Many teams starting out in BB come to learn about the importance of building their arena. Many teams ignore this and build their arenas much too slowly or not at all and wonder why they can't compete with other teams in their division. Others, and returned managers, realise that the quicker an arena is built, the sooner they can access extra benefits which will allow them to promote sooner and stay promoted. So, build your arena sooner!
After returning to BB, I quickly began to invest in my arena. At that time, I had no thought to becoming HG. Now, with my focus 100% on becoming HG and preparing for this, I see some added importance to building up my arena. I invest regularly now. If you can afford to dump a lot of money in one go, that's great. If, like me, your cash reserves aren't there yet, build it up regularly in smaller amounts. Just keep building!
Having discussed the intricacies of becoming a HG team with a few Division 1 HG teams, it become clear to me that if I get the training right, I will ultimately be making NT quality players...with NT level salaries...perhaps sooner than expected! Obviously, I am going to need to be able to afford those larger salaries...if not, I will be forced to sell off high quality HG players. This is something I do not want to be in a position to have to do.
So, building up the arena early is, in my opinion, not just a smart move in general, but a smart move for HG teams who are more training focused than the average team.
This doesn't mean I am expecting to get my trainees onto the NT, but that in a worse-case scenario, their salaries can be met regardless of how big they become. Strategic training (as I alluded to earlier) will be the key, training well-rounded players rather than mono-monsters to keep their salaries in check.
As a HG team, even after 2 seasons of full training, my team salaries will begin to climb noticeably. Remember, almost every player on the team (in the beginning) will be getting training. This means higher team salaries in general. Therefore, the sooner the arena is built up, the greater the ease in addressing the higher salaries will become as the seasons and promotions occur.
For those managers new to BB and wanting to know how to build up their arena, there are plenty of threads about it. I have always found 20k-22k arena size as sufficient (although I do not know enough about how arena designer and other infrastructure might improve this). However, the breakdown of the type of seats that make up that 20-22k can be important. Some seats sell out earlier than others in games (expensive seats) so you might consider building them up first. Or you might build uniformly across the seat types. Or just build up the cheap seats first. Again, there is plenty advice on arena sizes and builds worth considering.
So, build you arena up sooner rather than later. Good advice in general, but perhaps more important for HG teams.
NOTE: Don't forget to participate in the poll at the start of this thread
