The Economy
"I told you I needed to feed my family. They offered me 3 years at $21 million...you're going to see these kids in one of those Sally Struthers commercials soon."
The Economy page is the headquarters for your finances. It provides a breakdown of your expenses and revenues over the past seven days, including player salaries, staff salaries, attendance revenue (divided by seat type), merchandise revenue, and scouting costs.
There are several ways in which you can make use of this information. Primarily, it's a good reference for how your player and staff salaries compare to your total revenue, so you can determine whether you're spending beyond your budget. The attendance per seat-type can help you restructure and expand your arena to maximize your revenue. At the top of the page, two values are listed for your team's funds. Current Balance is the total amount of money you have in your bank, and Available Balance is the available amount you have to spend. The two are different when you are the current high bidder on a player on the transfer list; though the money has not been paid out to buy the player, the bank wont let you spend so much that you would drop below $0 if you win the auction.
At the top of the page, you will find your weekly revenue from merchandising and interest, as well as your temporary income.
Merchandising income comes from your fans buying team apparel. Jersey sales are affected by a combination of factors.
One factor is whether you have a winning team. Nobody likes to wear the jersey when you're losing, do they?
Other factors include how many domestic players you have on your team, and also how many were drafted by your own team, as fans like supporting local players more than imported talent. This is weighted by the overall skill of the local players, so stocking your team with local bench warmers won't do you much good.
Similarly, fans from around the country are particularly enthusiastic supporters of members of their national teams, and even more so when their national team is a successful one. So, if in a given week your player played in a national team game, fans from around the country will buy their jersey, typically in a quantity proportional to their salary. National team jersey sales will vary depending on the strength of the national team, but players playing in their domestic league tend to sell considerably more national team merchandise.
Finally, fans from around the league tend to notice the league leaders, particularly in important categories such as points, rebounds, and assists but to some extent in all categories. If your team has players among the league leaders, you will see a bump in jersey sales from fans of other teams in your league, with an additional bump for the most eye-popping numbers in your country or in all of BuzzerBeater.
As part of the agreement giving you shared television revenue, you also agree to pay a minimum total salary, shown on the Economy page. If your players earn less than this total, this minimum salary will be deducted anyway. The salary floor depends upon your league's television revenue:
- Division I: 245% of TV money
- Division II: 190% of TV money
- Division III: 130% of TV money
- Division IV: 100% of TV money
- Division V,VI: 70% of TV money
The salary floor does not apply to new teams for their first 24 weeks.
Players are only paid in weeks when you have a competitive league game. This means that a team not in the playoffs might not pay salaries during the last two weeks of the season, while some teams will skip one week of salaries. Because the week runs from Sunday to Saturday, all teams begin paying salary again during the offseason week ending with the season opener.
If you go into debt, you will be charged a 5% penalty each week until you are positive again at the time of a economic update. If your account is below -$500,000 at the time of a weekly economic update, you are given two weeks to bring your account back above -$500,000. Failure to reach that mark will result in all of your players being put on the transfer list automatically with a starting price of $0. If, after your players are sold, you are still not above -$500,000, you will be fired as the manager at the next economic update. Debt and bankruptcy are the first items calculated in the economic update each week. "Available cash after bids" does not count as money for the purposes of computing bankruptcy or the 5% interest penalty on a negative balance. Players must sell prior to the weekly economic update for these credits to pull you out of bankruptcy.
Temporary income lists everything else that happened this week. This is where income/expenses from player transfers will go, fees for changing staff, and so forth. While you have bids out on players but the sales are not complete, you can get a preview of your temporary income on the Bids page. New teams will also receive $50,000 per week for their first four weeks in order to help with their initial expenses.
A hoarding tax is implemented in order to discourage passive team managers. All teams in possession of over twenty-five million dollars will receive a weekly 10% tax to every dollar above the 25M mark.
Overextension tax is applied to all teams that spend much more than they earn, which is calculated based on an average income for each season. The training exemption is the difference between the current overall salaries and the combined overall salaries of all players when they were acquired. Overextension Tax is not applied on the first and last economy update after the start of the season for all teams and for the first 4 weeks for new teams.