Options for small market teams

[Corsairs]

I know a lot of online leagues equalize all their team settings, including market size, to provide parity and a level playing field. Personally, I enjoy leagues that feature disparity, where different teams face radically different challenges. Market size is obviously a key differentiating factor, with larger market teams enjoying greater media revenue.

While I personally enjoy the challenge of building a small market franchise into a force that can stand toe-to-toe with the large market clubs, I also recognize that there's a fine line to be walked in a setup like this. In the real world, GMs have incentive in the form of a fat paycheck to deal with MLB's financial inequities. That incentive obviously doesn't exist in our online leagues.

Assuming one is set on maintaining as much differentiation between teams as possible - including differing market sizes - the question becomes, "What options can be put into play to give teams on the lower end of the financial spectrum an opportunity to assist themselves competitively?" One obvious choice is revenue sharing. I'm curious what other kinds of perks and special opportunities other commissioners who run non-equalized leagues provide to their smaller market clubs. In particular, I'd be interested to hear about out-of-game custom house rules commissioners employ to help small market clubs help themselves against the big boys.

[Stu]

I think the key to making it work in an online league is making sure the market sizes don't get too much separation. In the BLB we have market sizes ranging from 3 to 8 which works pretty well for us. Budgets range from about 65m to 110m. Our financial system is heavily based on media revenue so it tends to keep the budgets more static, ie less drastic changes from year to year than default.

We don't have a salary cap but have a $20m cash cap and a luxury tax of $90m. Teams are taxed at 50% of the amount they spend over $90m. The total tax amount is assessed at the end of the season and distributed evenly among the teams who had a total revenue below the league average.

This system prevents the large market teams from getting too carried away. They can certainly spend over $90m for a season or two but continuing to do so often drives them into the red.