Increasing Attendance

[renojedi]

I am in the second year of an expansion franchise. Last Season I averaged 22K per game and had 97 losses.

This season, I got a bunch of FAs that have high local popularity and I lowered ticket prices by a buck. I also am 22-13, first in the division.

However, I have loyalty of "very good" but fan interest is only 1 of 100. I also am averaging under 10K per game.

This is my first year with OOTP (played Mogul and Puresim previously) so I don't see the easy answers like increasing marketing budgets, offering giveways, or tinkering with ticket or concession prices.

So, are those options in the game and I am just missing them? And what is the best and/or quickest way to increase attendance?

Thanks.

[Kelric]

OOTP doesn't model marketing, giveaways or concessions in any user-operated way. You'll get merchandise and television revenue, but that is decided by the game engine. When creating the expansion franchise, I bet you didn't edit yourself an Fan Interest. Starting at 0 makes it an almost impossible task. Any expansion team is going to have some interest in the first year, I probably would have looked around the league and seen what everybody else had, then given myself an Interest around the average.

[renojedi]

You are correct that I didn't edit fan interest. But, without editing it, what control measures can I take to increase it now?

[Kelric]

Winning and keeping guys with high Local Popularity. AFAIK, there's nothing else you can do.

Other than that, I'd say just edit it to some number that makes you feel comfortable.

[renojedi]

This is still driving me nuts. I am now 10 games over .500 in July and my fan interest still is 4 out of 100. I've been as high as 5 and as low as 1. Is this just borken or does fan interest really not change that much over the season? And when a big team comes to town attendance is still really low.

And what is a fan interest modifier? Mine was -67. I changed it to zero but why was it there at all?

[Kelric]

Originally Posted by renojedi

This is still driving me nuts. I am now 10 games over .500 in July and my fan interest still is 4 out of 100. I've been as high as 5 and as low as 1. Is this just borken or does fan interest really not change that much over the season? And when a big team comes to town attendance is still really low.

Fan Interest really doesn't change much over a season, with the possible exception of late season playoff pushes. You're really hurting yourself but not admitting the mistake and editing the numbers.

And what is a fan interest modifier? Mine was -67. I changed it to zero but why was it there at all?

I really don't know what the modifier does.

[renojedi]

Thanks. I changed fan interest to 60 which seems fair since most teams are above that. Attendance immediately shot up to 22K per game.

When looking at the fan interest modifier, I notice a lot of teams had them...Florida, TB, Baltimore, the other expansion team. Is that just for the teams that have been consistently bad? Odd that Boston, ChiCubs, or New York didn't have a positive rating since those fans come to every game no matter what. And also odd that two expansion teams are as hated as Florida and the gang. I just zeroed them all out.

[johnnybourbon]

another thing you can investigate (besides fan interest) is the average ticket price for the league. I started a league and in the second year noticed that my attendance had dropped significantly. I have the comp adjust the financials of the league each year, but human owned ticket prices are set by you. You may need to drop it more. In the seond year of the league, the average ticket price dropped by much more than a dollar. I'm thinking it was close to half (all the way down to $6.) I've gotten it up to $6.75 a few seasons later, and find attendance swings based on even a 10 to 15 cent raise or drop in ticket price.