Market Size of What?

[Amazin69]

I thought this was just a one-time glitch in v.15, but the market sizes are definitely off.

I noticed this because my Mets, for the second straight version, have a lowly Market Size of 4, the same as Pittsburgh! Which is ridiculous, given that four of the five boroughs of NYC have more people that all of Alleghany County, the Pirates' home base. (And then you have all the NYC suburbs, including NJ and CT; that's another 8.5 counties to throw in.)

It's my understanding that the Market Size is supposed to be based on the population of the team's "territory", as defined in Attachment 52 of the 2008 MLB rules:

http://bizofbaseball.com/docs/MajorLeagueRules-2008.pdf (page 204, et seq.)

Based on those listings, and the population data for 2014/2015 found at suburbanstats.org, the 13.5 counties that qualify as the New York "territory" have a population of roughly 16.4 million (depending on how one splits Fairfield County, CT) whereas the 3 counties that define the Los Angeles/Anaheim territory have a population of about 13.6 million. And yet the two NY teams get a combined Market Size of 15 (Yankees 11, Mets 4) while the Angelenos get a combined 19 (Dodgers 12, Angels 7). I can't see how this makes any sense.

(For that matter, what's up with the Yanks getting almost three times the Market Size of the Mets? Corrupt Bank Field many not be filled to the rim every night, but we still drew 2.1 million fans last season versus the Yanquis' 3.4 million, so the split should be more like 9/6, rather than 11/4. And I think in dual markets, the combined Market Size should be larger than the total population; at least a certain amount of people patronize both teams in each dual market, be it NY, LA, Chicago or the Bay Area.)

Even the Marlins, who draw a 3 Market Size to Pittsburgh's 4, have a cause to complain. Each of the three counties in their territory (Miami-Dade, 2.4 million; Broward, 1.6 million; Palm Beach, 1.3 million) has more people than the 1.2 million in Alleghany County, the sole support of the Pirates, per MLB. Granted that the Marlins are doing a sucktacular job of getting these people to come to the ballpark, but that's an issue for the "Fan Loyalty" and "Fan Interest" settings, not the Market Size. They're there, that's the point.

Likewise, the Astros have about 5.9 million in their territory versus the 1.22 million in the Pirate Cove…and yet they have the same Market Size of "4". Is there something I'm missing here, or is it just a big old bust? Just wondering.

Thanks.

[Peregrine]

I noticed the same thing in my fictional league - I thought it was supposed to assign market size based on city size but instead it seems random. My Baltimore club has huge market size while LA only has average?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

It's my understanding that the Market Size is supposed to be based on the population of the team's "territory", as defined in Attachment 52 of the 2008 MLB rules

Your understanding is incorrect. Market size in OOTP is based on the team's popularity. Or something like that -- the concept is somewhat vague. But it's definitely not tied to the team's population base.

[Gai1997]

Mets are given a small market because their owner operates like one. That's what I thought it was for, but they should have the same market as the Yankees but then they'd spend like the Yankees. Which is unrealistic.

[frangipard]

Originally Posted by Gai1997

Mets are given a small market because their owner operates like one. That's what I thought it was for, but they should have the same market as the Yankees but then they'd spend like the Yankees. Which is unrealistic.

That's not the way it's supposed to work. The owner has his own traits that are supposed to modify the underlying market size. If the Mets get an owner willing to spend -- which is supposed to be able to happen in OOTP -- they are very capable of being a relatively big-spending team. They have in the past. It shouldn't be the same market size as the Yankees, because it should more properly be thought of "size of fan base with money to spend on baseball" not merely "humans living in the metro area." Miami and Tampa Bay are a pretty sizable metropolises (metropoli?), but they're small-market teams because so many people there are transplanted fans of other teams.

Having said that -- yes, they're definitely off and were last year, too. Houston is the 4th biggest city in the country (and draws from Austin and San Antonio, too). Atlanta also is a very big market, especially when they draw from the rest of the south. On the other hand, Detroit is way inflated ... their current ownership is willing to spend, but the underlying economics of baseball in Detroit are not especially good.

I should also note that the "fan loyalty" is pretty off, too, IMO. They didn't want to insult any fan bases in their ratings, but as a Phillie fan, I can attest that their loyalty is terrible.

They're also all kinds of weirdness in the independant leagues; you have teams in the Shinkoku Island league rated as having large market sizes ... um, no.


The entire system needs a revisit. It shouldn't be hard; there is a 1-20 scale, but almost the entire top half isn't used, with the Yankees and Dodgers at like 11 or 12. Rejigger it so they're at 20, borderline major-league cities are at 8-10, and use the lower half of the scale for minor/independant leagues.

[MBarrett]

Market Size really could use some work. And rather than being based solely on population, I'd prefer it was based on household income or spending power or something a little more relevant to the financial impact on the franchise.

[SteveP]

Market size in OOTP has nothing to do with what you may think markets are like in the real world. It has only to do with the payroll of the team when your league is created. And the payroll of the team is constructed by the game to reflect the perceived value of the players on that payroll. The game just wants to be sure you have just enough cash coming in to pay your bills. That's it.

You have the ability to edit the market sizes to suit your own desires. However, I think it can produce odd results (AI decisions about roster moves) if you make big changes all at once. I like to do it gradually over the course of a few seasons.

You could also change the team names to things like the Toyota Giants and the Sapporo Twins, and stop worrying about market size.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by MBarrett

Market Size really could use some work. And rather than being based solely on population, I'd prefer it was based on household income or spending power or something a little more relevant to the financial impact on the franchise.

Well, then again…New York. Where the $ is.

And, strangely enough, Wilpon is getting a "generous" grade from the game when it comes to spending. Now I understand that there were a few years where the reins had to be pulled in because of the "what, Bernie Madoff can't give us money any more?" crisis, but that's over with now (the larger concern was that the Mets might have been held liable for Madoff's debts, which did not eventuate), and back in the halcyon days of Omar Minaya [/eyeroll], the bank was definitely open. The payroll might have been overshadowed by Brian Ca$hman having an unlimited budget across the Triboro Bridge, but the Willie Randolph-era Mets were not cheap. Ask Carlos Beltran or Johan Santana. So I think that the "generous" grade is fine, I just think it's the "Market Size" that's askew.

And really, if Market Size isn't supposed to measure raw population, what IS it supposed to measure. Fan Loyalty I can see reflecting the oscillations in attendance, showing how many band-wagoneers there are in a city where the Mets outdrew the Yankees (usually by a significant margin) in 24 or so of their first 30 years of existence. (If one compares the 1970 and 1980 attendance figures, the theory arises that each team had just about 1.2 million loyal fans, and there are 1.6 million lemmings that float with the tide.) And Fan Interest, sure, that reflects the pattern of attendance/population, explaining why the Marlins or Rays can't draw flies despite having their home counties swamped with potential attendees.

But it seems as though "Market Size" is there to show that *potential*, and it's doing a dang poor job of it. A team that drew over 4 million as recently as 2008 probably has more potential than a "4", I'm just saying.

(Yes, yes, and then they moved into a cutesy boutique stadium with no upper deck, but still. The stadium is still bigger than Corrupt Bank Park [Pittsburgh version], and the population is still way bigger than Pittsburgh's population. Hell, blow the bridges in the East River and confine the Mets fanbase to just the physical Long Island, giving the majority of the metro area to the Yankees. That's still 7.3 million people to the 1.22 million out Alleghany County way.)

I'll be glad to recalculate the population bases per the MLB territory definitions and assign those to my game (and share them here) but I still would like to hear if there's an alternate definition that I'm missing before I do so. (And, I should like to note, the online manual should cover this, but it doesn't.)

Again, thanks.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by SteveP

Market size in OOTP has nothing to do with what you may think markets are like in the real world. It has only to do with the payroll of the team when your league is created. And the payroll of the team is constructed by the game to reflect the perceived value of the players on that payroll. The game just wants to be sure you have just enough cash coming in to pay your bills. That's it.

Sorry, I didn't see this before; it posted while I was typing the above. Well, no offense, but that doesn't seem terribly logical. Why should one team have a permanent market size (base) advantage, which presumably affects payroll capacity, just because they happen to be spending well during a particular year? Why should a game that starts in 1997 have its Marlins be presumed to be ready to keep the gravy train a-going when they weren't, and why should one that starts in '98 have its Marlins be locked in an eternal cycle of fire sales, when neither reflects the demographic reality of the area?

You have the ability to edit the market sizes to suit your own desires. However, I think it can produce odd results (AI decisions about roster moves) if you make big changes all at once. I like to do it gradually over the course of a few seasons.

Well, presumably that's what the owner modifiers (and fan interest/loyalty) are there for. Those would be correctives that could account for any spikes and dips, regardless of the underlying base.

You could also change the team names to things like the Toyota Giants and the Sapporo Twins, and stop worrying about market size.

Yes, or I could go completely fictional, for that matter.

However, some of us like to play from a realistic base. Presumably that's why you spent the $ to get the names and logos licensed from MLB. (And thank you for that.) And we like our "realistic" settings to be, well, realistic. I ran one "hands-off" league in v.15 where the Mets remained perennially mediocre (only a few .500+ seasons, never more than 89 wins, no playoffs) over the course of 15 years despite good pitching (Zack Wheeler became the strikeout king, winning 10 titles in 12 years) because the team never put the $$ into improving the offense. Presumably this was due to the "Market Size" setting making them equivalent to Pittsburgh…FOREVER. Hardly realistic. JMO.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

It's my understanding that the Market Size is supposed to be based on the population of the team's "territory", as defined in Attachment 52 of the 2008 MLB rules:

http://bizofbaseball.com/docs/MajorLeagueRules-2008.pdf (page 204, et seq.)

As has been pointed out, market size in OOTP is not a rating of the economic capacity of the given city/metropolitan area to financially support a club. (Though there are some of us who think it should.)

In terms of how MLB itself ranks the markets of each of its members, that can be found it the most recent CBA. Interestingly, the method MLB is using is not based solely on population; there are some other factors influencing the rankings. In any case, here's MLB's ranking of the market size of each club:

1. New York Yankees
1. New York Mets
3. Los Angeles Dodgers
3. Los Angeles Angels
5. Chicago Cubs
5. Chicago White Sox
7. San Francisco Giants
7. Oakland Athletics
9. Toronto Blue Jays
9. Philadelphia Phillies
9. Boston Red Sox
12. Washington Nationals
13. Atlanta Braves
13. Texas Rangers
15. Houston Astros
16. Seattle Mariners
17. Detroit Tigers
18. Arizona Diamondbacks
19. Minnesota Twins
20. Baltimore Orioles
21. Colorado Rockies
22. San Diego Padres
23. Miami Marlins
24. Tampa Bay Rays
25. Cleveland Indians
26. St. Louis Cardinals
27. Kansas City Royals
28. Cincinnati Reds
28. Pittsburgh Pirates
30. Milwaukee Brewers

Note that these rankings matter in that the top fifteen clubs in the ranking are excluded from receiving revenue sharing starting in 2016. (For the 2015 season the top fifteen clubs can only receive 25% of the revenue sharing funds they would otherwise have been eligible for.)

[majesty95]

I have to agree. If market size is only there to set a "cap" on spending per se, what is the point of having owner personalities? It's kind of misleading. If I remember right, I wasted a lot of time creating a historical relplay and adjusting market sizes before thinking this it was handled the way the OP suggests. It just doesn't seem logical to tie "market size" to payroll. And it also caps teams, as mentioned, from growing in their market. Everyone stays pretty close to the same market that they started in. And what exactly are the owner profiles for?

[Le Grande Orange]

If I were designing the financial system, the three terms of note would be defines as follows:

Market size: a rating of the economic capacity of that city to financially support a club
Fan interest: an indicator of the amount of population following the club
Fan loyalty: a rating of the amount of the population following the club that is influenced by the club's performance.

The best scenario would be for a club to be in a city with a large market size, a high fan interest, and high fan loyalty. The team would be a money-making machine since there are many followers of the club willing to spend their dollars, and they'll spend their dollars on the club even when it isn't playing well. The worst scenario would be to be in a city with a small market size, low fan interest, and low fan loyalty. In that case, even when you are winning you're not getting many folks showing up to watch, and those that do will quickly desert the club if it starts playing poorly.

[majesty95]

I would think you have loyalty and interest transposed. I would think fan interest fluctuates based on performance. Loyalty would be what pct of fans show up regardless and how much interest will fluctuate. For instance, a team with a high fan loyalty should always have fairly high fan interest (like the Cubs). On the other hand, a team like Tampa would have low fan loyalty and their interest could pique or swoon depending on performance.

[MBarrett]

Originally Posted by majesty95

I would think you have loyalty and interest transposed. I would think fan interest fluctuates based on performance. Loyalty would be what pct of fans show up regardless and how much interest will fluctuate. For instance, a team with a high fan loyalty should always have fairly high fan interest (like the Cubs). On the other hand, a team like Tampa would have low fan loyalty and their interest could pique or swoon depending on performance.

Agreed. Make this change and LGO's idea is spot on!

[Le Grande Orange]

I see fan loyalty as the share of fan interest who will stay interested no matter what. Admittedly, there is interplay between the two. You could consider fan interest as a second sort of market size value. Whereas market size is the (theoretical) rating of the city's economic capacity to financially support a club, fan interest modifies that raw market size value since it represents the number of people out of the total pool who would actually consider spending money on the club.

Miami is a good real-world example. Economically, the city has a large population and per capita income, and combining those two results in the area having a market size rating of 349 (where the rating is metropolitan population times per capita income, with the result scaled so that a value of 100 equals the smallest market currently in MLB). Miami would be the tenth largest market in MLB under this measure. Yet attendance for the Marlins, outside of its first few seasons, has never been good. Thus the market size rating for the city is high, but fan interest is low, meaning the effective market size is smaller. In other words, on paper Miami seems like a good market for a ballclub, but in practice, not so much.

[joefromchicago]

All excellent suggestions - many of which I've made myself. But Markus has pretty much stated that he will never change the definition of market size to reflect a team's population base.

But then that doesn't stop a player from doing it himself.

[frangipard]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

All excellent suggestions - many of which I've made myself. But Markus has pretty much stated that he will never change the definition of market size to reflect a team's population base.

But then that doesn't stop a player from doing it himself.

Population or economic base? The two are very different. If you want to put an expansion team in Mexico City, it will be the largest population city in the league, but it should not be anywhere near the biggest market. It should not be based on population.

In the same way Miami, while a big city, is not, and will not be anytime soon, an especially big baseball market -- too many transplants, too many internhationals not into American sports. St. Louis is probably one of the smallest metro areas in MLB, but in baseball terms, they're a bigger market.

[Amazin69]

Well, never say never. We finally got rainouts this time around, and I never thought that was going to happen.

I guess I'll just do my own market sizings. Look for the new thread, sometime soon. And I think the "distractions" issue would be about "Fan Interest", not market size. The horses are there, the Marlins just can't lead them to water, or whatever.

By the way, does anyone know what the new "Fan Interest Modifier" is supposed to represent? (It's right below "Fan Interest", on each team's "Settings" page.) It's pre-set to "0" for each team, so I don't get its intended use, at the moment.

[majesty95]

I still think loyalty = "interest" regardless of performance. I'm loyal to my friends but I may not be interested in hanging out with them for a variety of reasons. My interest can swoon but ill almost always stay "loyal".

In the Miami example, say market size states that the economic demographics of the city mans that, under ideal fan interest, the team can draw 50,000 per game. The fan loyalty is low meaning they will have a small season ticket base (say 10,000). The remaining 40,000 seats should then be a metric of fan interest and loyalty. The die hard fans come no matter what, the loyal but uninterested fans come more when they play well and the fair weather fans only show up in pennant races and /or with big name players.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

All excellent suggestions - many of which I've made myself. But Markus has pretty much stated that he will never change the definition of market size to reflect a team's population base.

Because that would mean an overhaul of the entire financial model, and there's little appetite for the work involved. I think it needs to be done at some point so as to greatly increase both its realism and flexibility. Perhaps now that there's an additional programmer able to work on the game that might help get such an overhaul done sooner.