Subject: I.1

well if you think about it, the structure of the USA OTR has changed DRAMATICALLY this season. You had 2 teams (Bullsforever and Emus) who used to be top 5 OTR teams that aren't anymore... so everyone who's still active has shifted "up" the list and is getting more money this offseason.

With that said... I finished the season with just about 3 OTR more this season than last, and I'll still see about a $30million total increase in compensation from my general sponsorship agreement next year (with the same number of stars). All of my media and VIP deals seem a bit higher too. So there's probably something else at play too?

Perhaps they tweaked sponsorships when they made players cheaper?

P.S.

I really waffled on whether or not to push to advance this season after Mojo said he'd be resigning. I think if i played my veterans heavy next season, I'd be able to be a top 5 team in division I.1. Plus... the extra 30 million promotion bonus would be a nice boost for buying players he'll be selling.

In the end though, i decided to stick to the plan that I've had since literally day one of season 1. While remaining as competitive as possible at the level / division I'm in:
1) build up arena..
2) build up facilities..
3) train the "next gen" of players while playing them and getting them tons of experience..
4) advance to, and hopefully pwn in, division I.1 with players that are 3-4 years younger than my competition on average.
5) while everyone else's teams are hitting the free agent wall, I'm just rocking and rolling.

Problem is, I never dreamed that so many teams would quit along the way.

Also... i never dreamed that veterans would be as disposable / cheap as they apparently are. something tells me that teams hitting free agent walls won't really have much to worry about in the grande scheme.

If handball follows the same pattern as soccer and hockey, only the very best free agents become prohibitively expensive to have more than a few. From my experience, the expenses from free agents even a single tier below the very best is easily manageable by a I.1 team.

Your experience is definitely duly noted...

But I've actually recently run a study of sorts to try to quantify what I should expect.

Read more (if you're interested)...

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So... I've been following RFAs in handball for a little bit (making token offers and then "following them" and watching to see what their new contract costs). You can see their new contract amount once the deadline of the contract negotiations hits.

Probably the best case study I've done so far is using Anton Shpagin 's RFA proceedings as a proxy of where Lloyd Russ would be if he were two years older.

- Anton Shpagin had similar exp, OR, and popularity as Lloyd Russ at the time of the contract renewal.
- Lloyd Russ 's contract renewed within just days of Anton Shpagin 's RFA contract being set.
-Both [handball_team=11407] and I finished first in the regular season of our respective division II leagues.

Basically, this was as good of an "apples to apples" comparison as I'd reasonably be able to find.

Anton Shpagin 's new contract was ~$483,000 / day. Lloyd Russ 's new contract was ~$282,000 / day. Accounting for the fact that Anton Shpagin is considered "foreign-born" to his team, he'll cost 25% more. So we'll reduce his contract by 25% to make things as "apples to apples" as possible.

So we have the following:
Anton Shpagin : ~$387,400 / day
Lloyd Russ : ~$282,000 / day

Difference: $105,400 / day

That difference extended over the "life" of the free agent contract (336 days) can be interpreted as the "bonus" portion of the RFA contract (ie, the portion that represents what another team TRIED to pay in order to woo him away from his team).

so this amounts to ~$35,414,000.

But... with RFAs we know that it's enough for the player's team to match between 15% and 70% of the bonus amount (it's this "matched amount" that i understand to be included in the final contract... and not the actual bid).

So assuming his team made no "seasonal bonus" payments to Anton Shpagin over the years, the 70% adjustment would be used. This means that the highest RFA bid for the Anton Shpagin was ~$50,591,000.

But... if we instead assume that his team made as many "seasonal bonus" payments to Anton Shpagin as possible, a 30% adjustment would be used (Anton Shpagin was acquired by [handball_team=11407] when he was 18). This would suggest that the highest RFA bid was actually closer to ~$118,046,000.

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So we have a min/max (range) of $50.591 million to $118.046 million.
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So granted... the market will change over the next two seasons... but at least currently, I'm expecting that teams out there are willing to bid in the range of $50-100 million for desirable RFAs that come available.

My conclusion is that if you have more than a few of these desirable guys becoming RFAs during a 112 or 224 day span, it's really going to start to sting very quickly (consider that at ~$483,000 / day, Anton Shpagin is costing his team ~$54.1 million each season). My entire player salary expense this season has been ~$243,000,000. So one player is going to cost [handball_team=11407] about 1/5th of my total player salary budget. That's kind of crazy.

At the very least, this is an example of why US teams should really do their best to build from within, train, and rely on US-born players. Because having a full team of foreign-born players could really, really hurt when it comes time to start paying free agent bonuses on them.

My $0.02, for what it's worth.

You guys got sponsor increases? I had my best finish ever and lost about 70m between my general and media sponsorships.

Might have something to do with the fact that you only have 1 manager... and he's less than 100 OR?

Did you lose a manager or two this season to retirement or something?

I'm interested in how my sponsors compare to other similar teams in I.1 or with top division II teams, so I'll go ahead and post my full sponsor information.

General:
Contract rating: 5*
Contract worth: 286,431,120
Weekly donation: 17,901,945

Contract rating: 4
Contract worth: 276,908,432
Weekly donation: 17,306,777

VIP:
Weekly donation: ~3,200,000

HRE: 15
Marketing: 100%
League Ranking: 6th
OTR: 563.3

Staff Marketing: ?

Handball does make player salaries more expensive, so maybe it will be different than hockey and soccer. Of course, just like hockey and soccer, once you've built everything worth building, there's nothing to spend all your money on but players, so affording them becomes much less of an issue.

I followed a fairly simple financial plan for both hockey and soccer once I finished building infrastructure - I keep a certain buffer on-hand for covering free agents (initially 100M, but it's since risen to 200M), and only money above that buffer is available for bids on new players. Since both sports are still generating profits (soccer looks like I'll be up about 300M by the end of the season and hockey should be around +500-600M), I eventually accrue enough cash to buy better players.

At some point I'll break even with income and expenses (it would probably happen sooner than later if I was more aggressive in the market), but finances have never been a particularly big worry for me, and as long as my free agent buffer is set high enough, I should never run into a problem an emergency loan can't fix.

Ultimately, a good player may be really expensive and eat up a huge portion of your budget, sure - but what else are you going to do with that money? This isn't real life where you can cash it out and take a nice vacation instead .

200 cumulative OR for marketing

I should have included my final ranking (4) instead of my seasonal ranking (6) in league I.1 in my above post.

General:
Contract rating: 5*
Contract worth: 214,893,104
Weekly donation: 13,430,819

Media:
Contract rating: 4
Contract worth: 210,476,864
Weekly donation: 13,154,804

VIP:
Weekly donation: ~2,700,000 total

HRE: 14
Marketing: 76%
League Ranking: 9th
OTR: 522.04

General Sponsor:
Contract worth: 350,782,816
Weekly donation: 21,923,926
Bonus for league ranking: 14,615,951

Media Sponsor:
Contract worth: 404,809,824
Weekly donation: 25,300,614

HRE: 14.5
Marketing: 100%
League Ranking: 2nd
OTR: 712

My numbers almost exactly mirrored yours capsaicin.

====================
Division II.1

General:
Contract rating: 4*
Contract worth: 211,644,256
Weekly donation: 13,227,766
Bonus for each win in the league: 1,653,471

-----> Next season, I SHOULD win 58 games, so the total compensation should be $307,545,574

Media:
Contract rating: 5
Contract worth: 278,268,640
Weekly donation: 17,391,790

VIP:
Weekly donation: ~$3,100,000 combined

HRE: 15
Marketing: 100%
League Ranking: 1st in regular season
Playoff Ranking: 2nd
OTR: 609.09
====================

Mmm... that's all good to know since i'm further along in handball than either of the other sports. I'm kind of running blind regarding free agency.

I have heard many people say that handball's finances are a bit tighter than hockey and soccer though. For whatever that's worth, I will say that I've found it... more difficult in recent seasons to meaningfully accumulate money. But I also throw away about 75 million on average in fees and extra staff members each season for carrying more players than i need... That's probably pretty dumb now that I tally up the damage.

Now I'm at the point now where I'm trying to figure out how much i really want to commit to building my remaining 3 facilities.