Asunto: I.1

I disagree, I would love to be combined into a more competitive league.

Years ago I argued for getting rid of country-based leagues and making it language-based instead. The increased competition from combining all English speakers would be a lot more fun than what we have now.

You can still keep national teams even after merging, so that's not a problem either.

We would need to drop down to one league. Right now we have about enough active teams for two leagues.

I'm mostly worried about sponsorships. What happens when you go from the top of I.1 or even II.1 to being dumped in IV.1 of the Other World (if that's how it works)? One or two teams might not be hurt as much if they promote and not be as bad off, but they would still end up worse off while the good teams that don't promote could be especially in trouble.

Just by winning the league this season (after placing 4th last season) and getting higher contract ratings, my general and media sponsors increased by ~$7 million per week each. Sponsorships drop too fast if you're not a top team, salaries are out of control, and handball is in particular poorly balanced.

In theory, a larger and more competitive league would be fun, but not unless handball were to be re-balanced, and I don't think that's going to happen.

Maybe I'm underestimating what teams in lower divisions get in large countries, but I don't feel like sponsorships have gone down in the U.S. leagues that have lost division III.

While I don't know much about sponsorships, I checked Other World league I.1, and I wouldn't make it there. But probably our top 8 would (based on team strength). We'd all likely be placed in division II. II.1 is the strongest league there, and I'd probably be about 5-8 in rank there (my team strength is 138 total), whereas I'd probably be 2-4 in leagues II.2 and II.3. Basically, I assume our top 6-8 would be more or less fine and starting with me we'd pay a price.

The top 8 might be fine once they promote again, but there might be a few seasons between joining the Other World league and the teams stabilizing at their proper level where they might have to deal with terrible sponsorships. Alternatively, some teams may just be unable to keep their rosters together and might just have to do a bit of a rebuild; they'd be fine in the long run though if they had the facilities/arena.

I'm not really sure how it would work. Maybe we'd all be dumped in division III or maybe the high OTR teams might get to take spots from dead teams. It's also possible that during the merger all Other World teams will be redistributed according to OTR so that the new teams would start at the proper level, but I don't think that's how it will work, and that would be unfortunate for any teams already in the Other World league that got demoted just because of the merger. It's something to keep an eye on when it happens.

I'm pretty sure that teams get their sponsorships they would have gotten for the first season at the very least.

We can see what happens now. For example, the announcement shows a couple of countries merging into Other World starting tomorrow. Perhaps we should track the top 2-3 teams from each country and see where they are tomorrow. EDIT: Obviously we won't know about money, but it'd still be interesting to see what teams go to which league.

It seems that they mostly got dumped into empty spots in division III leagues. 2 random teams that were 7th and 8th place in the last regular season got into II.3.

Woowwww! I know there were a couple of really good teams. If they have to start in Division III, the one good thing would be their utter dominance of the league for a season.

well the positive i guess is that those leagues both looked totally dead besides the top division. we might not be the best but still looks like we got a while before that happens to us

I invited a friend to come join recently, so I did my part haha. Maybe we can get some US GMs in other sports to make a charity team just to keep our numbers up if it ever comes to that

So it does seem like even the top teams were dropped to league III. I think this is a bullshit. A team that has overall strength at ~340 shouldn't be placed so low. I don't know if they were able to keep their sponsors from the end of last season or if those offers were impacted by the fact that they were supposed to be moved to the other world leagues, but I doubt it is a good switch for them.
In the guide it says that quality of your league and number of leagues in your country influences how much money you will get. One is a factor that helps those teams the other doesn't, because they were placed in a league with bunch of weak teams, so it's hard to say, but if this is how the merging works, I don't want this to happen to us. I wish they did it based on the overall strength of the teams. It would make the leagues way more competitive, but I guess it would be hard to plan and unfair to the teams that advanced to league I.1 and those that were able to stay in that league.

Oh Rassle Frassle! I've been regrouped into this league before I'm ready for it. Congrats on the four free wins everybody.

still happy to have ya here!

Bought a USA U19 player for 18M. Little steep but he sold for nearly 30 originally and i had about 300M in the bank haha. Figured it would be good to reclaim some american bois. Working on level 14 training facility right now, so i dont think ill stall his development any. 17 yo 5/6 CD, guessing the CD is why he got sold? Only frustrated that i was 10 seconds away for getting him at less than 2M before i got dragged into a bidding war haha

That's definitely the way it goes sometimes. Glad you got him!

I'm sure this was already discussed before, but I don't want to read 230 pages in this forum, so I will ask here:
Is it beneficial to have players who have both shooting and blocking at a high level, so they don't have to sub? I know that in actual handball it doesn't make sense and there is no time to change the whole formation (offense for defense and the other way) so I was wondering how does that translate to the game? I don't have a way to check it myself, so I wanted to know if any of you tested that?

Most managers go with the offense/defense approach. I find that is too expensive given the number of players it requires. I have gone with the dual role player approach which allows me to carry fewer players. Since there are no specialists, I can more easily sub players in/out for energy savings or experience gains. If a player has a greater aptitude in one of the specific areas, I give him more training in that area. In the end, it is the total plyer build that is important!!