Titre: II.3

Well, guess I can't run a Handball team. My expenses cost about $24.5 million a week, and only get about $17.5 million from sponsors, etc. 10 days before I have to gut a department but I can't see how to it's possible to maintain when the salary of my 26 guys is almost twice as much as my team of 40 in hockey (much higher ratings too).

It is deceptively easy to end up in a situation where your team makes little-to-no money in the II league level (something my hockey team painfully discovered quite a while ago). Expenses scale up much quicker than II level general sponsor contracts can cover once you get to the final tier of facility upgrades and players get to free agency age.

It's going to hurt, but I would definitely sell expensive players before tearing down a facility upgrade since players are more easily replaced. Also, it's highly unlikely that the 26th player is worth their salary + the extra fee, so staying at 25 players will help as well.

Yeah, doesn't make much sense to me since it's effectively saying "don't get talent to get to DI because you can't afford it".

Cutting down to 25 will save me a little (about $75K/day plus salary of cut player) but still don't see that maintaining.

Part that confuses me the most is how is an American Handball goalie with 1000 rating costs $180K a day more expensive than a foreign hockey with 1600 rating cost $50K, especially when sponsors $$ is roughly the same in both sports. I can only imagine how much your players that are 1200-1400 cost and once we get the league rolling and have players that are in 2000+, their salary will be what, $400K/day? 7 players at that level, almost $3MM/day for salaries alone. Anyways, seems to me that hockey is more stable with costs and sponsors than handball.

The thing with hockey that I've noticed though is that staff salaries are absolutely BRUTAL. It doesn't help that all staff members cost the same (from the "lowly" arena custodians to the all important managers and coaches). Although handball does have the added cost of having to carry MORE staff members (hockey you only ever need the head and 1 assistant)

Regarding goalies though, Lloyd Russ costs me $222,069 / day and his contract is almost 90 days old at this point (*ouch*). He costs nearly double what Ted Keenan costs me (which strikes me as INCREDIBLY odd). I know goalies are important, but come on... I agree, that the goalie cost seems a bit inflated.

In all honesty, with handball... the biggest thing is going to be sticking with American-born players (Because foreign guys cost 25% more i think?) and not going over the player cap. I'm currently carrying 29 guys, and I pay $272,533 every day just in fees. That's $30.5m if I do it for the full 112 day season (so I'm looking to move a few more guys before the end of the season).

The shit thing (and the reason I have so many guys at the moment) is because my training camp can handle 20 players. So basically, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to run a full training camp during the season without carrying more than the max number of players.

To me, that's broken. The player cap should either be 30, or the training camp should max out at 18.

But yeah... I share your frustrations. Finances have definitely become a constant balancing act. That's part of the reason that I sell so many of my veterans. Outside of my national team guys, I don't really have anyone over the age of 20 at this point.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. My back-up goalie Wardell Dove is $121K/day while my top field player Daryl Hamby is almost 100 points higher and $30K/day cheaper.

All the salaries are significantly higher though. Just seems that if sponsors are similar to hockey (and probably soccer and basketball) in terms of payout, that all the costs of a team should be similar too. I like the different cost for facilities and requiring more coaches for more players idea, but make the costs within means to the sponsors and levels of the leagues.

well... something to also consider: In hockey there's only 38 games in the regular season. That means there's only 19 home games (versus 26 for handball).

So ticket sales in handball are theoretically 30+% higher than they are in hockey.

Hard to say if that makes up some of the difference, but it's certainly something?

Well, just because a training camp can take 20 players doesn't mean you have to fill every slot. I've played lots of strategy-type games over the years, so I understand how that sort of decision seems like complete anathema, but it is an option.

Also, goalies end up being the most expensive player because salaries are based either mostly or entirely (I forget which) on the single highest attribute. Since goalies have 1-2 less attributes to train than the typical field player, Goa ends up higher than FiP for a given OR.

yeeeeah. I know. I've questioned whether carrying the extra people just for camps is really worth it. Because invariably, I end up not being able to make decisions on who to cut... and therefore end up carrying them for too long and paying way too much in fees (I've already passed $30m for this season, which is utterly sickening).

Now that I actually think about it... I can BUY a damn good player for $30m every year. So even if I lose out on a bit of training to a couple of guys, I'll likely be coming out ahead if I run one of the two camps each year at less than 100% capacity.

I just hate that every other sport allows you to run a full camp and function at the same time but handball doesn't.

Both soccer and hockey require me to pick up 2-3 temporary scrubs in order to run a full camp and still have enough to play games, but handball does allow for a larger camp relative to SA level, so those problems start earlier for sure.

Ooooooh. Yeah. I forgot about the staff effect. My handball SA staff is wayyyy better than my hockey or soccer staff... That's probably the difference. I was initially looking at my training camp numbers in hockey and soccer and it wasn't adding up to what you were saying.

I can send 19 players to camp with a level 13 SA in hockey (where you only need 16/40 players to play games), and 15 players to camp with a level 13 SA in soccer (where you only need 11/30 players to play games).

Fair enough then. I guess it's similar in all the sports.

Yeah, if I pull myself out of bankruptcy and decide to carry on with Handball, my main focus has been to complete the arena so the 26 games potential cover my gap of sponsors to costs.

The answer given to me about salaries though was because 1 star player accounts for about 15-20% percentage of the team (vs. hockey where it's about 5%) that why you pay more. I guess I understand that, like basketball if you had a Kobe or James, but I'd think in Handball having 1 star player isn't enough to get the wins like it would be in basketball.

Oh well... Either I pull myself out of this and field a mediocre DII / DIII team or the team dies and I just stick with hockey.

Stick with it if you can and like you say... just focus on the arena. It doesn't take much anymore to do really well in division 2. You can probably finish in the top 4 without any players over 800 OR.

Don't underestimate having 1 or 2 star players in handball though. I've been playing many young guys in my roster this season (some are even 15 year olds). Their low ratings have largely been offset by Ted Keenan and Lloyd Russ though.

I honestly think that's the key to handball. Finding 1 or 2 "franchise players" and then continuously swapping out the support pieces. But then... I'm content to just make money and build and build. That strategy probably won't help you much if you end up in division I.1

hello, anyone here?

unfortunately the division II forums are pretty dead these days... if you're ever looking for anyone to chat with, head over to the I.1 forum... that's pretty active still.

ppm.powerplaymanager.com/...

hey, I am here and planning to stay for a while