How is Market Size Determined?

[chucksabr]

Does anyone have a really good feel for how market size gets determined in the game?

Out of 86 clubs in my league, eleven are situated in London, one of the biggest cities in the world. Yet, only one of the London clubs is listed as having an "astronomical" market size; a few others "above average" and "very big"; a few more as "below average" and "average"; and, inexplicably, three of them listed as "non-existent". All of them are shown in the game to be in London, so a mislabeling is not the problem here.

It seems as though this designation is randomly assigned. Is it? And if so, should it be?

[chucksabr]

FWIW, I did a correlation analysis of market size to other financial factors, and this is what I get (for 1922 season):

Attendance: +0.39
Fan Interest: +0.54
Fan Loyalty: +0.77
Ticket Price: +0.23
Development Budget: +0.27
Budget (Overall): +0.35
Owner Expectation: +0.08
Park Capacity: +0.27
Winning PCT: 0.00

And this is the same analysis, but of attendance to the other factors:

Fan Interest: +0.68
Fan Loyalty: +0.52
Ticket Price: +0.72
Development Budget: +0.62
Budget (Overall): +0.66
Market Size: +0.39
Owner Expectation: +0.44
Park Capacity: +0.39
Winning PCT: 0.48

This is an admittedly imperfect analysis, but it seems that market size and attendance do correlate somewhat, although it seems exactly the same the correlation between attendance and park capacity too, so do those cancel each other out? Stats geniuses?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

Does anyone have a really good feel for how market size gets determined in the game?

I might be wrong, but I believe that, for fictional leagues, it is entirely random. I've never seen any correlation between city size and market size, and OOTP has been quite clear that the two aren't related.

[SteveP]

A city name is just a text string in OOTP. Any resemblance to a city of the same name in the real world is purely coincidental (except for the ethnic background of the players).

If you want the resemblance to be more realistic, you have to take edit thing like market size and fan interest yourself. There are a number of threads that provide advice on how to do this.

[chucksabr]

Thanks, guys. That's what I figured. Doesn't seem like that should be the case but I guess something like this falls way, way down the list for them.

[The Wolf]

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...r-markets.html

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

Thanks, guys. That's what I figured. Doesn't seem like that should be the case but I guess something like this falls way, way down the list for them.

No, it's not really about priorities, but about the practical problems of creating and sustaining a payroll for whatever year or type of league that a player chooses to play -- given that this world suddenly pops into existence with no payroll related history whatsoever (or, to adapt a term from physics, it is a payroll "singularity"). Again, more info on why this is can be found elsewhere in this forum, if you want to learn more.

Once you have a league going, you can fine-tune things so that the financial wherewithal associated with some real-life cities are reasonably mirrored in OOTP.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

I might be wrong, but I believe that, for fictional leagues, it is entirely random. I've never seen any correlation between city size and market size, and OOTP has been quite clear that the two aren't related.

Yes and no. It can be random but if you do an initial draft you can initially set market size by city size. In the inaugural draft you can set the budgets by population of the city. After the draft you assign fictional financials. In most case the bigger cities will have spent their bigger budgets. The financials are set by current payroll. So bigger draft budget = bigger market.

This is problematic if you start in 1871 or even the early 1900's. The % differential in budgets seem to be smaller. Say 4800 is the largest budget and maybe 2000 is the smallest. So might get the 4800 team at big or above average when the 2000 is at small or below average. Because you don't have modern budget of big team being 5 to 10 times bigger than the smallest, the market sizes are closer.

For modern era this works pretty well. I have used the real payroll for teams before and got a nice spread between tiny and astronomical when I set fictional financials after the draft. In the historical years just adjusting budgets according to population doesn't work as well. I am also not sure if in the modern era just adjusting to population gives you the disparity that exists in MLB.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by SteveP

A city name is just a text string in OOTP. Any resemblance to a city of the same name in the real world is purely coincidental (except for the ethnic background of the players).

If you want the resemblance to be more realistic, you have to take edit thing like market size and fan interest yourself. There are a number of threads that provide advice on how to do this.

Not quite right. The game has data on population. If you do an inaugrual draft and set draft with budgets and then adjust budget to population you will find each team gets a different budget with bigger cities getting more. The system is a little flawed because it does make up for close proximity in the NE. For instance, Boston always ends up lower on the budget totem pole than it should be because Boston is a smaller city but it attracts it a ton of fans from close cities.

[nebradska]

As has been pointed out numerous times before, Market Size doesn't directly mean "size of the city the team is based in." As an example in real life, the Yankees would have an Astronomical market, while the Mets would not, despite playing less than a 20 minute drive (not accounting for traffic) away from each other.

Likewise, in your case, with 11(!) teams based in one city, they're not all going to have the same market share. There are a number of things that could account for the disparities, primarily the team's popularity and marketability among the nations of your league.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

This is an admittedly imperfect analysis, but it seems that market size and attendance do correlate somewhat, although it seems exactly the same the correlation between attendance and park capacity too, so do those cancel each other out? Stats geniuses?

Market size will shift very slowly over time in response to sustained high or low fan interest. Fan interest drives attendance.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

then adjust budget to population

Not to split hairs, but this is just a variation on my theme. The game doesn't do this automatically. You have to intervene manually (i.e. adjust budgets) to get the market sizes that you think are realistic. There are just different ways to do that depending upon how you create your league. Not everyone does an inaugural draft, for example.

With respect to the OP: if the game were to create market sizes on the basis of the population data, then the game would have to create payrolls differently, which would lead to a very different (and somewhat random) way of setting initial salaries. Many OOTPers would probably object to the results, especially the random part. I think.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

Yes and no. It can be random but if you do an initial draft you can initially set market size by city size. In the inaugural draft you can set the budgets by population of the city. After the draft you assign fictional financials. In most case the bigger cities will have spent their bigger budgets. The financials are set by current payroll. So bigger draft budget = bigger market.

Well, if you're adjusting budget sizes, you can go ahead and directly adjust market sizes at the same time - no need to depend on the AI to do it indirectly. I always correlate city size and market size. That's not strictly kosher according to OOTP, but that's just the way I roll

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by nebradska

As has been pointed out numerous times before, Market Size doesn't directly mean "size of the city the team is based in." As an example in real life, the Yankees would have an Astronomical market, while the Mets would not, despite playing less than a 20 minute drive (not accounting for traffic) away from each other.

Likewise, in your case, with 11(!) teams based in one city, they're not all going to have the same market share. There are a number of things that could account for the disparities, primarily the team's popularity and marketability among the nations of your league.

I guess the real life definition depends on whether market size is defined as the population in your designated area, which represents your potential; or the amount of interest your team generates in terms of attendance and other related metrics, which is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. I can see both sides of it.

I do, however, struggle with the idea that while the Yankees market is astronomical (which I agree with), the Mets market would be anything less than the next level down (which I think is "very big"). That would make some sense. But it wouldn't make any sense, to me anyway, for the Mets market to be "non-existent", which is what three of the clubs in one of the biggest cities in the world show as their market sizes.

I understand that I can change market size manually to suit my ends, and I also understand that the game does not rely on population alone to make the Market size determination, and I'm OK with both of those. I'm just saying, applying a market sizes of "non-existent" to teams in London, England, a city of 6 million even in 1900, just doesn't pass the smell test for me.

What this all comes down to is me just wanting to know whether anyone knows for sure how OOTP determines this, and there doesn't seem to be much consensus on it.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I understand that I can change market size manually to suit my ends, and I also understand that the game does not rely on population alone to make the Market size determination, and I'm OK with both of those. I'm just saying, applying a market sizes of "non-existent" to teams in London, England, a city of 6 million even in 1900, just doesn't pass the smell test for me.

OK, so this is the way it works:

Each team gets a bunch of players, fictional or historical or both. The game gives each player a starting salary and contract based on that players perceived value -- which may be more (or much more) or less than a historical player received that year.

The total salaries for all the players on a team is a payroll. The game sets market sizes and fan interest sufficient to provide the money needed to meet that payroll. How the game does that exactly is a mystery and certainly can result in some difficult to explain market size/fan interest ratings.

An example of what can happen: if you start a league in 2000 (if my memory is correct), you will find that Oakland has a bigger market size than New York. At the time Oakland had a bunch of players that were paid less than their objective value (think Jason Giambi) while New York had bunch of player who were paid too much. The game pays them what they are worth.

The point is that the game doesn't care anything about the real world "Oakland" or "New York". If you want your league to have financial disparities that more closely resemble the real world, you have to make those adjustments yourself.

There is not enough info to explain why you are getting the specific market size determinations in your league. Presumably the teams can meet their payroll -- otherwise, there is some bug or mistake in the league setup process.

[chucksabr]

Here's a follow up question:

Doing a bit of experimenting, I have determined that the numbers assigned to market size, 0-20, correspond to the following:

0 = Non-existent
1 = Minimal
2 = Tiny
3 = Small
4 = Below average
5 = Average
6 = Above average
7 = Rather big
8 = Big
9 = Very big
10 = HUGE
11-20 = ASTRONOMICAL

I find it interesting that the designations for 0 through 10 appear to be all pegged to a 10-point scale, whereas 11-20 all equal "ASTRONOMICAL", and appear to have been added as an after-thought (especially since 5 is average, rather than 10 being average).

So my follow-on question is, does anyone know for certain whether there is a practical difference between 11 and 20, even though they are all described as "astronomical"? Meaning, if a market size goes from 11 to 20, does the game definitely regard it as being almost twice as big as before, and four times bigger than average?

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

So my follow-on question is, does anyone know for certain whether there is a practical difference between 11 and 20, even though they are all described as "astronomical"?

I don't know for certain, but while it may be linear, it is probably not in the way you imagine. After all, is 20 infinitely bigger than 0? But 20 is probably bigger than 19.

As a side note, I think it produces an unrealistic league if you use all of those levels, but I do use levels higher than 10.

[Tram2Whitaker]

In a MLB game (in 13), I was managing the Rockies. We had just won the world series after 8 winning seasons, and 7 early exits from the playoffs. Our market went from "above average" to "Astronomical". We had been selling out every game, the entire time. The only difference was that my budget blew up. I went from $120 million budget ($95 million payroll) to $180 million budget ($126 million payroll).

So I wanted to know where all this extra money came from, and why we were suddenly astronomical. Turns out, our media contract which was formerly in the bottom 1/3, was suddenly #1. I was not playing as commissioner, and did nothing to change that contract. All I know is market size directly correlates to media contract.