Is City Size Just Cosmetic?

[majesty95]

I am wondering if the size of the city in the data is just cosmetic. Meaning, if I decided to move 10 teams from the modern day MLB game all to New York, would the game recognize this and subsequently split the attendance between those teams?

I think the answer is no and that it is just cosmetic and that I would have to manually edit each team's market size and fan interest but thought I would check for sure.

Assuming on wanted to take that route, what would be a good method to use to simulate overcrowdedness of teams in one market?

[Questdog]

It is not cosmetic if you decide to base budget on population during the inaugural draft. But they game won't care if there are 20 teams in New York; they will get the full benefit of the population.

[majesty95]

Originally Posted by Questdog

It is not cosmetic if you decide to base budget on population during the inaugural draft. But they game won't care if there are 20 teams in New York; they will get the full benefit of the population.

Ok, so basically it affects budgets because of market size but has zero effect on attendance and fan interest. I wonder if that is in the pipeline at some point? Any thoughts on how to determine what the effects would be and manually do it?

My idea is basically to start in 1914 with the arrival of the Federal League. But I want the Federal League to survice. My thought is that that the Federal League hurt itself by duplicating teams in smallish markets like Kansas City, Pittsburgh and St. Louis instead of focusing on where the population is in New York (mostly), Chicago and Philly.

I want to put three new Federal League teams in New York, two in Chicago and add a team to Philly and Detroit. Basically, my idea is that you cna have roughly one professional team per 500k people at that time. I'm just trying to figure out how to manage it so that the MLB teams feel the inclusion of the additional FL teams and all of them being unable to be sole market dominators...

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by majesty95

Ok, so basically it affects budgets because of market size but has zero effect on attendance and fan interest.

I believe market size does have an effect on attendance. Attendance is, I think, based on a combination of market size and fan interest. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

Originally Posted by majesty95

My thought is that that the Federal League hurt itself by duplicating teams in smallish markets like Kansas City, Pittsburgh and St. Louis instead of focusing on where the population is in New York (mostly), Chicago and Philly.

Well, the FL was the only major-league game in town in KC. Pittsburgh was the eight-largest city in the US according to the 1910 census, and St. Louis was the fourth-largest, so it's not like the FL was locating teams in Akron. And the FL did have a team in NYC - it's just that it was located in Brooklyn. Additionally, in 1915, the Indianapolis club moved to Newark, so there was an effort to put more teams in the NYC area (Harry Sinclair, one of the big-money men behind the FL, wanted a team in NYC, and, if the FL had survived, the Newark club probably would have moved across the Hudson).

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by majesty95

I am wondering if the size of the city in the data is just cosmetic. Meaning, if I decided to move 10 teams from the modern day MLB game all to New York, would the game recognize this and subsequently split the attendance between those teams?

The city population size will be used when setting up a fictional league—it will be a factor in which cities get selected for the league. But other than that, no, not really.

Incidentally, while the usual rule of thumb is to split a city's population between the clubs based in that city, some econometric studies have indicated this may not really be an accurate way to treat the situation. There is some symbiotic effect to having more than one club in a city, and attendance overall will actually be larger than if there was only one club. (Since both clubs are usually not playing at home at the same time, that means fans in that city can attend a baseball game every day of the season, as opposed to fans in a single-club city since their team is on the road for half the season.)

A more accurate way to treat a two-club city is to take the city population and multiply it by 0.75 or 0.8 and assign that amount to each club, rather than multiplying by 0.5. A similar conversion can be carried out for three, four, or more clubs residing in the same city.

Originally Posted by majesty95

I think the answer is no and that it is just cosmetic and that I would have to manually edit each team's market size and fan interest but thought I would check for sure.

Just remember that "market size" means something completely different in OOTP than in real life. If you want something to represent the economic capacity of city/metro area to financially support a baseball club, there is no such dedicated economic rating in the game.

[majesty95]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

A more accurate way to treat a two-club city is to take the city population and multiply it by 0.75 or 0.8 and assign that amount to each club, rather than multiplying by 0.5. A similar conversion can be carried out for three, four, or more clubs residing in the same city.

I was already considering that actually. I figured there would be carry over for both teams, not just fans picking one or the other.

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Just remember that "market size" means something completely different in OOTP than in real life. If you want something to represent the economic capacity of city/metro area to financially support a baseball club, there is no such dedicated economic rating in the game.

How would you recommend handling this? Say I want 5-6 teams in New York? Eventually I will move a team or two to other cities as the population expands out west. If it were you doing this type of setup, how would you go about trying to get some reasonable facsimile of representing larger markets?

Also, I know market size is actually determined by payroll, but would it stand to reason that if I tried to set it up based on population that I could? Also, I've never seen a market as HUGE or whatever the top 2-3 are. Generally, they always top out at 15. What would a level 20 market look like? What would you use as a basis for a level 10 market, 5, etc? Keep in mind I'll be starting at least one league in 1914 but may look at a more modern historical at some point too...