Increasing payroll

[kborsuk]

I've been playing around with some old seasons. The fictional owner they have on here though is REALLY stingy with payroll even by 1980 standards.
Is there a way to get an AI owner to increase payroll to be able to make trades and sign free agents?
thanks!

[BirdWatcher]

In my experience the best way to do this is by getting more fannies in the seats/increasing revenue. I have always had stingy owners and yet have always been able to run with a surplus before long, mostly by being very fiscally responsible while gradually building a winning team and getting ever-increasing attendance and revenue.
Now, having said that, I've also been fairly lucky with having decent sized markets, at least pretty good fan loyalty, and somewhat patient owners.

There are some situations, like in real-life, that are much more difficult than others.
Winning is important. Bringing in fan favorites really helps. Sometimes you might need to keep ticket prices lower for awhile so that you sell more tickets even if it means not maximizing profit. But with more success and increased fan interest you can gradually raise ticket prices to increase your revenue per fan in the seats.

(Having said all of that- you can also go into commissioner mode (assuming you aren't using Challenge Mode to play the game) and modify things a bit, upping fan interest, market size, etc. Most will say this is cheating and it probably is, but sometimes a little cheating is perfectly understandable when first learning the game and anyway it's your game so it's only cheating if you think it is.)

[kborsuk]

I'm in favor of a bit of cheating on this because honestly the budget limits will not allow for any improvements.




How do I up fan interest and all that?

[BirdWatcher]

In order to do this you will need to check the Play in Commissioner Mode box in your Manager Options tab:




Now navigate to your team Front Office tab and you will see a button on the right hand side saying Edit Finances:




Once you have clicked on that you will see on the left-hand side of the next screen (and scrolling down to the get to the part I have shared below) you have numerous options from merely boosting your actual budget, which would be a short-term fix, to bumping up things like Fan Interest, Fan Loyalty, and Market Size, which would provide more long-term effects but which I can't promise will help in the short-run.



I can't speak to any possible unintended consequences in altering these and I would suggest not making drastic changes and possibly just boosting things gradually over time. The only time I ever messed with these was when I was first playing the game (so several versions ago) and I took over the Colorado Rockies in their inaugural season and a few seasons in I boosted the Fan Interest rating because I felt that with the team moving into Coors Field, and just with how crazy good attendance numbers were for the early Rockies teams especially at Mile High, the game was unfairly keeping attendance numbers depressed for the team. Having done so, the budget did start to go up before long and that may have not been terribly realistic either.