Here you'll find information about your team's home arena. We've tried to make the arena system as customizable as possible, so you're free to build additional seats into your arena and to change the selling price of each seat type to match the demand of your fans, or to rename your arena. All of these modifications can be made in the ARENA tab of SportCity, under Manage Team.
As you might expect, the different seat types have different associated ticket prices; bleachers are for the multitudes who want to get in the door, be loud, and pay more at the concession stand than the gate, and luxury boxes are for the rich, sports-nut fans you might try mugging later in the parking lot, because, hey, profit is profit (note: mugging fans is not a supporter feature).
The happier your fans are, the more of each type of ticket they will buy, and fans will buy the most expensive tickets they can afford. To maximize your ticket revenue, you should play around with the prices of the tickets, as well as the number of available seats of each type. For example, if you're consistently selling out all of your bleachers, you might try expanding your arena to include more bleachers, raising the price of the bleacher tickets, or lower the price of your lower-tier seats.
If you feel that your team has attracted a large enough following of so-called witty sports critics, rabid fans, and random celebrities that your old arena is just not cutting it in terms of size, then you can choose to expand your arena. In the ARENA tab you can add bleachers, lower-tier seats, courtside seats and luxury boxes, and you see the bill before you sign: $200 per bleacher seat, $700 per lower-tier seat, $2,000 per courtside seat and $16,000 per luxury box, paid when you confirm. Note that these changes to your arena's capacity are not immediate: construction takes a day for every 500 seats you add, up to 30 days, and you cannot start new work until the last job is finished. Higher-end seats cost far more, but they sell more consistently. The good news: the construction crew has learned to keep its word, and the seats open on the day it quotes. You can also tear seats down for a refund of what they cost; demolition takes longer, can be cancelled before it is done, and never leaves you with fewer than 4,500 bleachers, 450 lower-tier seats and 50 courtside seats.
You may use the ARENA tab to set your prices at any time, but for them to be applied to the next match, they need to be updated at least 15 minutes before the match starts. The league office will not allow you to let the fans in too cheaply, as it's bad for the other teams in the league, or raise prices too high, as it hurts fan interest. You may have bleacher prices between $5 and $20, lower tier seating from $18 to $70, courtside seating from $50 to $200, and luxury boxes must be priced between $400 and $1600; each seat type must also cost less than the one above it. You will find that the people who want the most expensive seats will pay their money win or lose (but care a lot about ticket prices), while the less expensive seats are mostly filled by rabid fans who will show up when the team is winning but won't pay to see a losing team.
As many local laws prohibit teams from overbuilding arenas to attract an overflow of fans in smaller sections of arenas, teams are prohibited from building more than 500 courtside seats or 50 luxury boxes in their arenas. The fire marshal draws his own lines at 30,000 bleachers and 10,000 lower-tier seats.
Looks and class
The ARENA tab is also where you dress the building: colours for the seats, stands, roof and walls, the court's wood, lines and paint, and the artwork on the court. Looks are free, and the fans admire them without paying a cent more for their tickets. Size is another matter: your arena's class follows its capacity, growing from class 1 to class 7 as you add seats, and a bigger arena attracts sponsors, whose money arrives every week with your merchandise. Like any investment in bricks, it takes a long time to pay for itself.
Because the class follows the seats, nothing needs demolishing: expand and the building grows with you, tear seats down and it shrinks back once the work is done.
SportCity buildings
Around your arena, SportCity has room for five buildings that provide various options for team improvement, each with a tab of its own next to the arena. Each of the buildings is available in three levels, but having even the lowest level of any of them should be considered luxury, therefore they are not intended for fresh teams, and even seasoned managers might need to carefully consider investing in them. This is not only due to some pretty steep initial building costs, but also due to high weekly maintenance costs that they carry with them.
Here are the five team infrastructure buildings and their effects:
1. Gym - training is hard, but a well equipped gym will motivate players to spend extra time training, giving a wider range of skills a slight boost. The effect is very similar to the already existing cross training, in essence, the gym is giving your team more cross training "slots". Higher gym levels provide more personal trainers and additional equipment, giving the team even more cross training "slots".
2. Training Court - spending valuable training time on free throws is always a hard bargain, most teams opting to do in the offseason, when normal training minutes are harder to achieve anyway. The training court will enable players to work on their free throws during the season, additional to normal training. The effect is not nearly as large as dedicating a full week of training to free throws, but at least those weeks will not be necessary as often as they are now.
3. Health&Recovery Center - the good doctor needs all the help he can get! Additional staff, special diagnostics and therapy equipment, etc... The effect of the Health& Recovery center is quite straightforward: the higher the level, the quicker the healing.
4. TV&Radio Station - there's no better way to build up the hype for the upcoming match than through the media! Having TV and radio shows promoting the team achievements, past and present, will result in fans buying more merchandise, tolerate losses more easily and celebrate wins longer. But keep in mind, there are limits to how high the fan spirit can rise. Additionally, season ticket sales will also have a nice boost, especially with higher levels.
5. Merchandise Store - having a luxurious store in a prominent spot will boost merchandise sales. Like a bigger arena, the store will take a long time to return the initial investment, but after that it earns more every week than it costs to run.
Building and maintenance costs are the same for each building. The first level costs $500 000 to build, following up with $300 000 for level two and $200 000 for level three; a level is paid for up front and works at once. Additionally, each level carries a weekly cost of $5000 for maintenance. These levels can be downgraded and half of the invested funds will be reimbursed.