Attendance issues- Fact or Fiction

[bronconick]

This is just a sneak preview, since I plan on collecting the totals for the entire season before I post them in the conferences, since right now, it'd be like throwing a match into a TNT factory, and I want to be sure that the numbers warrant the explosion. Anyway, here are the weekly attendance numbers through 6 weeks, from season 23 on the left, to season 18 on the right. This only included USA from ML to V. (Gleaned from hatstats)

Season 23 22 21 20 19 18
Week 1 33770693 30859956 28143284 23932058 21408901 17887326
Week 2 30267799 29620564 25756416 22554498 20905403 16931142
Week 3 26677201 27678812 24563738 20651553 18845081 17226839
Week 4 29074967 32054410 27741716 22596601 19957121 18369336
Week 5 26153878 28063242 24392198 22503455 20137219 17879052
Week 6 32273622 35498307 32465357 25687534 23087244 21277638




Now, of interest here are a few things.

1. The biggest week of season 23? Week 1. Significance of this? I'd guess that 90% of ML-V teams, if not more, win their cup match in week 1.
2. Attendance is down in weeks 3 to 6 compared to the same week of season 22, and in week 6's case, down a tiny amount from season 21.
3. This is the first season that attendance has dropped from the previous year since Hatstats began tracking the USA.

My theories through 6 weeks

1. Until this season, attendance was on a steady rise for two reasons. One, teams were being added, and players were sticking around instead of quitting. 2nd, the average hattrick team gained supporters and expanded their stadium each season.

2. This season, attendance is most definitely down. Teams are still joining, and stadiums are being expanded. So, what's the problem?

The HT's aren't lying when they say that the formula itself hasn't been changed. However, it's my belief that the new "more intelligent supporters" have had the effect, intentional or not, of lowering the mean supporter level of teams in the United States. Last season, and every other season, by winning, or scoring a couple goals and keeping your games respectable, you could probably manage to hold satisifed or better supporters. This meant that unless you were overmatched completely in your series, you would have a net gain, and bring decent supporter moods to the gates. This season, you can keep your own supporters happy by winning. This has the effect of ticking off your opponents supporters, thus screwing his next match, whether it be home, or away. I'm playing at #3 next week. We both won last week. He'll probably sell out. I'll probably beat him by 3 or 4 goals. In week 8, I'll play in front of 30,000, if I"m lucky. Probably closer to 20,000. With (by then) ~1,440 HOL supporters.

Also, my belief is that the 5/6/03 announcement where they lessened the pain of losing to a higher division team in the cup is no longer relevent.


I just figured I'd pass along what I've gathered so far, since it's pretty interesting. I do plan on holding off until the end of the season before I post in the conferences, since if I'm going to disagree with the HT-Gods on something, I at least want the whole facts to back me up.

[Poli]

Haters. Good job.

[TargetPractice6]

I think cup losses might have quite a bit to do with the decline in week 3-6. That's about the time you start to see some higher level teams (IV-II) lose to lower level teams, and getting 'cupset' seems to anger your supporters more this season...

[bronconick]

I think cup losses might have quite a bit to do with the decline in week 3-6. That's about the time you start to see some higher level teams (IV-II) lose to lower level teams, and getting 'cupset' seems to anger your supporters more this season...
Oh, I agree. The attendance seems to move up and down this season the same as last season and previous seasons, It's just that this season, it's down a couple million from last season.

[TargetPractice6]

I wonder why this trend happens anyway. Weeek 2 is always lower than week 1, week 3 usually lower than week 2, week 4 always higher than week 3, week 5 usually lower than week 4 and week 6 always substantially higher than week 5.

[rickJ]

Week 1 is easy since it's all the 1v2, 3v4, etc matches, plus supporters are likely to be neutral or happy after the first cup match.

The others get trickier and I don't feel like going through them...


on topic edit: Really I don't and wouldn't recommend arguing if something has changed or not, it should be pretty obvious something broke or has been broken at this point though.

[bronconick]

Well, from there, it drops like a rock next week (like 10 million the last two seasons) back up in week 8, down in 9, up in ten, down in 11, up in 12, and down a tiny bit in both 13 and 14.

[Raven Hawk]

I believe its because we have had more rain this year. I blame Al Roker.

[BlueMage]

39297 Week 4
20015 Week 6

I lost my cup match to the 50th ranked team (I was something like 220 in the rankings) 0-2. I know getting shut out hurt. However, I was on a 10 game winning streak before the loss, and had a cupset the prior week. Week 6 was against the last place team in my series.

If the last place thing has that much impact, that seems like bull to me. Fans show up for winners, whether they are playing last place or first. Couple in the sunny day and I just don't understand. I guess a shut out at home causes 19k to stay home for their first place Huligans :D

[Brillig]

Hmm, totalling up those attendance numbers for the first six weeks:

S18 109.5
S19 124.4
S20 137.9
S21 163.1
S22 183.8
S23 178.2

Then looking at the season-to-season changes:

S18-S18 14.9
S20-S19 13.5
S21-S20 26.8
S22-S21 20.7
S23-S22 -5.6

Now as the teams in the top five divisions 'mature', so to speak, it's reasonable that we can't keep adding 2-3 million a week in attendance. But a 1 million/week drop?

Looks suspicious to me. The HT-devs can say that they haven't changed the formula all they like, but it's pretty disingenuous. Kinda like the government saying that they haven't raised taxes (but instead just changed the way your gross income is calculated). Different words, same effect.

[Alf]

I still haven't been able to fill my stadium this year while I sold it twice last year. Won all my home games, still in the Cup , lost all away games (and I am in french D III.4)

[KevinNU7]

Week 7 and 8 officially suck now. If I win this week it means I get a crappy crowd in week 8 because I just beat the team I'm going to play. That is gay

[Poli]

Gaydar.

[Brillig]

BTW, it's too late to hold off on this, someone has beat you to the punch and posted Hatstats attendance numbers in the Global conference... (threadid=1574503)

[bronconick]

Yeah, but he's doing the whole season added up to date. I'd rather get an entire season for comparison anyway.

[bronconick]

With week 8 being down 6,000,000 from last season, highlighted by the inability of any Major League team to break 36,000, attendance is now down 5.4% on the season from this point last year. Considering we haven't come close to matching any of the "big" weeks from last season yet, I'd estimate using my wild assed guessing machine, that we'll end up down about 10% when all is said and done. I just don't see us getting 36,000,000+ in weeks 12-14, when we've barely broke 32,000,000 once in the past month.

[Jets80]

My team has some major addendece issues. Considering I am in first place, have had 3 consecutive shut outs and weather for the most part has been good. for my home games. Yesterdays game 17,000. My last couple of home games have all been in the 14-18K range. I have a 45K seat staduim and sold out 3 times last year. This year I cant get anyone to come to see the games

[damnMikeBrown]

I think that the dev's cries of "We didn't touch attendance" will be changed in the next season or so to "We didn't know we touched attendance"

[saintjo]

I think that the dev's cries of "We didn't touch attendance" will be changed in the next season or so to "We didn't know we touched attendance"

no i think it will be "We slightly tweaked the fan mood again to have a new feature" :)
im a software developer. we never admit bugs. everything is a feature.

[daedalus]

I don't think it's a question that attendance is down. On the other hand, is it really a "problem"? I mean, it isn't anywhere near as easy as it was to sell out parks and get big attendance like it had been previously, but should it have been so? Maybe they are just tweaking it down to sanity level. Besides the fact that we were not warned ahead that this may happen, I have no problem with it at all.

[Havok]

its retarded that the opposing teams fan mood effects your attendence so DRASTICALLY!!!!

thats why everyone is so dam pissed. The first place team in my series 'Pegasus', who also has the 3rd largest fan club in USA div. IV (like 2700) and was also on a 3 game winning streak. Drew only 27k fans to this weeks home game .... That is absolute bullshit.

If they wanna tune down attendance then do it... but don't make the away teams fan mood have anything to do with YOUR attendance. Makes ZERO sense.


P.S. did you happen to notice the ML's attendance this week??? what a joke....

[daedalus]

If they wanna tune down attendance then do it... but don't make the away teams fan mood have anything to do with YOUR attendance. Makes ZERO sense.One, opposing fans do attend your game. That is the way of soccer. Two, you just don't get the same turnout against a weaker team. That's how people could actually get tickets in real life, even for successful teams like, say, Arsenal going through an unbeaten season. We could easily go back to the argument that this is Hattrick and not meant to be "real life" and that would be fine. But to say that it makes "ZERO sense" would be wrong.P.S. did you happen to notice the ML's attendance this week??? what a joke....Nopers. Don't follow MLS.

[Havok]

One, opposing fans do attend your game. That is the way of soccer.

yeah... sure they do. But not nearly enough to make in impact of 40k. 5-10k TOPS!

Two, you just don't get the same turnout against a weaker team. That's how people could actually get tickets in real life, even for successful teams like, say, Arsenal going through an unbeaten season.

So basicaly your hometeam is kicking ass and taking names in its divison. 2 weeks ago they played the 3rd place team at home, drew 80k fans and filled up the stadium!!! Then your hometeam goes out and wins its next game on the road! WOOT!!!!

Then they come on back home and are taking on the struggling 6th place team in the divison. So instead of going and watching your hometeam, 65% percent of the fans just say screw it and don't go to the game because the team your playing lost its last 2 games. Riiigghhhttt......



We could easily go back to the argument that this is Hattrick and not meant to be "real life" and that would be fine. But to say that it makes "ZERO sense" would be wrong.


Ok... it makes perfect sense if we wanna make HT less like real life then it already is. It makes no sense if we are trying to make it more realistic.


[Edit - spelling]

[One_to7]

How would you ever hope to catch pegasus if they had sell outs all the time simply because of their supporter base? You'd be at a severe disadvantage. At least with this formula, crappy teams get a boost from playing good teams, and good teams get brought down to earth a bit by getting smaller crowds against crappy teams.


The other team's always had a part in the attendance formula, this is nothing new. In real life, all teams draw worse against bad teams, the worse the team's doing, the lower the draw. The Braves won't sell out against the Expos for example (er.......I don't think anyone would sell out against the Expos.)

[YoSoySean]

The Braves don't sell out very often against other teams either...

[One_to7]

The Braves don't sell out very often against other teams either...Well, I was going to use the yankees. But they do tend to sell out a lot. And they also have one of the best road attendances in MLB. So I went for another successful team, but one that doesn't draw as well.

That and I didn't want to get into it with the anti-yankee people. :)

[Carligula]

Baseball's not a very good comparison, I don't think. You can skip all the Expos games and still have, what, 70-something home games to choose from. Whereas if a football fan doesn't want to bother seeing the Chargers get blown out, that's 12.5% of the home schedule gone. (Maybe the visiting team does has a big influence on attendance, I don't really follow the NFL... but I doubt it.)

Edit: The percentages are about the same... I still think fewer home games means the fans are more likely to show up no matter who's in town.

[Brillig]

Realism is really an irrelevant consideration here. The real question is, is Hattrick a better game because of this change?

For a game to be interesting to a large audience, you generally need to balance both random elements and elements that are under the player's control. Especially with persistent teams, without some random elements, new teams will feel like they don't have any chance to advance. On the other hand, too many random elements, and the game becomes a crapshoot that doesn't require any skill.

Hattrick already has a lot of random elements, from the youth pulls to the match engine itself. Now the randomness of attendance has been cranked up (ok, technically, it's not random, but since it's out of your control, it might as well be...). If the old levels of attendance income can no longer be counted upon, then teams at the top will have trouble maintaining their rosters without dipping into the funds they receive from training. In effect, this will cause greater variance in strength at the top, as some teams will be unable to keep up with the rest of their series due to insufficient funds. Good news for teams hoping to move up, bad news for teams at the top.

The randomness isn't particularly good news at the bottom either, but those teams have more room for error. (The Toves, for example, come fairly close to break even with just friendly income each week - league crowds are just a bonus. Not being able to buy an upgrade player is a lot different from having to sell a trainee early to make payroll.)

This change will also encourage managers to maintain a healthy cash reserve, in order to ride out variance in attendance. This is definitely not a healthy change - less money coming in, combined with managers stockpiling cash, could lead to significant deflation in the economy.

Finally, we have the changes in supporter numbers. It seems like early promotion has gone from "ambitious" to "ugly". It certainly looks like a bad run in a higher division can quickly blow through the 10% bonus for promotion, eat into the base beneath that, and then you can get demoted and lose another 10%, a setback that could set your supporter club back several seasons.

There seems to be little attraction to promoting even a smidge early, so I expect to see a lot of thrown qualification matches and congestion at the top of the series. Although it's completely stupid in terms of playing the game, I'm considering trying not to promote.

And then the question becomes, is it fun to play like this?

Then we have the odd silence of the HT-Devs on the subject. Yes, I know they said the attendance formula hadn't been changed 30 or 40 times. This is typical geek behavior - they're technically correct, and they refused to even consider that attendance had, in fact, been impacted. They need to spend some time listening to what the players mean instead of just what they said. Or, they anticipated the reduction, and are deliberately leaving the players in the dark...

Personally, I'm just going to assume worst case, that all the changes are intentional, and work from there. If it means I stay an extra season in D.V, then *shrug*. I'll spend an extra season beating the snot out of one_to7 and his Yankee-loving Lakers :)

[daedalus]

Excellent points as always, Brillig.

I think one of the aims may have been to bring the price down for everything. At least if we are assuming that it is intentional (between nerfing of daytrading and lowered attendance). As mentioned by someone in another thread, people are getting less for their players but, at the same time, are paying less for their new players as well. Ultimately, the money evens out.

I don't read conference so I know nothing of the developers' denial at changes. One possible explanation, if we are to believe their denial of changes, is that the attendance formula is and has always been heavily based on fan moods (even more heavily than we had given credence to previously) and that, by virtue of their modification to fan moods, they have impacted attendance without having touched the formula.

That said, while I applaud their attempt at this change and I think it's not a bad thing, it's probably something that will require some tweaks like anything else. I would find it highly doubtful that they could get this right first try anymore than I would expect anyone to.

[sterlingice]

Agree with you on almost all points, brillig. It's a well thought out post about the topic. That said, you didn't come to a conclusion as to whether it was good or bad, choosing rather to just shrug it off and adapt. I, on the other hand, being a judgemental loudmouth have to throw in my 2 cents. ;)

This is a bad change unless other things are changed to compensate. Turnover in the high ranks is not necessarily bad and, in fact, for anyone with aspirations of making MLS or Div II or whatnot, it's great news. One of the enjoyable things about hattrick is that for every KC Wizards, there are a tons of other teams going back and forth between all levels. But this change, in the ends, adversely affects this.

The method by which promotion is reached will now be faulty. I think the change I've barked longest and loudest about is the qualification game setup where 5th and 6th place teams get a better setup than 2nd-4th place teams. It's inherently unfair and screwed it. It promotes people not trying to win. And not in a strategic "if I PIC and lose, it's so I can win the next game" but in a "I'll just throw games so I get a spare game to drub some lower team who is trying hard to move up despite being the 2nd or 3rd best team in the series not 5th". In other words, it stifles the upward movement of teams as the 5th and 6th best teams aren't getting 5th and 6th but 3rd and 4th because the rewards are less.

A few teams who had a bad season a level higher will throw games to move down and crush opposition. This is somewhat farfetched but I could see it happening because of the following: By far, the worst problem is that teams will be very reluctant to move up. Why move up to Div III when you could crush Div IV competition, win 13 games a year (throw one to avoid autopromotion) and then throw the qualification game. Get fat at lower levels because it's just not worth it to move up and get crushed higher up. Wait until you're strong enough to compete for a title in the next higher level and then finally promote.

The real problem comes in for those 2nd-4th place teams who are trying to promote up. They'll never get that chance because they simply won't have the talent for a couple of seasons to match up with a team that should be in the next higher division. Not only that but they'll all incur at least one, if not two losses per year to this higher level team and the random crowds will hurt them even more.

So, now, that leaves us with 1 team that is in a series it shouldn't be in crushing two or three other teams who are trying to legitimately promote. But they just might get frustrated and start trying for those spare qualification games at 5th and 6th so, in the end, the only teams that are where they should be are the 7th and 8th place teams.

Now if you think that teams shouldn't promote until they are good and ready to go to the next series at the expense of the other seven teams, then this is a good thing. But I figure most of us would rather they reward people willing to take a chance and this makes it completely illogical to do so.

SI

[Havok]

How would you ever hope to catch pegasus if they had sell outs all the time simply because of their supporter base? You'd be at a severe disadvantage. At least with this formula, crappy teams get a boost from playing good teams, and good teams get brought down to earth a bit by getting smaller crowds against crappy teams.


The other team's always had a part in the attendance formula, this is nothing new. In real life, all teams draw worse against bad teams, the worse the team's doing, the lower the draw. The Braves won't sell out against the Expos for example (er.......I don't think anyone would sell out against the Expos.)


i never said anything about pegasus getting sellouts 'Just' because of they're fan base.... pegasus should easily be getting sellouts with a 3 game winning streak and its HUGE fan base.

Screw a sellout anyway... just better then FREAKING 27K!!!!

[Havok]

~dola~

I said it once and i'll say it again. If they wanna change attendance at games then do it. But make it based of your teams preformances, not someone elses. The way it is set-up now if the team you play at home this week, lost last week then your attenance is screwed, no matter how good your playing, no matter how many games you've won in a row. That just flat out isn't fair.

You guys are all sitting around debating this like HT just put in "all-around" lower attendance for everyone. Thats not the case... what has happened is your opponents fan mood is almost as important as your fan mood for drawing fans to YOUR STADIUM!! that is just lame.... should it affect your attendace some??? sure! But a drop off of 50-65% terrible.

So its leaving it almost completely out of your hands.... you won 5 games in a row and your first place in the divison??? who cares, your opponent lost last week so only 30k out of a possible 80k attendace for you.

I can't believe how anyone would think thats a 'Good' thing. The good news is all over HT in the USA, sweden, global forums etc.. people are screaming for it to be fixed. Im pretty sure its a bug anyway... i can't imagine this is how it was meant to be.

[Alf]

SI : I am in D III. I have finished 2nd or 3rd last two seasons. It appears I am heading this way again this year. I clearly am the Division favorite (as per division poll and ratings). So that's me the guy you are describing => the not trying to promote guy. I always play my league games in PIC mode in order to make a nice long cup run and that way, if by accident I finish 5th or 6th , I can send the ultimate MOTS and stay in DIII.


One guy (who had been in DIII for ages due to bad luck) has just promoted from DIII to DII. He had the highest supporter fan club by a huge margin in DIII. Now, in DII, he has lost all his games and his supporters are bleeding away => that is a very incentive way of saying to DIII teams, do not promote or you will regret it...

[saintjo]

Hattrick already has a lot of random elements, from the youth pulls to the match engine itself.

randomness is just a "lazy" software developers way of getting out of programming complex logic or patterns. :)

now lazy is in quotes because its not necessarily a knock against their developers, but that some of their logic in ht is either not completely thought out or was implemented too quickly.

with that said, hattrick is still one of the best games out there. and there has been maybe only 3-4 games in my history that has held my attention for over a year. (i had to throw that in there so i dont upset the ht-gods and get punished)

[One_to7]

You guys are all sitting around debating this like HT just put in "all-around" lower attendance for everyone. Thats not the case... what has happened is your opponents fan mood is almost as important as your fan mood for drawing fans to YOUR STADIUM!! It's always been this way. No, it's not a good thing in my eyes, but it's nothing new. I wouldn't mind seeing them put a cap on the effect the visiting team can have on your attendance, or something along those lines.

If this decreased attendance is a 1-time thing (like when you buy a player and get a 1-time TS drop), then I won't be upset. They changed it so supporter moods depends more on winning/losing than just scoring a lot of goals (well, they changed it so it more resembled that.) That's a step forward in my mind. Then again, I train defense, so I don't usually score that much, even when I'm winning. :)

[Mr. Wednesday]

They supposedly made the supporters "smarter", but mine are still dumb as rocks. :(