Serious Hattrick Discussion: How to turn a profit

[GoldenEagle]

Ok, my beloved Golden Eagles FC are in debt, due to a stadium expansion and early mistkaes in the transfer market. I need to turn a profit but how? Here are my financies:

Crowd - $42,882
Sponsors - $30,300
Finanical - $0
Temporary - $0

Arena - $10,310
Wages - $14,384
Interest - $8,890
Temporary - $2,000
Staff - $18,000
Youth Squad - $20,000

We have trimmed our wages and squad to a bare minimum. The crowd will not always be there. We will lose two games this week. So we are not normally going to turn a profit. What can I do to get out of debt and help my team? Suggestions?

[astralhaze]

Get a good youth pull and sell him. Try to schedule as many home friendlies as possible. Then, win your series.

That's what I did anyway. Then I expanded my stadium and got back in to debt lol.

[Superman=#54]

Train goal keeping. Buy cheap keepers then sell them for big profit after a few weeks for training. Thats what I'm doing now to gt myself out of debt.

[Doug5984]

How big is your new stadium? If you can get a team that can consistantly sell out your stadium then you want your crowd intake to be almost double your weekly team expenses...then the money from sponsers will be a profit, that is a hard thing to do...and probably will take some time...Other ways of making money are: getting a lucky youth pull, this is basically just luck....but you could pull someone that sells for over a million...so I wouldn't bank on one getting a player that really sells for anything, although if you could pull a passable keeper that is close to $100k. And the last way to make money that I know of is training young players and selling them for a profit....For example I bought a 20 year old passable defender, trained him for 2 weeks and then was able to sell him for $125k- That is $100k profit in 2 weeks, not bad.

Regarding friendlies...you get half the gate money so it does not matter if the game is at your stadium or not...it is better to try and shedule friedlies with good teams that have a larger # of supporters because they will draw a larger crowd...and that is more money for you, but normally you won't get very much $ for a friendly...

Since your arena expenses are $10k I would assume your staium is around $15,000 which when sold out is double your weekly espenses so...its just a matter of getting your debt lower (that 8k a week is killer) and getting a good training program going, also with some good luck you could be out of debt in not to long...
Hope that helps, and again I have only had my team for 2 months so I am no 'expert' so everything I say might not be totally accurate....

-Doug

[GoldenEagle]

We seat around 16,000. I have a Cup match against a second division team on Wed. and hope to sell out and get around $70K. Then I would only be able to get us down to $100K in debt, which in turn would reduce the interest. The youth sqaud is at its first week of inadequate.

[Poli]

Golden Eagle, I would suggest pairing down your staff, if you haven't already. After that, hire an economist. It will help some against that terrible interest. Keep your staff down until you begin squeezing a profit out and can handle the load. I don't hire staff unless I'm making a profit after a projected 2 week period, including a home game and a road game. If I can't cover their salaries at that point, I don't need to have them.

The friendlies note from Doug is a good one. I usually don't have a problem playing my fellow FOFC gang in a friendly, but I have to get bumped out of the Cup first. Usually, the money at my place is pretty good, but I haven't had a friendly at my place in a while now. Regardless, find a good high ranking opponent in the US and play them there. Don't worry about losing a friendly. It's all for training anyway. It has no bearing to my knowledge on your team's psych. After all, I lost to GM-George 11-1.

If your youth pull is decent, put someone on the market, be it the youth or someone else. Two seasons ago while stretching for a profit I would sell any player I could for 1 or 2k. Usually it would raise higher, but any income is good income when trying to defeat the debt beast.

The note about keeping is a good concept as well. Horned pulls keepers and sells them regularly. It's a good concept, for sure.

Hope I've helped, I'm at your service...sort of. :)

[HornedFrog Purple]

My only suggestions are these:

If you are at inadequate youth squad pull keepers every week. You are only getting a random roll on one skill, so your odds are better. I still pull a keeper every other week and I am at excellent.

The other thing you might consider is hiring a couple of spokespersons. Dont hire more than 3. What they do is boost your sponsor money. For instance if you spend 3000/week for 2 you have the potential of around 5k extra from your sponsors, depending on what their mood is. So that is an extra 2 grand. If that doesn't work out fire them.

Don't spend money on doctors unless you need them. I have never found any noticeable benefit from hiring more than 3 for any given injury.

These are just things I figured out from trial and error.

Edit: Don't worry about being in debt, just about everybody starts off that way. I am debt again because I just expanded.

[GoldenEagle]

I am anxious to go up to Division 4 but I know I should be pateint and try to build for the long run. But with all these teams going up I am going to be jealous. I feel there are 3 good teams in my league, so no matter what I am still going into be into a battle for promotion next year if I cant win it this year.

Sorry, I am just fretting. :)

[vex]

Don't be in a rush to get to Div. IV. Unless you can consistently put up mid to high 50's you'll just get relegated.

[GoldenEagle]

I think it all depends on where you land in Div. IV. I have seen some divisions that are real strong and others that are weak.

[vex]

Just don't get in DataKing's;):(

[illinifan999]

What I have done now with looking at the economy. You play equal amounts of home and away games. When I don't have a home league game I lose somewhere around 35k without selling anyone. Before I had my stadium expansion I was making 5k with a home league game. That meant that I would be losing money. So I upgraded. I figure if I can make more than 35k profit on a home league game, then at the end of the season I will have made a profit. But then again I've been playing longer than you, and have more supporters, and I sell out every game.

Regarding friendlies, what I do when I am not in the FOFC Cup or the US Open Cup, I always go to a foreign transfer market, and just click the teams taht are there. I then send a challenge at my place with cup rules. This would get me the most amount of money per friendly. And try to never travel to a foreign nation, always get them to come to your place. For example, last week on Thursday, I went to the Swedish transfer market, and sent out 20 challenges all at my place with cup rules. By Friday I had one accepted. Without cup rules I was making 5k a friendly, but with cup rules I might make 6k.

[Nyarlahotep]

Just to add to the foreign friendly bit. The most money I ever made off of a friendly was when I went to Germany to play a team that was brining in a decent crowd for friendlies. Even after taking out the 6k I still made over 8k.

[DataKing]

Originally posted by vexroid
Just don't get in DataKing's;):(

Amen to that. Not that any of us have any say in the matter, but I would advise avoiding my series at all costs. With the exception of the one whipping-boy team in my series (who will be relegated at the end of the season, no doubt), the lowest NSI rating in my series this past week was 60, and a high of 76.