Forum topic: fans calculation formula

Hi Frank, does the formula for calculating the fans also take the league level into account? I ask because after the last race where I finished fifth and eighth in the major league I lost 1,500 fans. I currently have one tenth as many fans as my junior team in the third league.

i talked about fans in a previous post in the forum:
https://pitwall.org/forum-topic/8237/1/unbalanced-things

imho this is a big issue for the competitiveness of teams.
top teams like mine, if they are able to stay on top for at least 2-3 seasons in a row, they start to have a big income from fans. i'm talking of millions of difference...
this is very unbalanced and it gives an advantage to those teams who are already the best. and in every way you think to balance it, it will always be an advantage to the top teams.
i'm start thinking that the only way to sort this thing out and make it fair for every teams is to eliminate the income money from fans, they could give as commercial points as a bonus instead of money.

this whole thing make useful the strategy to sit in DIV2 to farm fans and make tons of money. this strategy should be discouraged instead.
i hope Frank will put this thing as the priority number 1

i would like to understand what think all the managers like you that are in the midfield of the standings and that can't improve their fans and they can't compete to hire the best drivers because they don't have enough money to pay very high salary.

Looking back at my revenue from fans I didn't realise how big the income drop is between winning div2 and my first few seasons in mid-table div1. Only now - nine seasons in - am I getting back to similar fan revenue but that maybe because I scraped a distant finish of third in the standings last season. Now I've dropped back to about seventh it will be interesting to see it drops again. Even so, I have never made above 3m from fans and if Matteo is experiencing differences of millions I am guessing he is making a lot more.

Commercial revenue shouldn't solely be based on division/position anyway (and I'm guessing it is); there are so many factors involved (popularity and charisma of drivers or nationality to name just a couple) in fan engagement that maybe it is too complex for the game to calculate fairly. I have never looked in to it but, for example, if you had a Spanish driver competing in the Spanish race would you see a spike in fan revenue that week? Then there is scarcity value - if there are loads of Spanish drivers in that race would that dent the revenue, compared to if there is only one that team would receive a massive revenue shot.

It would be interesting to know the factors that affect the calculation (like marketability), but the main component should be the division level, otherwise it is better to stay in the low divisions

Davide from my data the division level is already taken into account, but like i said the whole thing is unbalanced anyway

So I also haven't checked my fan income at all. I've been promoting and relegating between div 1 and 2 basically every season, so lets see what my figures say.
Currently as we stand now in W12
Total fans
140 306
Fans change since last week
-22 777
Merchandise sales
Estimate this week
372 360,-

Looking at this season I probably average between 300 and 500k a week, and last season wen I was in div 2 I averaged 900k plus.
I am demoting to div 2 next season and will keep an eye on it.

Shaun the income per fan is the same in every division (having the same merchandise options)
What is a little bit different between in division 1-2 is the "fans change since last week". In div 1 we get more fans per week compared to a team in div2 with the same average position.

But aside from that, the point I'm trying to explain here is that on average a team who finish in the top 3 position for let's say 2-3 season in a row get an unfair advantage in term of fans income compared to a team in the midfield of the standings.

This situation makes very difficult for the midfield teams to be competitive because in the long term they have less money for salaries.

My team is a perfect example of what I'm saying:
Right now i have about 1,7 millions fans almost all gained in the last 3,5 seasons. In the same time a team in the midfield should have more or less the same amount of fans of 3,5 seasons ago.
This means that right now i have a money income from fans of few millions more per week compared to 3,5 season ago, while in the same 3,5 seasons a midfield team get 0 money.
Now you understand that in the long term this income gap is a huge problem of competitiveness because only the teams who have more money can compete to hire the best drivers without go bankrupcy

This answers the question I always had, didn't ask anyone though, but I always wondered how teams are able to afford drivers on let's say two or three mil a week wages, plus whatever their bonus structure is, and be able to maintain a positive balance.
And yeah, I can see how teams lower down in div 1 will struggle to compete with teams who've been topping the div for a few seasons.
The question is, was this intended, or is it just a case of there being too many variables that influence it to be accurate, or is there actually a problem with the code and how it's implimented.

I don't understand how it can be seen as unfair. The team is successful for a long time and will attract fans. It happens in all sports. It's not "unfair" but is an advantage.

If I promote to top division next season, the first thing I do is change the settings to the bonus of increasing fans over profits. It's not going to fix the loss of fans entirely but it is there to use to combat this.

It's like arguing Manchester utd have an unfair advantage because they sell more tickets every week.


It could be worth looking at a total number of possible fans? Like a global population then a pool of likely Motorsport fans.

It could go deeper with the added breakdown of financial clout of fans, high spend, medium spend, low spend.

I have no idea how difficult this would be to code either

The comparison with Manchester is no sense...the problem is not that Manchester sell more ticket, but the problem is that a smaller team can't build a bigger stadium to sell more tickets... Let's discuss this...

This is a game and every player should have the same chance to succeed. With the income gap caused by the huge difference in fans number this become unfair in the long term cause a new team like yours has less chance to win compared to an older team who are in top positions for several seasons.

Do you want a real life proper comparison? Every team in F1 have a budget cap of about 140 millions per season, now for example give to Alpine the ability to spend 200 millions per season... What are the consequences? Alpine will start winning every seasons forever very soon... Or at least we can say that Alpine has higher chance to do that compared to other teams. In a game this never work...

I guess you didn't fully understand what is the problem in the long term since you are in your first season after long time, and I'm asking a balance of the system to give to every team the ability to win div1 if they put the right effort to build a very good team, because now is not possible if teams like yours haven't the chance to close the gap of the fans income.

I'm one of those few teams who has this advantage, and i can say that i reached a position where it's easier now for me to maintaine my team to the top compared to 2-3 season ago... This situation is exasperated by the lack of players of course, but this remain a very unbalanced thing