'Refuse to build new stadium as there is no evidence of fanbase expanding in the near future'

[dan-wafc]

I'm Wigan, several years in and winning everything in sight. Problem is, the DW Stadium has an expansion capacity of 32,000. I'm just about making money each season by virtue of winning competitions and selling players, and I can't earn any more because I make so little on a matchday. I badly need a new stadium built, but every time I ask the board they refuse as 'there is no evidence of the fanbase increasing in the near future'.

I've had this message every time I've asked - every six months for the last three years. I've got around £100m in the bank, it fluctuates through the season but it's around that every time I ask the question.

My last few average attendances:

2017/2018: 31,935

2018/2019: 31,985

2019/2020: 31,960

2020/2021: 32,000

It seems as though there is very obviously potential for attendance growth there - last season every single match in every single competition sold out completely. From this season onwards I'm going to start losing money quite severely I think unless something is done, is there any way the board will be convinced that a few extra seats are worth the investment?

[Cadijk van Kaarhandel]

There's a hidden 'maximum attendance' in the database and it might just be that you've reached it already. Not sure if this is dynamic but if it is its probably on very slightly so.

[eple]

Pretty sure the max attendance value is dynamic.

Look at it this way, Dan. The longer you wait and increase the club rep and the values for avr & max attendance, the bigger the new stadium is likely to be and that might prove an advantage if you manage for a while, since you would have to wait at least 20 years to build a new one after that. I managed to have a world class side in the EPL with a 12.5k stadium by selling players at their prime on 48 months installments and using that money to cover higher wages. Might be worth a try.

[D0bi]

It would also depend on the size of the town you're in, Wigan only has around 81,000 people in it (more in the surrounding areas, obviously) as well as bordering Bolton, Blackburn, Preston, Manchester. Not to mention it's a Rugby town.

Asking for over 30,000 fans in a township of just over 80,000 is a bit much, most small-town clubs attendances are ~10% of their population size.

[dan-wafc]

Good shout that. My problem is exacerbated because I've kept my young players on long, cheap contracts - and suddenly they're not all in their prime and wanting £100,000+ contracts. So my wage bill has gone from being the fourth lowest in the Premier League to the fourth biggest in about three seasons, simply because of the renewals. Problem is I'm trying to do it with British-only players, which makes finding replacements tough.

Thanks for the advice though, it's so frustrating watching Man Utd waste the millions of pounds they make on a matchday - they make about four times as much as I do!

[D0bi]

Yeah, tell me about it. That's one of the problems of managing in a small town though. Ideally you want to manage at a club in a large city that has no local rivals (think PSG, only "big" club in the Capital of France) to have the best chance at high crowds and matchday income.

[Lenzar]

Give it a couple more years and try again.

You'll get plenty of plastic fans if you keep winning - look at United.

[Michael F]

You'll get plenty of plastic fans.

They have them already, in Wigan they are called seats

[Tiger Woods]

Right i have a similar problem but with PSG.

I have spent 5 years there winning 5 Ligue1 titles 4or5 domestic cups and 3 champion league titles

The board say we can not afford to buy the stadium and also if i ask them to build a new one they say the fanbase is not great enough.

Bearing in mind that we have 750m in the bank are ranked the richest club in the world and ranked 2nd biggest club behind Barcelona

The stadium holds 48,000 and we have 40,000 season ticket holders now

anybody any experience with this or any suggestions?

[Football Manager.]

They have them already, in Wigan they are called seats

hahaha this is brilliant

max fan base MUST be dynamic otherwise how would teams progress from lower down the leagues.

[Cadijk van Kaarhandel]

I checked Wigan’s in my save (couple of years in) and the Max Attendance is (hidden is spoiler tags below, don’t look if you don’t want to know)............

24k to 25k. So you’re doing pretty well to have it up to where it is

[dave byrd]

I'm in the same boat as the OP, currently in my 5th season at Valencia on FM12. Game is in the year 2025.

We are still at the Mestalla ground (which has been increased to 65,000). We sell out every home game regardless of the opposition, have paid off the loan and have nothing outstanding, and have over £100M in the bank. We have won the league 3 times, cup twice and the CL. When I ask the chairman for a new ground, he declines my request every time..

[VonBlade]

max fan base MUST be dynamic otherwise how would teams progress from lower down the leagues.

Poorly, that's how. Far too little of FM is dynamic. Rivalries, attendance etc etc. There are loads of areas that would transform the game just by making them dynamic rather than fixed. Indeed there is no reason for anything to be set in stone.

Except of course that if the game was as fluid as it should be, SI would struggle to sell the next version. So it has to be limited for business reasons.

/curmudgeon

[dave byrd]

Yes, fan base is dynamic, but as many have pointed out over the years it takes too long to rise compared to the increasing stature of the club.

Seen countless threads like this over the years with small teams topping the prem and Europe with millions in the bank but still playing infront of tiny crowds in their insufficient grounds.

An example from one of my previous saves was when i took Oxford from the conference to the prem on FM10 and for years and years we were playing infront of 18,000 in the Kassam stadium.

When we finally got a new 65,000 ground it sold out from the very first match... It that case it appeared the '20 years' rule applied, in that you didn't seem to get a new ground till your current one was 20 years old, and certainly in our case the new stadium was granted exactly 20 years after the date the Kassam had been built which was annoying as it was that that seemed to dictate when the new ground was built, not our wealth, success and increased demand for tickets..

[sjm]

There has to be some sort of limit; while the UK is very urbanized, think of other countries where there might be one major city and then not much. If you take, say, a tin-pot club in a tiny town in Austria (say a population around 10,000, similar to that of Ried) to the top of the league and to the CL, there's still a very low limit to how many people will come and watch. There might only be tens of thousands of people living within about a one-hour drive of the stadium. However well you're doing, people aren't going to travel three hours to watch you hit 5 past Niederhintersdorf on a cold, wet night in November. And of the people that do live nearby, not everyone is going to be a football fan. It'd be silly to have 50,000 packed into the "Keine Sorgen Arena", no matter how well you're doing.

That might not apply to Wigan in such an extreme manner, but it does mean that you can't adopt an opened-ended approach to attendance for a large number of clubs.

[dave byrd]

Agreed that small towns wouldn't have as big a demand as a bigger one if the team became successful, but what about in the case of Valencia (in real life 20,000+ people on a waiting list for season tickets), the other poster with PSG and my Oxford example?

[Herbert Fandel]

There has to be some sort of limit; while the UK is very urbanized, think of other countries where there might be one major city and then not much. If you take, say, a tin-pot club in a tiny town in Austria (say a population around 10,000, similar to that of Ried) to the top of the league and to the CL, there's still a very low limit to how many people will come and watch. There might only be tens of thousands of people living within about a one-hour drive of the stadium. However well you're doing, people aren't going to travel three hours to watch you hit 5 past Niederhintersdorf on a cold, wet night in November. And of the people that do live nearby, not everyone is going to be a football fan. It'd be silly to have 50,000 packed into the "Keine Sorgen Arena", no matter how well you're doing.

That might not apply to Wigan in such an extreme manner, but it does mean that you can't adopt an opened-ended approach to attendance for a large number of clubs.

This is true, but remember that from within the FM world, if you start doing really well in CL then your league's rep will rise too

So whilst IRL ATM people wouldn't travel that far, to watch a match between an Austrian CL team and a low team from the same league, after years/decades of the league and therefore its clubs growing in rep it might...

Given how slow everyone is saying the change is, I don't think it is unthinkable, as by the sounds of it, to get 50,000 into the stadium of such a club you would need to boss CL for years, in which case, and in light of the knock-on effects, it would be believe.

It is all circular and related, and you are applying too much of today's realities to an absolutely fictional scenario

[eple]

There has to be some sort of limit; while the UK is very urbanized, think of other countries where there might be one major city and then not much. If you take, say, a tin-pot club in a tiny town in Austria (say a population around 10,000, similar to that of Ried) to the top of the league and to the CL, there's still a very low limit to how many people will come and watch. There might only be tens of thousands of people living within about a one-hour drive of the stadium. However well you're doing, people aren't going to travel three hours to watch you hit 5 past Niederhintersdorf on a cold, wet night in November. And of the people that do live nearby, not everyone is going to be a football fan. It'd be silly to have 50,000 packed into the "Keine Sorgen Arena", no matter how well you're doing.

That might not apply to Wigan in such an extreme manner, but it does mean that you can't adopt an opened-ended approach to attendance for a large number of clubs.

I think that the rise in attendance that comes with success is fairly small, that is until the club reach continental and worldwide status. I don't know if that's possible to do in Austria, certainly very difficult time and consuming anyway.

Also imagine the impact that a big club with highly payed staff and players with excellent facilities will have on a small town. There is a very small Norwegian club from a small town that has consistently been able to compete in the two highest divisions for the last 40 years. I don't know the excat figures but around 1000-1500 people work with sports there, and they have around 2000 students, many studying subjects involving sports, with the university teaming up with the football club. All in all they make up about half the population. Now imagine if they had taken it from there to what is possible to achieve in FM.