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Post ID	Date & Time	Game Date	Function
#39567	09/17/2016 1:16:32 pm		Ignore
Andreimun Joined: 10/25/2012 Posts: 44 York Frogs III.3	Just a quick thought: I find it kind of interesting that most people (including myself until today), don't bother finding the optimal ballpark capacity and just go with the recommended numbers. After making some calculations based on my ticket revenue (unless I screwed up), it seems that a ticket (in my league, at least), is about $17-$18. An extra seat costs you about $100 in maintenance every year. So you should fill any seat at least 5 times every year in order for it to be worth your while, financially. So, for example, in League V, if you don't have at least 10 games every year in which you get more than 29,000 (probably even more than 10, because you are way more likely to get an attendance of 29,100 than 29,900) spectators, there really is no point in having a ballpark capacity of over 29,000. Another way to put is this: the extra 1,000 seats cost you $100,000 every year. Unless you get around $100,000/$18=5,555 spectators for these extra seats in a season, you are losing money. For example, if I only had attendances over 29,000 spectators twice during the season: 29,100 and 29,500, then the extra 1,000 seats only brought in 600 spectators during the season, way fewer than the 5,500 or so necessary to make me break even on these seats. In theory it would be possible to calculate an optimal number of seats, but in my case I suspect that this number is around 28,500 or 29,000. Of course, attendances vary with the fan mood, so may be hard to predict, but they do not vary that wildly in my experience so one should be able to optimize this. In the end, it's true that the sum of money involved is not that high, but still, this could mean a minor leaguer's salary for a year.
#39569	09/17/2016 1:27:03 pm		Ignore
Haselrig Joined: 04/13/2014 Posts: 2790 Novi Doubledays III.4	When considering ballpark capacity, I tend to look at where my team is likely to finish (not an exact science by any means), then I look through all teams at that league level that finished one below, one above or at that spot and average all those average attendances together to get a rough idea of what attendance I should expect for the upcoming year. You can't hit it exactly, more because it's very hard to call a division before a game is played, but that method has worked pretty well for me over the years.

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