Stadium Upgrade Guidelines

[mattynokes]

A little discussion in the chatbox has prompted a suggestion. It doesn't appear there's much backing to why the guidelines are what they are. Some seem ridiculously expensive and others seem a little cheap. In the end I think it comes down to perceived value. Maybe some just don't consider stadium upgrades, but I'm sure I, like others, would consider these more often if they were priced more cost-effective.

Infield Quality/Grass/Visibility/Foul Ground: 5M per upgrade

Installing Convertible Top: 100M

Install Natural Grass: 10M

Upgrade Convenience/Comfort/Sight Lines: 15M per upgrade.

Seats: 2.5 mil per 100

Adjust Dimensions (Subject to Admin Veto): 20M

Note: On adjusting dimensions you may not change certain aspects such as the Green Monster or the Crawford Boxes/Center Field in Minute Maid. You also may not put in ridiculous dimensions (600 or 250 foot walls for example).

I think before we look at what the upgrades should cost we should look at what the average amount of time of return on investment should be and what the in-game costs would be for the upgrades if building a new stadium. Also a realistic sense of what the effort would truly be to make this change happen in real life.

Structure/Surface Upgrades
When upgrading to a convertible roof from an open stadium it cost about $140M on the stadium creation. Really I don't see this effecting anything, so it's probably a worthless upgrade to have.

Installing turf will effect play and in-game effects the price $3M.

Seating Upgrades
These seem to have varying price effects with the different levels you change (i.e. going from Average to Good is different than going from Poor to Fair). Obviously adding seats can be done. The question is, what's a fair price?

Poor to Fair: About $35M
Fair to Avg: About $35M
Avg to Good: About $75M
Good to Excellent: About $80M

Convenience - This has to do with location, ease of getting to the ballpark, and parking. Personally I don't think it's realistic to upgrade since you really can't get convenience unless you build a new road off the highway for fans to access.

Comfort - Park enjoyment, history, quality of concessions, and how inviting is the park. It's hard to put a price on it, but it's definitely something that could easily be upgraded.

Sight Lines - Simply, how good is the view? Is there a pole in your way blocking your view? This is something that realistically could be fixed, but would likely be costly with construction.

Playing Field Upgrades
There is no cost in-game when changing these things. Note that a team could benefit by an upgrade or downgrade as going either direction on these effect Stadium Effects.

Infield Quality - Probably as simple as buying new dirt/clay.

Infield Grass - Probably the most simple change. Just tell your grounds crew to cut the grass shorter/higher.

Visibility - Has to do with the backdrop the batter sees. So putting up a sign in center or black screen could effect this. Possibly a little more costly than the first two.

Foul Grounds - This is something I see almost tied in with Outfield Dimensions. I would definitely changing the foul grounds should be more costly than the above items.

Outfield Dimensions
As far as I know, most outfield walls can come down/apart fairly easy, so moving them likely wouldn't be a problem. The problem is where the seats are. You could probably get away with cutting down the bullpen space in certain areas very easily, but moving concrete seating would be costly.
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PRICING SUGGESTIONS

Installing Turf/Grass - I can't find any articles, but I believe I remember hearing Ohio State's artificial infield cost a few million. With the in-game cost being about $3M, I think a cost between $3M and $5M would be appropriate.

Seating Upgrades
I would like to see three different tiers of pricing for Convenience, Comfort, and Sight Lines. I think all three have varying levels of difficulty to improve when considering realism factors. It's definitely cheaper than an in-game stadium cost effect, but I think they need to remain a decent price so people may actually buy them.

Convenience
Poor to Fair: $20M
Fair to Avg: $20M
Avg to Good: $30M
Good to Excellent: $30M

Comfort
Poor to Fair: $10M
Fair to Avg: $10M
Avg to Good: $20M
Good to Excellent: $20M

Sight Lines
Poor to Fair: $15M
Fair to Avg: $15M
Avg to Good: $25M
Good to Excellent: $25M

Seating Costs
Currently it would take over 14 seasons to get your money back at league average tickets prices for being 100 seats. Now getting extra fans to your park should create more concession revenue, but that still seems way too long to get a return on your investment. As Corey put it, "To sink millions into an upgrade that won't gain any value for 12-14 years, teams are better off spending money elsewhere.

I think a return on the investment should come after 5 seasons. That would make $1M equal to 110 seats.

Playing Field Upgrades
A team really doesn't get an advantage with these so it's purely speculation and realism.

Infield Quality - $3M

Infield Grass - $3M

Visibility - $5M

Foul Grounds - $7M

Outfield Dimensions
I think $20M is way too much. I think the team wanting to make the change should post their changes, reasoning, and suggested cost with it being up for review based on the individual situation. Minor changes should cost considerably less than major changes.

[mike]

The only things I can agree with you on this are Seating Costs and the playing feild upgrades. I know those prices may seem realistic for conveince and what have you but as it is barley anyone upgrades simply because like what you told me on xat "a bump from fair to average and then average to good etc, would only bring a 1 or 2 point fan loyalty bump". So why on gods green earth is a team going to spend upwards of 20mil to do so for only very minimal gain? You'd be much better off on the fan loyalty department by taking that 20mil (or more if you want more than one upgrade) and spending it on an all star caliber player or draft picks to try and pick up an all star spec. Actually winning games would increase your fan loyalty tenfold so the smart money would be to just try and improve your team rather than do any upgrades.

I think they should be a more reasonable cost of 10mil per upgrade or basically 10mil per 1 point of fan loyalty (assume that it only went up one point per upgrade with the maybe the occasional 2). Thats still fairly expensive of an investment but one that would actually be worthile given the price. It would be 40mil per category to go from poor to excellent. The whole problem with stadium upgrades is that the juice is never worth the squeeze.

[AndyP]

Well, in real life teams rarely have to pay anything to upgrade their stadiums....you could make that case too.

[mattynokes]

The only things I can agree with you on this are Seating Costs and the playing feild upgrades. I know those prices may seem realistic for conveince and what have you but as it is barley anyone upgrades simply because like what you told me on xat "a bump from fair to average and then average to good etc, would only bring a 1 or 2 point fan loyalty bump". So why on gods green earth is a team going to spend upwards of 20mil to do so for only very minimal gain? You'd be much better off on the fan loyalty department by taking that 20mil (or more if you want more than one upgrade) and spending it on an all star caliber player or draft picks to try and pick up an all star spec. Actually winning games would increase your fan loyalty tenfold so the smart money would be to just try and improve your team rather than do any upgrades.

I think they should be a more reasonable cost of 10mil per upgrade or basically 10mil per 1 point of fan loyalty (assume that it only went up one point per upgrade with the maybe the occasional 2). Thats still fairly expensive of an investment but one that would actually be worthile given the price. It would be 40mil per category to go from poor to excellent. The whole problem with stadium upgrades is that the juice is never worth the squeeze.

Playing and winning games will always be the quickest way to raise your fan loyalty. And I don't see how you can say it's not worth it without explaining to us what a 1 or 2 point boost does. I don't know the exact effects of it, but just looking around the league there's only a few teams with 90+ and some of the better, annual playoff contenders (ARI, CHW, CIN) average out in the low 80s. So a 2 point boost would probably do you well off.

The numbers could be tweaked, but I don't think they're far off. Compounding a boost with success would raise it even further. And no matter what the prices are, you're always going to have some GMs who only see money as a way to improve their team, not their stadium.

[Corey]

I agree with everything but the tiered stadium upgrades, I just don't see any team buying them if they cost that much. I think if we were to raise them, it should be a standard price of like $20 million per upgrade. Although I'd be for just keeping those the same.

I definitely would like to see the cost of extra seats to go down a bit though. Right now I'm just now getting to the point where I am feeling a gain from the seats I bought... over 13 seasons ago. I would never ever invest in any more seats again. I did it then only because I had a lot of money and there was a push to get some of the money out of the league.

I agree with everything else though.