[stevehep]

Finances is an area of the game that some of us like to gain as much detail as possible from it and others just want to know how much money they're making!

As a part of the game that's not really changed much over the last few versions, i'd like to offer up an idea (or two) for enhancement, and also let anyone else share any ideas they might have;

1 - I'd like the ability to expand my finance headers whether i'm in Income or Expenditure. The ability to expand them if you choose to, caters for both the users who are happy as it is and those who want more detail. I'll use some easy ones as examples;

Gate Receipts - Then drill down by game
Players Sold - Just split by player
Prize Money - Again, by competition
Bonuses Paid - Again, aplit by player

This is just a simple idea, which can be applied to most of the current headings in finances, but i feel it gives the user more information.

2 - I would like to be able to refer to my finances of more than just this year and last year. Many other screens in the game allow you to rotate by season, i think this would be a good idea in finances too.

All other ideas welcome!

[Saintmat]

Sponserships would be good

[stevehep]

Do you mean different types of Sponsorships (As most big clubs have more than 1 agreement)?

I like that idea!

[wasq]

I think those ideas definitely are good ones.
Those things aren't (or haven't been) of priority to SI I think, because real life managers don't really get involved in the financial details. It's more of a sidestep from your job as a manager.

But I think many players would like the opportunity to try their hands on ticket pricing, promotional ideas, sponsorships and more details in general.

It's a good idea to add more things in this area, though there should be an option at the start of the game to let the assistant handle this. But that's also the case in the reserve team and stuff, so that wouldn't be too hard to implement, i reckon.

Another nice improvement would be to help deciding how to improve the stadium. With financial details and such, it might be quite a tough job to decide what's best for the future, both financially and for the fans.

There's so many things that could be added in the finances department. If SI choose to do this, they'll have a lot of options.

[Shandiar]

Originally posted by wasq:
I think those ideas definitely are good ones.
Those things aren't (or haven't been) of priority to SI I think, because real life managers don't really get involved in the financial details. It's more of a sidestep from your job as a manager.

But I think many players would like the opportunity to try their hands on ticket pricing, promotional ideas, sponsorships and more details in general.

It's a good idea to add more things in this area, though there should be an option at the start of the game to let the assistant handle this. But that's also the case in the reserve team and stuff, so that wouldn't be too hard to implement, i reckon.

Another nice improvement would be to help deciding how to improve the stadium. With financial details and such, it might be quite a tough job to decide what's best for the future, both financially and for the fans.

There's so many things that could be added in the finances department. If SI choose to do this, they'll have a lot of options.

You must remember that FM is a Football MANAGEMENT game wasq, so i think that adding features such as the player altering ticket prices and suggesting promotions is getting away from this. SI often reply to suggestions like this that they are a football management game and want to be reasonably true to what football managers do. I'm not sure that Alex Ferguson has much say in the price of season tickets or Arsene Wenger suggests match day promotions. There are a couple of other games out there that give you this option should you want it that much.

Having said this, stevehep's suggestions of simply adding more deatil to the finances so that players can see where money comes from can really help the style of some players, for example seeing just exactly how much prize money the Carling Cup offers and using this to decide how seriously to take it.

i like the idea of seeing exactly how much gate receipts are fluctuating each game, though i don't really want to be choosing how much to charge fans.

[Mister Z]

Originally posted by Shandiar:

You must remember that FM is a Football MANAGEMENT game wasq, so i think that adding features such as the player altering ticket prices and suggesting promotions is getting away from this.

Here we go again, another conservative statement. If you want to change current financial structure of FM, you must have more control over it. The current setup is yet another poor attempt to fix the bug that a team could grow a tremendous deficit and wasn’t sacked for it.
If a FM manager has his head on the block for financial issues he has very little control over.
As a MANAGER, I want control over income out off gate receipts, sponsor ships, commercial stadium opportunities, prize money and bonuses etc. and yes that means a lot more than positioning and shouting on players on the training pitch.

[Attila]

Originally posted by Benjani'sBootCleaner:
my board love me for my results but hate me for the fact i'm 450k in debt

That's the point. The club's financial situation is part of the confidence, hence we should have some control over it. Currently we can control the wage & transfer budget only, and set the seasonal bonuses. That's not enough, if you want to increase your bank balance. I think it would be fine, if we could set (season) ticket prices, decide on stadium expansion, sponsorship etc, even if it's not part of the manager's job IRL. An option to let the AM handle this stuff would keep the more conservative players happy, too.

[dsdfdsf]

I agree with being able to have more than one sponsership deal (like arsenal have,stadium & shirt(Emirates),shirt(nike),from what i have seen so far they are the only club in ame to have more than 1 sponsership deal(correct me if im wrong)), i understand it would manily be larger clubs who have savvy money men that would do this. Playing as Man Utd, when it came to getting a new sponsership deal (from what i gather the deal in the game represents the AIG deal), it went from 14 odd million pounds(4/5 yr deal) to 6.5 million pounds (6yr deal) a season. I mean by this point in the game money was no object but a 50% drop is rather big. What i woundered is if sponsership deals were set like PA, have bands of -1 to -10.
For example - -10 (main sponser money amount between 12.5 to 15 million, Kit sponser money amount between 7.5 to 10million) (needs - a club rep of 9000 or above, have a chairman with business attribute of 18 +)
-9 (main sponser money amount between 10 to 12.5 million, Kit sponser money amount between 5 to 7.5million) (needs - a club rep between 8000 - 8999, have a chairman with business attribute between15-17). You get the idea. Is that clear or not?

[Macflyer]

Those kind of idead, like ticket pricing, sponsorship negotiations, stadium building, etc. is always followed sooner or later by a response that this is not the aim of the game, being a manager/coach of a team rather than the almighty owner of the club.

Mostly people suggesting those things receive additionally the advice to look for a game from EA or so.

Why I can´t seem harm of having these functions implemented in a manner that you can turn them off if you don´t want them, I can understand why not to implement them by SI to distinguish their product from mainstream products.

Maybe if one day SI might be running out of ideas for new features, because everything possible has been implemented, then we might see some "improvement" in this area.

[stevehep]

Personally, i'd like to see an enhanced version of the finances as in my first post as i wanted to stay away from suggesting ideas that are outside the scope of a normal football manager.

However, some of the ideas mentioned could well be included in the Boardroom Interaction section of the game. We could almost start a separate thread for the number of potential enhancements you could ask of your board. For example;

Maybe once your club reputation hit a certain level this could trigger the ability to be able to go to your board and ask them for say a stadium sponsor (or similar) in much the same way you can have a merchandising feeder club once you hit a certain level.

Just another idea...