Sports DLC implementation

[BioBiro]

This post will attempt to implement the Sports Team DLC ideas suggested by others, into something that fits in-game.

There are two kinds of corporate involvement in sport:

* Ownership of team *
You must own a venue for your team.

Sports teams play many events through a season, with a final ranking determined at end-of-season.

Sports available/Venue required:

• American Football/Stadium
• Soccer/Soccer Field
• Rugby/Rugby Field (new building required)
• Basketball/Basketball Court (new building required)
• Ice Hockey/Indoor Hockey Rink (new building required)
• Open-Wheel Motorsport (to us, this is Formula 1/GP2/GP3)
• Closed-Wheel Motorsport (to us, this is WTCC/GTs/Endurance)
• Two-Wheeled Motorsport (to us, this is superbikes/MotoGP)

Motorsport has special links with your company’s products, as the car is as much a competitor, as the driver: Car construction is bespoke in open-wheel motorsport, so open-wheel motorsport uses the ‘Engine’ product that your company manufactures; a higher ‘Engine’ quality = better horsepower and reliability. Closed-wheel motorsport uses production (road) cars, so the company’s ‘Car’ product’s quality plays a large part of determining how competitive the team is. Motorbikes should work the same way.



* Ownership of annual tournament *
You must own a venue for your annual tournament.

Tournaments occur once per year, i.e. an annual basis.

Sports available/Venue required:

• Golf/Golf Course
• Snooker/Snooker Hall (new building required)
• Tennis/Tennis Court

The option to end-the-running of a tournament should be available; this should incur a moderate corporate branding penalty if the tournament has been running for only a couple of years, rising to a heavy branding penalty if the tournament is long-established by that point of the game. I would also put forward the idea of a cash penalty for cancelling a tournament, which increases in size the closer the date gets to the time of the tournament (the sport’s series owner must punish you for cancelling a tournament only a month before it was due to run, as that puts the sport in serious difficulty).



* Further detail that relates to both teams and tournaments *
Both teams and tournaments should have a few, select, additional pieces of data: All sports have leagues/ranking levels that teams play at, and that determines the prestige and importance of a tournament; for example, soccer teams compete in divisions, tennis tournaments are Grand Slam and below, snooker has ranking and non-ranking events.

The performance of a team determines their promotion and relegation between ‘leagues’. The funding invested into a venue for an annual tournament, as well as the prize money offered by the company, the brand-weight of the company hosting the tournament, the TV coverage the owner secures, and the placement of the venue (high footfall areas), are all adjustable game mechanics, and determine how a company-sponsored tournament is given higher, or lower, ‘ranking’ within the sport, each year.

Additionally, as corporate-sponsored sports, it is common to see gender divisions (all female golf tournaments are very popular, for example). Perhaps a team or tournament (when it is initially created/setup) could have a ‘male’ or ‘female’ option.

I think it is fair to suggest that a company should only be able to own one team of each sport, and run one annual tournament for each sport. Companies are entitled to own multiple teams and/or tournaments, as long as they are in different sports.



* Information on game-play/finance mechanics that relate to both teams and tournaments *
I do not feel certain sports should be restricted to certain cities (soccer=UK, football=US, baseball=Japan, ice hockey=Canada, etc.), as this does not work properly with the city-names used in CapLab. Instead, I think a factor very similar to the City Competitiveness Rating used as a ‘boost’ for certain industries/sectors, should be employed, but for individual sports. In a game with five cities, some cities should be huge on football, others not so much.

The buy/sell mechanic of a team should use the existing 'For Sale' marker in-game. If you want to sell your team, simply mark the team's home venue as 'For Sale', and receive offers from the AI. Look for home venues for sale, to purchase a sports team. This mechanic can also function for the buying and selling of tournaments, if people feel that functionality should exist.

Both the player’s companies, and the player themselves (through personal investment), should be able to fund money into their team(s) and tournament(s). This is the same mechanic as the political ‘Donate’ function.

Both teams and tournaments should not be seen as likely profit-generators, but rather as money-sinks. The value come from the brand boosts they provide to a company, and to a lesser extent to give the in-game player something to do with their in-game money.

Do not forget to have a ‘History’ screen, where past tournaments and team season data are stored and visible. If my tournament’s been going for 15 years, I want to be able to see an overview of our achievements/events, since its inception.



* Advertising/Brand mechanics *
In real-life, sports tournament hosts do not receive much money from TV sports broadcasting channels for the rights to show their tournament. For example, in snooker, you would be lucky to get 10%, for a major tournament like the World Championship or The Masters. Television coverage is, in itself, a privilege, and very valuable for your tournament’s reputation and perception. Less popular tournaments like the British Open or Malta Grand Prix are lucky to get some piss poor coverage on Eurosport 2 at night, and so should think themselves lucky to get coverage on a ‘free’ basis (no money changing hands), or to pay to have TV broadcast it.

Tournament venues should have an Advertising link (same as the Advertising unit in retail stores), which lets them pick a TV or radio station. Higher viewershare/content rating of the station = higher cost to have it broadcast. A hugely popular tournament (‘A’ ranking) can expect some money in return for allowing a major TV station to broadcast it; a ‘D’ ranking tournament will have to pay to have a small radio station broadcast coverage of their tournament.

Company-wide brand boosts should occur, whereby the prestige of a team/tournament boosts a company’s brand (whether it be corporate, range, or unique).

Merchandising - you can tick Yes/No to whether a product is merchandise of a company’s team/tournament. If you do, then it receives an immediate branding modifier, which is determined whether negative or positive - and how much - by the success/prominence of the team or tournament. The relationship is reciprocal - if the merchandise product(s) is of poor quality, then this harms the reputation/perception of the team/tournament. So, merchandise of a crap team drags the product brand down, or can give it a large positive boost, and crappy merchandise of a good team/tournament can drag the team/tournament down.



* Naming function *
When setting-up a team/tournament, you should be able to name it, using one of several sentence structures allowed by the game. For example:

A.) “The” COMPANYNAME CITYNAME _custom_or_presuggested_word_
B.) “The” CITYNAME COMPANYNAME _custom_or_presuggested_word_

_presuggested_word_ list would be something like:

• Dolpins
• Tigers
• Whales
• Thieves
• Hardliners
• Undefeatables
• Space Rockets
• Powerhouse

This way, the AI won’t name their teams/tournaments really stupid things - they’ll always be something like: The Los Angeles SSA Corp. Tigers, or The Red Petal Ho Chi Minh City Space Rockets (hahaha~).

A similar algorithm will need to be develop for naming tournaments, obviously looking at current & previous corporate tournaments for inspiration.



* End Notes *
There are obvious additions to both lists of sports, but I’ve deliberately kept them relatively short, in this text.

I have not touched on the usage of staff or sportsmen/women (team members) within this DLC concept, nor have I considered how ticket sales at tournament venues (stadium, snooker hall, tennis court, etc.) should be implemented, and would appreciate any feedback on these aspects.