Commercial feeder clubs

So I requested a new link with a commercial feeder club to my board. They came up with 5 alternatives. All says they will give "major economical benefits with regards to merchandizing", but they range very much in how much I have to pay them each year.

So my question is: is there any difference (apart from the obvious difference in annual fee they receive from my club)? Will the feeder club that "costs" more also give back more revenue when it comes to merchandizing?

Thanks in advance

Not really in my experience. The thing that affects it most is if you have a player of the same nationality as your feeder club, then your merchandising goes through the roof.

The Annual fees are just proportional to the clubs reputation and the fact that it's a 'special' affiliation. Therefore it's not crazy to assume that the higher rep club will bring more merchandise income for you.

There's too many variables to take into account when assessing which club would be more valuable as a merchandise affiliation; your own clubs reputation, the feeder clubs reputation are definite variables and then the others such as league standard, nation reputation might come into play too.

It's difficult to analyse because the merchandise income from affiliates in finances is not seperated from your usual merchandise sales. So you simply can't measure accurately whether choosing Toronto FC over Tokyo blahblah will bring more income.

There's very little research done on this area because of this

I'll analyse my Barcelona merchandise income over the 6 seasons and see if it can be any use for you:

Average monthly income was hovering around the 2mill mark from merchandise, i formed a link with Chicago and signed some youth players hence a small rise in income over the new year. This was tittering around the 3mill mark until Summer 2009 when i signed David Silva for 57mill for formed a link with Japanese club Okayama and the merchandise shot up to the 5mill mark from shirt sales for Silva!

This fell back to the 3mill mark with a couple of rises mid-season, perhaps this was the feeder club income as no transfers were made at this time. I didn't see a sharp rise again until i signed Bale (maybe he didn't have any effect) but interestingly i also toured the US at this time, 3 games across the country. Merchandise shot up to 5.5mill.

We're hovering around the 4mill mark 3 seasons in now, double what i was getting at the start. More big peaks appeared when Benzema and Jankovic were signed for big money, shirt sales i assume!. Then Marquinhos was signed in Summer 2012 pushing the merchandise over 8mill for that month. Averaging now at 6-7mill per month, triple the start incoming of 2mill!

It's hard to analyse how important those feeder clubs are, perhaps i'll cancel both when i have some time and test it out. I'll take another summer tour of the US to see if that makes any difference like the first tour obviously did

Just to add... you could always research it yourself and give some valuable insight to the FM community

Accept Club 1, go on holiday for 6 months and record your merchandise sales.

Accept Club 2, go on holiday for 6 months and record your merchandise sales.

Club 3..

Club 4..

Club 5..

And then compare the levels of income against how much the affiliation cost. And also make a note of the feeder clubs reputation using the FMRTE editor and checking the clubs rep. Might take you a couple of days to do it though

Thanks for your information on this I appreciate it. Maybe I will look further into it one day...