The renting of Stadiums

Forgive the length of my ramblings. And forgive my obsession with FM stadiums...

So Crawley Town (AI) have finally made it to the Premiership by 2044/45.

However, 7923-capacity Broadfield Stadium is clearly inadequate for the top flight. A 4577 seat terrace conversion is planned, to take the capacity up to 12,500.

So, until 8th February 2045 they will be renting out AFC Wimbledon Stadium, based in Kingston-upon-Thames, a modern stadium built in 2024 which has a 15,900 capacity, Crawley paying AFC Wimbledon of the Championship a fee of £20,000 for the privilege.

My observations:

- I'm really impressed that the AI has been able to implement this, especially considering the new AFC Wimbledon stadium didn't exist until 2024.

- Also impressed that Crawley (of the Premiership) have the first-choice when it comes to using the ground. They tend to play their home games on a Saturdays and Wednesdays, whereas AFC Wimbledon (Championship) homes games have been moved to Friday nights and Tuesday nights. Nicely worked out! Especially considering the fixture congestion that can happen in long-term games.

My queries:

- Kingston-upon-Thames and Crawley are around 30 miles apart. Is that too far for a 'temporary' home? I've googlemapped the area and can't really find any major clubs who could have offered an alternative. Doesn't seem to be an awful lot of football clubs between the outskirts of London and the South Coast, so perhaps going North is the only option.

- Having said that - it's 20 miles from Crawley to Brighton. A lot less. But Crawley have Brighton listed as rivals. Would that impact?

- Is it merely a coincidence that it's AFC Wimbledon involved? Sponsored by "Sigames" of course

So yeah. This is the first time I've seen a stadium rent between clubs created in the game. Anyone else got an example? Presumably it's a "Premiership thing".

Nice one, good to see the AI deal with something like that, one thing about the distance, when Inverness Caly Thistle first got promoted to the SPL their stadium was not up to scratch so they shared with Aberdeen for a season, which is about a 90 mile trip each way.

Nice one, good to see the AI deal with something like that, one thing about the distance, when Inverness Caly Thistle first got promoted to the SPL their stadium was not up to scratch so they shared with Aberdeen for a season, which is about a 90 mile trip each way.

90 miles? Yeesh.

I suppose 30 miles is nothing, especially with London's rail links.

Must have some kind of formula to work out things like these. Latitude and Longitude, etc.

Yeah it must have been a nightmare for their fans, saying that 90 miles each way is the least they have to travel for any away game, i just couldnt be assed with that every second week.

I used to dig around in the database and I'm sure that each club (probably each stadium) has a location variable attached to it (I think, as you say, its measured in longitude and latitude) so it's trivial for the game to work out which clubs are in the vicinity and order them by distance and then check through each 'local' club to see if they have a larger stadium that would fit the bill. I'd assume that rivalries would stop any potential groundshare, as would, presumably, being in the same division (although I'm not sure of the RL rules on this).

There is a lot of moaning about SI (and, yes, some of it is warranted) so it's good to see someone applauding a great little feature that they get spot on that 99.9% of people won't ever noticed. There are countless examples of these 'little' features in the game which just goes to show the complexity of the game and programming.

And yes, AFC Wimbledon and their link with SI is mere coincidence.