Reducing Financial Losses

Hey guys, I'm playing as Arsenal and ******* money away big time (around 6m a month wages and of course the stadium repayments)

Has anyone got any tips for making money, i've shipped out all the reserves I can and I'm signing as many young (15/16) high pot. players as I can with a view to sell on or use (depending on how good they turn out)

Really need some help.

Thanks

You should do okay financially when the reward money comes in.

I haven't been doing too bad with that but is there any ways of increasing your general revenue stream?

Do you have one of those feeder clubs that give you heaps of merchandising revenue?

I haven't added any :/ any tips on what to look for? (I've never really gone too deep into the financial side before this year)

I haven't added any more? any tips on what to look out for with them?

Have you gone through a whole year's cycle? It's usually impossible to understand a club's finances until you've seen the full income from TV revenue, season tickets, sponsorships, prize money, and a few other factors, basically a significant amount comes in as a lump sum at the end of the season/start of the next season.

Yeah i'm on my second season, I have played FM for a few years but i've never really cared too much about the financial side of it. After getting the board to negotiate a transfer for Eden Hazard for me (£64m) I feel I should keep an eye on it.

Not really sure about giant clubs like Arsenal. But I've always managed small clubs in relatively remote Europe countries and my main income, after many seasons, has become two business aspects.

1. Gate receipts.

2. Buying youth talents, train them for few years and let them experience 1st team football for some time, sell'em for profit.

Those two above are how I've gotten my lowly club finance to the level of FCP of Portugal so far.

Yeah, i'm buying quite a few 15/16 year olds and loaning them out, hoping to make a profit on them, there's a few that have done really well that i'm tempted to just keep though. Just set up a Feeder club in USA to try and get more merchandising hopefully.

Well, I found almost all my first 11 from youth talents I bought. One of them became my top star and has increased his value to 20m over 8 seasons, yet his wage demand is very low ( only 31k week ) since he became home-grown and his favorite club is the club I manage. So many times, I was tempted to sell him since big clubs made offers ranging from 20m to 40m, but that guy is going to retire from my club.

I don't generally send them out on loan. I keep them in my reserves for a year and give them specific training. Those who follow the trainings well are kept. Those who don't follow are loaned out next year to my feeder clubs.

I'm in the same position, managing Arsenal and now in 2015. I've been able to maintain a balance of between $150-$200m, while being opportunistic about signings (waiting until a player I want becomes unsettled, for example) and investing in youth. I've also made a lot of money selling some of my older players at inflated prices to the likes of Man City and Real Madrid. Almost everybody at the club is for sale at the right price (all of my players have an asking price set in 'transfer status', even if they're not transfer-listed) -- if you always have a good replacement for the best player at any given position, you can accept that offer for him from Real Madrid for 4 times his worth. You can make a ton of money this way and really fleece the big clubs.

However during the middle of the season, I'm losing money every month (at least $5m a month). However I've found that I can rely heavily on season-ticket sales at the beginning of the season and prize money near the end of the season to recoup any losses I've incurred due to transfers and player wages. I'm not too high on the idea that I'm reliant on Champions League prize money to maintain a good balance, however. But I always try to keep the balance over $100m going into September to cover the months where I'm losing money.

I find that Arsenal spends a ton on non-football expenses, and that coupled with even a wage bill that is very reasonable but still allows for top-four competition (between $9m and $10m a month) makes it impossible to be in the black each month.

But it is satisfying to be managing Arsenal, competing for the PL title every year, and always in contention for the Champions League, while spending far less on buying players than the other top clubs. I don't think I've ever come close to spending my entire transfer budget in a given season (it's usually around $50m with a wage budget of $13m, so I have wiggle-room because my wage bill is under $10m). This is the first save where I've really made a concerted effort to be smart about finances, and it's really rewarding.

It can be a bit worrying when you post hefty losses every month but by the end of the season it all gets balanced out (gate receipts, TV, sponsor, prize money). I play in Russia quite a bit and generally their attendances are low so you post a big monthly loss which looks bad but a lot of teams have huge sponsors which balance it all out in the end.

Stay well inside your wage budget and you'll be fine. There's some instances in lower leagues (a notorious one in Germany whose name escapes me) where money just drains from the finances, there's nothing you can do though. Higher league clubs are fine though, they've been tested thoroughly and finances will balance out eventually.

I'm terrible for spending my entire budget which is my biggest issue I think, I'll be a lot more careful in the next window as my squad is pretty solid and the kids are really coming along (Ramsey is unstoppable). Hopefully that will be okay, but then I have things like staff asking for 10kp/w from a 3kp/w contract... really making it difficult haha

lol, at least you have a transfer budget. I haven't had a single euro for transfer until I got to my 4th season and that was only 400k euro.

Now I have 50m for transfer budget though, but I can't spend that money since the club cannot sustain high wage players in long term.

haha, do you get to keep the money you got from selling players?

The club's yearly income is fairly limited. It's in Sweden with top league prize being 500k euro. I am saving up for a new stadium of around 45.000 seat which would be the biggest in Sweden, so yeh, I need to save up. Club has around 92m right now. And I spend 8m a year for player wages.

I do enter UCL every year which gives a healthy dose of 7m. I normally fail to qualify for the knockout stage. I did enter knockout stage twice now though.

The club pays me 2400 euro / week. That should tell you how poor the clubs are in general in Sweden.

Okay yeah that is a pretty far cry from the Arsenal finances, I'm thinking of starting a new save with a smaller club though, never really had that sense of working my way up, it'd be a nice change of pace.

Well, ticket price goes up as a club's reputation goes up. So far, gate receipts is giving me the best & stable income right now. Right now with 14000 all seater, I get about 7m from stadium. Once a new stadium of almost 3x capacity is built, I can expect 20m from stadium along with naming rights sponsorship.

With 3x more stable income, I think I can finally look up to regularly entering UCL knockout stage, but that plan is still far away and I am in my 8th season with this club right now.

A long way to go, this is going to be a really long save. Will I win UCL ever? Who knows.

See that's what i'm missing out on though, I'd love to build a club from the ground up to champs... Think I'll have to restart soon

Well, everyone has different taste in having fun.

But, yeah, building a low league club especially in low-standard football league to become the champ of Europe is quite a challenge.

Believe or not, I also have 16 youth talents in my reserves and I carefully monitor them. They are also a source of my main income.

Sadly, I have had only one youth talent from my own youth candidates. :/

Another good thing about playing in low standard league is that you can let your young talents play in your first 11 for experiments. My club dominates Sweden premier league and my club is light years a head of my rivals, so I let two/three new youth talents slip into the first 11 every year and let them win Sweden cup which boosts their value significantly.

Reward for winning Sweden cup is, LOL, 50k, but hey silverware is silverware.