(Suggest) Womens Leagues

[Topspur]

With a big increase in the ladies game over the last year, and a lot of television coverage, it would be great if the womens teams are added to the game, with perhaps a link to the mens team?

[qDizzy]

totally agree...

definetly think there should be continuing support in women in sports as well... ladies love the sport too and we should continue to support the platform for them to have the oppurtunity to play the game they love... 

cheers mate great post!

[santy001]

It's simply not commercially viable yet from what SI have said. There isn't a large enough audience for the resources to be dedicated there and establishing all the support infrastructure (researchers etc) and emulating all the league rules and such in FM. 

[Preveza]

Si have enough of their plate already. Wasting resources on a womans league will be a waste of time.

[qDizzy]

yea i hear u guys.... FM still got alot going on to try and keep the game going and stuff...

still i think they should aspire to, if and when they get a chance to... perhaps introducing womens international cup tornements only... so u can be manger not only for mens international teams but womens too... skiping all the transfers and leagues in the womens league... i think would be a good start to kinda get the ball rolling towards that direction.... until they get the full expericne.... would say it would take a couple years... but think its cool to kinda mention it now.. so that maybe later down the line it hopefully would be looked into....

maybe the audince isnt there now, but perhaps later it will... really do think women sports are becoming more popular...  perhaps later down the line maybe 10 years from now it would be just as big as mens... think tennis is a good example of it.... i enjoy basketball myself and see the WNBA getting really popular really fast in the next 10.... 

anyhoo... cheers mate

best of luck gaming....

[Spedding]

So has said they want to include it but at the moment it's not financially viable. Miles has said in the past once a few leagues are getting championship level attendances theyĺl include it.

[chestermike]

It will never happen unfortunately because it's just not worth it to SI, spending all that money developing the women's side when it will generate very few if any additional sales.

plus if you want to manage that quality of football, you can always download the down to level 22 editor files available on this forum.

[forameuss]

On 7/13/2017 at 07:44, qDizzy said:

yea i hear u guys.... FM still got alot going on to try and keep the game going and stuff...

still i think they should aspire to, if and when they get a chance to... perhaps introducing womens international cup tornements only... so u can be manger not only for mens international teams but womens too... skiping all the transfers and leagues in the womens league... i think would be a good start to kinda get the ball rolling towards that direction.... until they get the full expericne.... would say it would take a couple years... but think its cool to kinda mention it now.. so that maybe later down the line it hopefully would be looked into....

maybe the audince isnt there now, but perhaps later it will... really do think women sports are becoming more popular...  perhaps later down the line maybe 10 years from now it would be just as big as mens... think tennis is a good example of it.... i enjoy basketball myself and see the WNBA getting really popular really fast in the next 10.... 

anyhoo... cheers mate

best of luck gaming....

That's still a huge undertaking though.  The work is getting the database itself up to the standard that SI and their users are used to.  The current database took decades to get to that level, so it's nothing trivial to do the same for the women's game.  You then have to work on segregating both sides (because obviously the "main" database should not be affecting the women's one) which is going to add up to a huge amount of work for just a few tournaments.  

What santy said is pretty much the answer.  It's been brought up before, and it simply isn't viable when balancing the amount of work against the potential benefits.  Are there really these huge pockets of female (or male) fans that would buy the game, but only if they can manage the England Women's National Team?  Or Glasgow City?  Not buying it.  It's a nice extra option for some, but I doubt it's a deal-breaker.   It's probably more likely to drive some people away sadly - look at a lot of the comments every time a women's match is given the full coverage.  

If the game takes off even more than it has already, it could be an option in future.  It's pretty telling that EA with their deep pockets full of dirty, dirty cash, are only really dipping a toe in the shallow pool that is their game in this sense.  SI aren't even in the same ladder, let alone the same league financially.

[Jorgen]

I would really, really like the addition of women's football to FM. Not only is the quality of football getting better every year, it also shows that SI is taking this seriously. For me it would be just great to be able to have a fresh and new game, with new, but real, clubs and players, competitions and tournaments. And is it so very different or so much more work compared to scouting new youngsters every year, editing existings players' stats and adding new leagues or competitons to the men's world?

Another great benefit, would be the enormous potential of girls and women that would like to play a computer game, but do not have women's sport to choose from. Except for the occasional tennis game perhaps.

 

 

If it is too much work to create a 2nd footballing world, perhaps the two could be integrated, like youth / reserve leagues don't interfere with the rest of the game eighter.

Another idea would be to make it possible for us to edit the footballing world ourselves, like we are able to do with almost every aspect of the game. In the editor, add a switch for men's / women's competitions. If set on women's, the game replaces "he" for "she" on all players and replaces regen-pictures for women's variants, etc.

[Guest]

On 06/08/2017 at 00:20, Jorgen said:

Another great benefit, would be the enormous potential of girls and women that would like to play a computer game, but do not have women's sport to choose from. 

SI sells about 2m copies of its various FM titles each year which is probably in the region of 0.001% of the potential global fanbase for men's football so not only is the logic of adding the women's game resulting in more female FM'ers pretty flimsy the potential additional customers on a like for like basis I reckon would struggle to exceed 1,000 new players.

It's just not financial viable for what would amount to a very brief (days) period of positive publicity that in all honesty would of itself not create anywhere near the additional revenue required.

[Guest]

On 06/08/2017 at 00:20, Jorgen said:

Another idea would be to make it possible for us to edit the footballing world ourselves, like we are able to do with almost every aspect of the game. In the editor, add a switch for men's / women's competitions. If set on women's, the game replaces "he" for "she" on all players and replaces regen-pictures for women's variants, etc.

SI would be rightly crucified if they added women's football to FM in such a half arsed way.

[forameuss]

On 8/6/2017 at 00:20, Jorgen said:

Another great benefit, would be the enormous potential of girls and women that would like to play a computer game, but do not have women's sport to choose from. Except for the occasional tennis game perhaps.

Yeah, as Barside said, this is a hugely flimsy argument.  Where is the proof that there's this untapped pool of female players who like football, even love it, but refuse to buy the game because there is no female option?  Almost patronising to them to suggest they would only be interested in that way.

On 8/6/2017 at 00:20, Jorgen said:

If it is too much work to create a 2nd footballing world, perhaps the two could be integrated, like youth / reserve leagues don't interfere with the rest of the game eighter.

Another idea would be to make it possible for us to edit the footballing world ourselves, like we are able to do with almost every aspect of the game. In the editor, add a switch for men's / women's competitions. If set on women's, the game replaces "he" for "she" on all players and replaces regen-pictures for women's variants, etc.

It's absolutely nowhere near as simple as that.  Youth and reserve leagues also have far, far more integration with the rest of the game than the women's game would have to have.

[Bannside of Killowen]

it would be a great addition to the game even if it is just viewable for the next 2 years until the data is built up and maybe by 2020 having the female leagues playable, well the nation teams.

As a female player it's a wee bit werid if you selected a global star etc but means you have played in the male teams 

[Jorgen]

OK, well, I have no idea how SI should / could implement it, but I really would like it

[GoldenGoal]

On 05/08/2017 at 20:20, Jorgen said:

replaces regen-pictures for women's variants

Haha can you guys even imagine this? Regens look ridiculous in FM17. Female regens with huge foreheads and mutant chins? oh god!

[Jorgen]

Was just a suggestion

[jjtile]

I like this idea.

 

Not buying the "not financially viable" argument. Can it really be true that every country featured in game has its database-building costs covered 100% by the additional sales generated by including that country? Seems difficult to believe.

[santy001]

1 hour ago, jjtile said:

I like this idea.

 

Not buying the "not financially viable" argument. Can it really be true that every country featured in game has its database-building costs covered 100% by the additional sales generated by including that country? Seems difficult to believe.

I don't understand what there is or isn't to buy on this front. 

It's been mentioned years before this was even in peoples minds, for a whole host of leagues around the world. 

I'll use an example for the company I work for, we recently invested £12,000 in a new camera set-up for product photos. We've just been quoted €14,000 for a piece of software that will help us with listing on Polish website Allegro. 

The first, we said yes to and the second we said no to, because it's not financially viable.

Financially viable doesn't mean "don't have the money for" it means more along the lines of "the investment won't be repaid in a timely manner" because we would have to have profits on sales of more than €14,000 to offset it on that site. When it starts getting up towards sums of money that you could hire more staff with, or money that may well be your actual profits after all is said and done then it's not a good idea to be generally careless with that money.

- - - -

Back to FM though, what you perhaps don't realise is there's already research infrastructure in place for say level 10 of England, but its not an active league in the game. Yet SI has information on players, has player data, team data and such already in place. It's presumably not financially viable to use that data to make an active league at this time, because the investment in that side wouldn't be repaid either. But, the data is already there.

There's researchers in the Caribbean, in Africa, in South America, in the UK and everywhere else, providing information on inactive leagues. As long as the scientists down in Antarctica don't start up a league of football tomorrow, there's pretty good odds SI is getting some information about it already to some extent.  Bear in mind what this information is, players names, appearances as best as they can be, stadiums, stadium locations, an assessment on facilities, club history, player history, backroom staff, player ratings, potential abilities, current abilities and so on.

There is nothing at all on the women's front at this time to my knowledge. In addition to this, there's no in-game infrastructure for women's leagues. There's no attribute weighting profiles for a female defender, a female forward etc. There's no spread in the regen system to reflect where the best female footballers tend to emerge. There's no regen system for the type of players that countries more frequently produce. There's nothing that reflects the physiological differences that exist, the average height and weights would need to be lower for example. 

I mean, it'd be incredibly easy to half ass and put something in that paid lip service to women's football. But that doesn't tend to be what SI are about. 

[forameuss]

2 hours ago, jjtile said:

Not buying the "not financially viable" argument. Can it really be true that every country featured in game has its database-building costs covered 100% by the additional sales generated by including that country? Seems difficult to believe.

It's quite simple.  This isn't an easy change to add and will take considerable resources.  Putting a monetary value on it, it'll cost £x.  Then by simple common sense, the addition of that feature would have to yield at least an increase of profit of £x.  Otherwise, what's the point in doing it?  Smaller features, fine, but this would be an enormous undertaking, so why would they do it when it's not clear where the benefit falls for them?

[SeoulYank]

On 8/7/2017 at 07:28, Barside said:

SI sells about 2m copies of its various FM titles each year which is probably in the region of 0.001% of the potential global fanbase for men's football so not only is the logic of adding the women's game resulting in more female FM'ers pretty flimsy the potential additional customers on a like for like basis I reckon would struggle to exceed 1,000 new players.

It's just not financial viable for what would amount to a very brief (days) period of positive publicity that in all honesty would of itself not create anywhere near the additional revenue required.

I think you grossly underestimate the rabid nature of women's soccer fans. Having covered the sport as media and having relationships with people in the merchandising space in women's soccer, I have decent insight here. 

The women's soccer fanbase may be significantly smaller than men's soccer, but they spend more money per person and display far greater brand loyalty. There's a reason EA put women's teams in FIFA. I know a lot of people that did not previously own console's that went out and bought PS or Xbox strictly so they could buy FIFA, and that's without even getting clubs.

I can say for me, can't tell you the last time I bought FM, I'd buy it the day it went on sale if women's leagues were in the game.

[SeoulYank]

On 7/10/2017 at 07:02, santy001 said:

It's simply not commercially viable yet from what SI have said. There isn't a large enough audience for the resources to be dedicated there and establishing all the support infrastructure (researchers etc) and emulating all the league rules and such in FM. 

They've said that, as someone who works in the women's soccer space and sees women's soccer fan spending behavior, I think they are dead wrong. I would generate more revenue than having leagues like K-League 2, the Indonesian leagues and countless other leagues in the game does.

[Guest]

The difference is those leagues have been established for nearly two decades & are in the game off the back of the European & South American men's game.

To add the women's game would require a new cohort of trusted researchers, a new or adapted transfer module & a modified match engine, what aspect of those three core areas is easy for SI to take on without significant investment?

[SeoulYank]

51 minutes ago, Barside said:

The difference is those leagues have been established for nearly two decades & are in the game off the back of the European & South American men's game.

To add the women's game would require a new cohort of trusted researchers, a new or adapted transfer module & a modified match engine, what aspect of those three core areas is easy for SI to take on without significant investment?

Once upon a time, you had to establish trusted researchers for those leagues despite the fact that adding them wasn't likely to add much in the way of consumers. Adding the women's game would do much more to bring in new buyers than those leagues did. Nobody is saying do it for FM 18, but if you're to do it then at some point the groundwork has to be laid, Right now, tbh, SI Game's refusal to look seriously at it looks a lot more like uneducated bias against women's football than a decision based on detailed analysis.

As for the specifics of the issues you raise, if you were to add women's football to the game, you'd probably want to start at a minimum with:

England - FA-WSL 1

France: Ligue 1

Germany: Frau Bundesliga

Sweden: Damallsvenken 1

Spain: Primera Division

Australia: W-League

USA: NWSL

There are others you could run with, but that gets you the big hitters. That's something like 80 teams, ~2000 players. Add in another ~500 players from leading national teams or leagues not in the game. I could get you excellent researchers for all of those leagues in a few days and, tbh, in the women's football world they'd be willing to do it for free to get the leagues into the game.

Transfer module: framework is there already. NWSL works similar to MLS, other leagues work same as men's leagues. Would need to adjust for the fact that transfer fees are rare and much smaller than the men's game at the moment. Most moves are free transfers when contracts expire. The challenge that would need to be addressed is seasonal movement of players - for example, a lot of NWSL players go to play in W-League after the NWSL season and vice versa. Basically loans.

Match engine: apart from 3D players looking like women and not men, what needs to change? It is the same game. I suppose there is one consideration - do you rate relative to men to ensure game is slower, etc. (same way you do now to where the play is vastly different if you are running an Premier League team versus a Conference side) or do you do like EA and rate the women against each other rather than against the men, in which case you would need to modify the match engine I suppose in order to reflect a slower less physical style of play and capture the differences between the leagues (e.g. NWSL being the fastest/most physical league in the women's world while European leagues being slower but more technical).

 

[santy001]

11 hours ago, SeoulYank said:

Once upon a time, you had to establish trusted researchers for those leagues despite the fact that adding them wasn't likely to add much in the way of consumers. Adding the women's game would do much more to bring in new buyers than those leagues did. Nobody is saying do it for FM 18, but if you're to do it then at some point the groundwork has to be laid, Right now, tbh, SI Game's refusal to look seriously at it looks a lot more like uneducated bias against women's football than a decision based on detailed analysis.

As for the specifics of the issues you raise, if you were to add women's football to the game, you'd probably want to start at a minimum with:

England - FA-WSL 1

France: Ligue 1

Germany: Frau Bundesliga

Sweden: Damallsvenken 1

Spain: Primera Division

Australia: W-League

USA: NWSL

There are others you could run with, but that gets you the big hitters. That's something like 80 teams, ~2000 players. Add in another ~500 players from leading national teams or leagues not in the game. I could get you excellent researchers for all of those leagues in a few days and, tbh, in the women's football world they'd be willing to do it for free to get the leagues into the game.

Transfer module: framework is there already. NWSL works similar to MLS, other leagues work same as men's leagues. Would need to adjust for the fact that transfer fees are rare and much smaller than the men's game at the moment. Most moves are free transfers when contracts expire. The challenge that would need to be addressed is seasonal movement of players - for example, a lot of NWSL players go to play in W-League after the NWSL season and vice versa. Basically loans.

Match engine: apart from 3D players looking like women and not men, what needs to change? It is the same game. I suppose there is one consideration - do you rate relative to men to ensure game is slower, etc. (same way you do now to where the play is vastly different if you are running an Premier League team versus a Conference side) or do you do like EA and rate the women against each other rather than against the men, in which case you would need to modify the match engine I suppose in order to reflect a slower less physical style of play and capture the differences between the leagues (e.g. NWSL being the fastest/most physical league in the women's world while European leagues being slower but more technical).

 

If its so straight forward, and you've got inside knowledge of the market really, you should be looking to do it yourself then? Take out a loan from the bank, and make a success out of it. If its going to be a resounding success and bring in money, then you'd be stupid not to do so. 

Women's football in FM may happen, it may not, but its not on the agenda at present until its pulling in Championship level attendances from what I'm sure others have attributed to Miles saying. 

All of FM's researchers are unpaid (at least for their FM research work, some are SI employees who I imagine have a main job role with SI that isn't to do a clubs research) but you've mentioned 7 leagues that need to be correctly implemented and then put through a Q&A process. Now lets assume each league has 1000 hours of Q&A (probably a gross underestimate, but my days of working at Sega are hazy and long long ago) 25 people testing it for a week solid. Or less, across multiple weeks. Let's say 5 people for 5 weeks. You suddenly need 35 more Q&A staff to test it. Now, even if you go down the route of temporary contracts, in order to get this done and its paid at what would be a reasonably low-endish guess of a London hourly wage for these staff temporarily of like £10 an hour. 

Before national insurance contributions for the employer etc the Q&A staff for 5 weeks of testing would come to £70,000. To cover the cost of some Q&A staff alone, it would need approximately 2500 sales where all the unit sale is profit and goes to SI. Now, I don't know what fees steam take, what the cut is after shops have had their end etc but its probably closer to £20 than £30. But SI likely have to pay VAT to the government, there will inevitably be other fees as well just general costs of doing business. It really wouldn't be all that difficult to envisage a situation where profit per unit is around £5 or less. Which dramatically increases the sales count.

In all likeliness, there just isn't the sheer physical man-hours in the budget (the total number of SI staff multiplied by the hours they work) to do this and the things already planned/in place for an FM release. So odds are they would have to take on more full time staff as well. Low balling salaries again considering SI are based in London, let's assume it means 5 more development staff are needed to maintain the whole women's side of the game. Their salaries would probably be low-balling again around £30k each. So you'd be looking at £150k per year extra permanent staff, and £70k per year Q&A staff and now in addition to national insurance contributions, work place pensions come into play too. You'd be looking at around needing 15,000 extra sales assuming SI clear £20 profit per sale but if I were to work it out at around £5 per unit being profit, to break even this would need around 50,000 more sales. 

A little bit of digging suggests the average attendance of 7 of the top women's teams (in the UK) in the last season was 8,380 combined. Now working out crossover for those who also enjoy the men's game and working out what percentage already purchased FM and what percentage are never going to be interested and you're rapidly losing this number and 50,000 sales is beginning to look like a pipe dream. 

When you start to sit down and look at the numbers, it just doesn't make a huge amount of sense. I expect my figures are somewhat low-balling the reality, but asking any business to risk a quarter of a million pounds is a huge gamble. Especially when all is said and done, and you get the final sales figures, even if sales did grow enough to offset it - you wouldn't be able to 100% accurately attribute whether or not it was down to that, or just down to growth from other areas. 

I couldn't even hazard a guess at the costs of getting a research team in place but I actually expect in truth the closer cost to the business of getting this would all set up would be pushing closer to 500k than the 250k figures I'm playing around with. 

Further to this, SI posted a considerable loss in its last accounts, with a note mentioning the expectation to make another loss in the next set of accounts. In the strictest sense, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be considering taking on extra financial burdens at present for features that may be of limited use in increasing profitability. 

[qDizzy]

hey santy001

didnt read your whole post... i kinda skimmed thru it (sorry mate its kinda long - and think i get da idea of what your tyrna say)...  looks like u bring up some very valid points as to why it might not make sense finaically for FM to include womens league.. 

totally not gonna argue wit ya on that 1... and as i mentioned before i personally would like FM to make the game as good as possible (still feel like theres a bit of areas they can improve in for me personally to feel like the game is smooth, easy to navigate, along removing bugs and stuff).

all to say this... perhaps it may not be the right time to incoperate a womens league into the game... but i think that we should be supportive of the idea for the future...  perhaps 5,10 years from now things could be different and would be cool if FM have this on the board as things to look into in the future...

hope u understand mate what im tryna say.. u probablly are right but perhaps several years later it may be a good idea to incoperate a womens league into the game...

cheers mate... best of luck gaming 

PS pretty impreassive u got a little bit into breaking down the figures... are u involevd with the finacial markets by any chance?.. lol (not being sarcastic - i myself played around with stocks at some point - thats y i mentioned it... actually did find that impressive). cheers mate

[Gangor]

Another point to be made is that including women's teams in FM will be part of a virtuous circle. Part of the reason that women's football lacks popularity is that it doesn't have wide coverage and isn't taken seriously by the wider football establishment, including SI. So much emphasis is put on supporting other parts of football - Kick It Out or the AFC Wimbledon sponsorship for example - but the woman's game is ignored. If SI include woman's football in FM that could be a small part of the puzzle of making the game more widely popular and accepted.

[qDizzy]

13 hours ago, Gangor said:

Another point to be made is that including women's teams in FM will be part of a virtuous circle. Part of the reason that women's football lacks popularity is that it doesn't have wide coverage and isn't taken seriously by the wider football establishment, including SI. So much emphasis is put on supporting other parts of football - Kick It Out or the AFC Wimbledon sponsorship for example - but the woman's game is ignored. If SI include woman's football in FM that could be a small part of the puzzle of making the game more widely popular and accepted.

great way of putting it mate. of course these things take time. i just think its cool for girls who like playing sports to feel like theres an oppurtuntiy to be able to play it someday professionally. and when you have players like seria williams and mia hamm i would think its inspirational for those girls to see them at their best in their sports, and feel they can also do it.

so little by little the more women sports gain attention the more chances there is for these girls to feel like they can do it too because their role models are doing it.

about 15 years or so ago (cant really remember when)  i remember seeing a commercial with micheal jordan and mia hamm and i thought it was pretty cool, i didnt know who she was at the time, but the commercial was cool and it jus rose your awarness.. 

i watch a little of the WNBA and man theres a couple players, 2 in particular who are probally the 2 best players in the league. i also see them extremely markatbale in fact (i guess i can relate them to one being like Kobe and the other like Kevin Durant -  marketablity wise, mind you, their play style is similar to thoose players)

i personally think these girls should have shoe deals and be seen on televsion for commerials and stuff..

i mean i see seira willimas in commercials but basketball is huge in the USA and i dont see why they arent being used to advertise stuff.. like sneakers esspiaclly... if you ask me..  there seems to be alot of oppurtuity there for Nike or Addias to really be able to sell basketball sneakers for woman. but right now i dont really see much of that going on and the WNBA is still kinda not really mentioned in the sports networks like that... but hey little by little i think it will get there...

guys take there girlfriends or wives to the game and i think alot of girls are becoming more attracted to sports and only a matter of time before they say hey.. let me check out some woman sports... and wouldnt it be funny if then it would be girls taking guys to women games... lol.. and i really think the guys would start liking it too... i perosnally enjoy watching some WNBA.

i mean i can just see the way a girls cheer for their bf's or husbands team, the same will go for guys cheering on their gfs or wife's team in woman sports... really think its only a matter of time... LOL at girls getting together to watch the game.. da guys helping out wtih the guests.. think that would be awesome...lol

but back to your point Gangor making a womens league in this game avaliable would defintly be a step in the right direction, couldnt agree more.

cheers to Topspur for starting the post

cheers to all who posted here..

best of the gaming..

 

 

 

[SeoulYank]

On 8/11/2017 at 19:53, santy001 said:

If its so straight forward, and you've got inside knowledge of the market really, you should be looking to do it yourself then? Take out a loan from the bank, and make a success out of it. If its going to be a resounding success and bring in money, then you'd be stupid not to do so. 

Women's football in FM may happen, it may not, but its not on the agenda at present until its pulling in Championship level attendances from what I'm sure others have attributed to Miles saying. 

All of FM's researchers are unpaid (at least for their FM research work, some are SI employees who I imagine have a main job role with SI that isn't to do a clubs research) but you've mentioned 7 leagues that need to be correctly implemented and then put through a Q&A process. Now lets assume each league has 1000 hours of Q&A (probably a gross underestimate, but my days of working at Sega are hazy and long long ago) 25 people testing it for a week solid. Or less, across multiple weeks. Let's say 5 people for 5 weeks. You suddenly need 35 more Q&A staff to test it. Now, even if you go down the route of temporary contracts, in order to get this done and its paid at what would be a reasonably low-endish guess of a London hourly wage for these staff temporarily of like £10 an hour. 

Before national insurance contributions for the employer etc the Q&A staff for 5 weeks of testing would come to £70,000. To cover the cost of some Q&A staff alone, it would need approximately 2500 sales where all the unit sale is profit and goes to SI. Now, I don't know what fees steam take, what the cut is after shops have had their end etc but its probably closer to £20 than £30. But SI likely have to pay VAT to the government, there will inevitably be other fees as well just general costs of doing business. It really wouldn't be all that difficult to envisage a situation where profit per unit is around £5 or less. Which dramatically increases the sales count.

In all likeliness, there just isn't the sheer physical man-hours in the budget (the total number of SI staff multiplied by the hours they work) to do this and the things already planned/in place for an FM release. So odds are they would have to take on more full time staff as well. Low balling salaries again considering SI are based in London, let's assume it means 5 more development staff are needed to maintain the whole women's side of the game. Their salaries would probably be low-balling again around £30k each. So you'd be looking at £150k per year extra permanent staff, and £70k per year Q&A staff and now in addition to national insurance contributions, work place pensions come into play too. You'd be looking at around needing 15,000 extra sales assuming SI clear £20 profit per sale but if I were to work it out at around £5 per unit being profit, to break even this would need around 50,000 more sales. 

A little bit of digging suggests the average attendance of 7 of the top women's teams (in the UK) in the last season was 8,380 combined. Now working out crossover for those who also enjoy the men's game and working out what percentage already purchased FM and what percentage are never going to be interested and you're rapidly losing this number and 50,000 sales is beginning to look like a pipe dream. 

When you start to sit down and look at the numbers, it just doesn't make a huge amount of sense. I expect my figures are somewhat low-balling the reality, but asking any business to risk a quarter of a million pounds is a huge gamble. Especially when all is said and done, and you get the final sales figures, even if sales did grow enough to offset it - you wouldn't be able to 100% accurately attribute whether or not it was down to that, or just down to growth from other areas. 

I couldn't even hazard a guess at the costs of getting a research team in place but I actually expect in truth the closer cost to the business of getting this would all set up would be pushing closer to 500k than the 250k figures I'm playing around with. 

Further to this, SI posted a considerable loss in its last accounts, with a note mentioning the expectation to make another loss in the next set of accounts. In the strictest sense, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be considering taking on extra financial burdens at present for features that may be of limited use in increasing profitability. 

Thanks for the detailed response, it is appreciated. Quite often when women's soccer is the topic, the responses are neanderthal in nature.

Believe me, if I had the slightest ability to develop games (I don't) I'd do it myself. Nowhere near the level of FM, of course, because you definitely could not make money doing that. The difference here is you already have an established game and framework to piggyback off of.

What I'd tell you in response is 15,000 units would be easy. I could pre-sell that many in the US alone. 50,000? I won't say easy, but I don't think it is out of the question worldwide. 100,000 wouldn't be out of the question worldwide.

In any event, as I stated before, I don't expect this to happen this year or next. However, I think it is worth looking into in a detailed fashion. I think it would be a positive move, it would bring new fans to the game and it would be good PR for the company as well, just as Lewes FC got incredible PR worldwide recently for an absolutely meaningless (and that level of the pyramid) public statement that they'd pay their women's team the same as the men's team (so they are both getting paid next to nothing).

[pdjacks]

It's not necessarily about the level of match day attendances that determine whether or not including women's leagues within FM is viable or not. TV Audience is also something to look at, and in that respect women's football is becoming more and more popular https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/07/tv-audience-england-womens-football-lionesses. There's also a significant number of girls actually playing football, within the UK alone there are currently 147,000 according to the FA website http://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/policies/equality/womens-and-girls-football

But beyond that, FM is a game, and within gaming in general there are people who like to play games where they can identify with the characters in it. SI have clearly recognised this, else you wouldn't be able to create a profile as a female manager. Women's leagues is a next obvious step, and I personally believe that beyond the clear moral argument for including women's leagues within the game, that the addition of women's football to FM would sell sufficient extra units to cover the financial cost based on the good publicity which doing so would generate alone - never mind that increased audience that FM would be reaching. 

[7omer]

In my head all the infrastructure would be the same. It doesn't need to be a link between male or female games. Could be 2 stand alone games or start files and just be a blue copy of the men's game with a new database with new names and new teams. 

 

I guess it could also be a fan project where those who wanted the female version took all the job for SI games to collect all the data and they just implement it at the end. 

 

It wouldn't rectilinearly need that much from SI, just much from those who wants it. And if SI plays this smart they make it measurable how many plays female FM2018 and % of the total and how many only play female version to collect data if it might be worth it in next version to actually do it themselves in more seamless build up towards the male version. 

[Remez]

Waste of time on amateur football.. for handfull of woman who want to play it.

And i think they rather play with the ''real" teams. 

[Ianbanksjones]

If I was SI, I'd be lining up a research team for women's football right now. I agree with Santy in that financial viability is based on far too many 'what if's' to even consider it at the moment. There is also another factor that should be taken into consideration though. At the moment, women's football is undergoing a worldwide period of rapid growth and expansion. Personally, being married to an ex-footballer, I have seen it. This means that whilst the market may be growing, the shape of the leagues, the payments they receive, television deals, competition formats, or even amounts of teams are likely to change so dramatically from year to year, that each year would require virtually starting from scratch. I want it in, just not yet. Regrettably, I don' think wwomen's football is quite ready. 

[PMLF]

I think the first step could be allowing people to add women's clubs, players, competitions, etc... in the editor, making them separate from the men's equivalents.

That could also help SI recruit researchers in the future, if they decide to add women's football in the game in an official manner.

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.