svw

The "Final Data Update" was released on March 29, but today (May 9) they've released a "China Data Update" with 83,000 changes. When does SI normally stop updating the database/game? It's making me hesitant to go dive too deep into a complicated project.

Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to say that alian62's methods definitely worked for me. As long as I added just 1 previous winner to the history of a totally new custom competition, that competition would have its history updated normally.

@alian62Thanks for the tip! That makes complete sense based off what I've seen, so I'll try that out next time.

Nice to know I'm not alone! (I didn't see this problem in FM15, for what it's worth.) I've been editing Cape Verde and noticed this too. I made some new divisions for a league pyramid, but those competitions don't get updated records. The first division is a modification of the existing national championships, so those records are updating fine even though I completely changed the format. The main domestic cup is also updating fine, since that's an existing competition.

I opened EA's FIFA 23 to see how they did it. They say "Country/Region" instead of "Nationality", and they list the associations as China PR, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Macau. The IOC and FIFA use the name "Chinese Taipei" and the special Olympic flag in agreement with the "One China" policy held by the People's Republic of China, and I haven't heard of any dispute over the names "Hong Kong" or Macau" in international football, so the concern must come from Football Manager using terminology like "nationality", right? To be fair, FM23 isn't really describing anything political like actual nationality or citizenship. FM23 is describing "football association this player has declared for". So if EA can use "Country/Region", it would surely be fine to use language like "Declared for". Many players are citizens of one country, but are declared for another. Example, Owen Hargreaves is a Canadian citizen, but if he were playing today in FM23 he would have the England flag beside his name. He would be "Declared for England" and "Also eligible for Canada and Wales". Using that kind of language might help achieve more realism, although I suppose it would take more than changing a few lines in the database.

It's worth noting travel costs have always been a big challenge for Canadian sports leagues. There's a reason Brazil, another big country, has a strong tradition of regional state leagues. Even the much smaller Germany initially had regional leagues before the formation of the Bundesliga. After the winter update, I saw Forge FC had travel costs of about 400,000 euros over a season, with overall expenditure of 5 million euros (over $7 million Canadian). They made lots of money from gate receipts and broke even, but I don't know about the other teams. For what it's worth, this CBC article says the CPL didn't make a profit from the 2021 season. On average, it cost more than $4 million Canadian to run a CPL team (almost 3 million euros). So maybe these expenditures aren't too unrealistic? The CPL's plan is to slowly expand the number of teams, take advantage of World Cup 2026 hype, and introduce promotion/relegation in the future. I think it's fair to say the current version of the CPL is in a transition state, since they weren't even making a profit in 2021. But this means the FM23 version of the CPL might be perpetually stuck in a money-losing transition state, which is unfortunate for long-term saves in Canada. So then the question for me would be if the CPL gets a reputation boost as its clubs perform better in continental competitions, and if that reputation boost increases profits, and if the North American Champions League gives enough prize money at the group stage to improve things.

Does that mean EA's FIFA games are also banned in China PR? Because EA also uses the normal FIFA naming schemes for all 4 associations.