2025-04-25, 07:14 AM - Word count:
Playerbase and retention
As announced last season, the BoD is continuously keeping track of the size of the player base in relation to the number of active roster spots. With the huge influx of users in the S20 class we decided about 2 months ago to open calls for two new Organizational managers. One thing we are noticing is that the retention rate used in the projection was underestimated (65% compared to the current 75%) and that there is a larger than projected number of players joining the S21 class (already exceeding 40 compared to 30-35). On the organizational side, we see that several rosters have less than 1 open spot in the starting XI available for active players and in total there are 206 currently active (and non-retiring) players to fill out 220 available starting roster spots. If we assume a continued retention rate of 75% for the S21 class, it means that the organizations must make room for around twice as many players than there are starting roster spots available (~35 for 14 spots).
Expansion?
What does all this mean? Well in short the "simplest" way to increase the number of starting XI positions would be to again expand with two or more organizations. In practice this is not so simple. Expansion not only requires more people interested in a manager position, but also puts a strain on the current organizations having to make difficult decisions on who to protect and who to not, as well as increasing the workload for most other departments like simmers, bankers, accountants, file workers. Other departments such as the PT Team are also experiencing an increased workload with the increase in the number of players. What other alternatives are there? Without expanding the SSL leagues, there are two other options that could help give players starting minutes; increase the number of substitutions allowed or increase the length of the Academy. Neither of these options leaves much room to grow, substitutions is a very divisive issue and it can be argued that increasing the length of the Academy only pushes the can further down the road. Alternatives that restrict the league's growth have also been voiced, such as allowing only X players to create in any single class, but they are not viable in the long term.
The different sides of the expansion dice
So if expansion is seen as the only viable option, how do we handle its consequences?Interest in management:
We received more applications for expansion management last season than we've received in a long while for our open management positions. This gives us hope that the ones that weren't selected are still interested in applying again and while it's no guarantee to be selected just because you've previously applied, one application in one process might be ranked higher than in another process. We are also seeing a bigger interest league wide in management and tactician positions with, at the time of writing, only 1 open assistant manager spot across all organizations.
Strain on current organizations:
Organizations are already filled to the brim with players meaning that they are most likely not able to draft or sign any new players in the upcoming prospect drafts. We do acknowledge the tough decisions and discussions with users that need to be had when deciding who to protect and who to expose which we are trying to take into account when adjusting protection list rules. One such alternative is to allow organizations to protect additional players at the cost of draft picks, essentially trading a future roster spot with a current roster spot. We will reach out to the manager group before finalizing any rules for a potential expansion draft.
Strain on the sim team:
This has by far proved to be the toughest aspect of expansion. A league matchday (set of 5 games) in S20 takes about 20 minutes longer to record compared to a matchday (set of 4 games) in previous seasons (1 hour compared to 1 hour and 20 minutes). The expansion in S20 also increased the number of league matchdays from 14 to 18 adding on to the total number of matchdays that the simmers have to and commentators are able to record.
Adding on two more teams per league would result in matchdays that are around 1 hour and 45 minutes, which is a hefty chunk of time we expect the simming department to allocate seven times a week. In order to mitigate this the BoD have tested some alternatives that did not put the team in the hands of the FM Assistant Manager and whatever weird things they get up to during a game, including but not limited to, illegal tactical formations and substitutions.
Our current games use FM’s Extended Highlight option which shows the play-by-play of not only goals or high danger chances but more general highlights of good play for an average of 17.5 minutes per game.
Key Highlights were previously used in the group stage of the SSL Cup when all 16 teams faced off against each other in 8 games for a total of around 1 hour and 40 minute matchdays (essentially halved of Extended Highlights), an average of about 12.5 minutes per game.
Commentary Only Highlights is the next and final step on the FM track which only shows text commentary of highlights without any 3D viewing experience. On average this takes about 5 minutes per game including replays of goals (~10 seconds per replay).
Using the Commentary Only option we would reduce the length of a matchday of 6 games to 30 minutes compared to 1 hour and 45 minutes reducing the simmer workload length to less than a third of the commitment. Now we are not saying that all games are to be recorded using this setting as that would completely lose one of the selling points of this league, but in order to get the calendar and simmer workload in order we would plan to record up to 50% of the league matchdays using these settings. For context a league of 12 teams would have 22 matchdays where up to 11 of them would be “quick simmed” and if we compare that to the S19 season where 14 matchdays were “full simmed” we would be able to provide almost the same number of quality matchdays while also not exhausting the simming department.
More teams also require more time to prepare the file for simming, and we are looking into options that would make use of the network functionality of FM to allow managers to directly input their tactics in the beginning of the season and other ways of simplifying the process without reducing the tactical flexibility given to managers.
Strain on other departments:
As a league, we need more users to be involved in the behind the scenes and we hope that removing the restriction on monetary pay gives more of an incentive for users to take up a job. We have a saying in Sweden, “many creeks soon make a river”, which essentially means that any small thing you contribute will help the league as a whole to flourish. Whether it be helping the new players in the Academy, checking and processing contract signings and trades, checking and processing bank deposits, creating draft renders, grading Point Tasks, or something else will help spread out the overall workload of the league and make for a more enjoyable experience for every user.
What are the next steps?
- We open applications for organizational managers in order to assess the viability of expansion by two or more organizations. Deadline May 11th
- We discuss potential expansion protection rules with the management group. Deadline May 18th
- We make a final decision on if and when an expansion should take place. Deadline May 18th
- We make adjustments to the simming schedule based on the decision.
/Canadice and the BoD
