Expansion Announcement

[Canadice]

Expansion in S5

We are soon at the midway point of the fourth season of the SSL and we are seeing the largest draft class since the league's start on the pitches. As a BoD, we are constantly evaluating the health of the league and with the responses we received from the pre-season survey it gives us vital information, thoughts and suggestions to take into account in our discussions.

Looking at the number of players and teams in the league, we are at a point where multiple teams have more active players than they can field in a single game, even with substitutions, and this will only get worse heading into S5. As such the BoD has decided that we will have another call for expansion for the S5 season. If you are interested in being a manager of an expansion team, you can find the hiring post here.

Now we have heard thoughts and suggestions from both the managers in our offices and the players through the survey about expansion that we will keep in mind when detailing the expansion rules. These rules hope to balance the competitiveness of the expansion teams and the relative loss for the current teams. The expansion teams will provide more players with the opportunity to play more of the season in the starting XI and see your player perform on the pitch.

We also realize that we will get to a point where expansion is not a long-term solution for the increasing number of players, but after thorough analysis, the BoD does not yet think we have reached that point. We are working on other aspects of the league structure that will be announced in the weeks to come but no matter how the league looks in S5, we intend to have 14 teams participating.

/Canadice on behalf of the BoD

[AgentSmith]

How will this affect the sims? They're approaching 2 hours long as it is

[Citizen of Adraa]

This feels like a trap

[C9Van]

QUOTE (Canadice @ Jun 23 2022, 03:36 PM)

We also realize that we will get to a point where expansion is not a long-term solution for the increasing number of players, but after thorough analysis, the BoD does not yet think we have reached that point.

Care to share this analysis, please?

I am interested to see it is all.

[Canadice]

QUOTE (AgentSmith @ Jun 23 2022, 05:38 PM)

How will this affect the sims? They're approaching 2 hours long as it is

We will announce further changes to the league in the coming weeks but whatever we finally decide upon will reduce the time spent on any individual matchday.

QUOTE (C9Van @ Jun 23 2022, 05:41 PM)

QUOTE (Canadice @ Jun 23 2022, 03:36 PM) We also realize that we will get to a point where expansion is not a long-term solution for the increasing number of players, but after thorough analysis, the BoD does not yet think we have reached that point. Care to share this analysis, please? I am interested to see it is all.

We had as of Tuesday this week, 147 active players in the league. On average that is 12-13 active players per team. If we look at the class breakdown of these actives we see the following:

CODE

Act   IA    %Act   S1    38    29    56.72% S2    31    8     79.49% S3    28    10    73.68% S4    50    6     89.29%

The addition of another draft class (even one of a smaller size to the previous) to this number would increase the number of active players per team even further. All players in the league are still growing as we haven't hit the league's first regression yet and that means playing time is of the utmost importance. The rule changes that we have previously implemented about substitutions and loans will help with this issue, but not comparably to the size of the S4 draft class in terms of sheer number of players.

There are other ongoing discussions within the BoD about how the league is supposed to look in the future, as seen in the previous announcements and the pre-season survey, that will change the landscape of the league and be another helpful tool to provide as much playing time as possible to active players in the league.

Hopes this shares some of the thoughts that we have considered in our discussions.

[Legend]

Love it.

Next up... Pro/Rel!

[Reno]

Oh for fucks sake