How to determine attendance for international cups?

[tstellar]

The code currently uses two methods for determining international cup attendance: For teams in the user's country, it uses the average stadium capacity for its league. For teams outside the user's country, it uses the average stadium capacity for the cup. I would like to just use one method for all teams, so which one should we choose? Average league stadium capacity or average cup stadium capacity?

[will_the_canuck]

The code currently uses two methods for determining international cup attendance: For teams in the user's country, it uses the average stadium capacity for its league. For teams outside the user's country, it uses the average stadium capacity for the cup. I would like to just use one method for all teams, so which one should we choose? Average league stadium capacity or average cup stadium capacity?

Hey tstellar. I'll take a shot at answering this question.

As the code uses two methods for determining international cup attendance, that kind of makes sense in a way since not all international teams are ranked the same. Think of it this way. Using England as an example, if you were to play the FA Cup and have a team from tier 1 versus a team from tier 5, what would the relative attendances be for each home game? Well, tier 1, having an average talent value of 8000+ which would work out to an average talent rating of 78.0+ for the tier, would likely have an attendance of 30,000+. The tier 5 team, which would have an average talent value ranging from 4000+ to about 6000 for the tier, thus having an average talent rating of anywhere from 40.0 to 60.0, would likely have an attendance of say 10,000 to 20,000, I might guess. So just within the FA Cup, the attendances can vary greatly. Now if you consider an international cup, you can have teams from the higher leagues, like England, play against teams from the lower leagues with average talent values below 7000, and those attendance levels can likely range from 15,000 to 25,000 likely. There can be a wide margin.

So with this in mind, when a team is playing at home, the average stadium attendance relative to capacity of the league should be used since it kind of represents what the team may normally achieve in attendance, although additional factors can be used in the calculations, like options found in the constants file that relate to stadium attendance. Those would begin with "float_game_stadium_attendance". Since the average stadium capacity or attendance for an international team would not normally be known, it is like bygfoot would assign a value to the stadium capacity for that season, based upon the strength of the team (average talent value) as determined by the related league file. This would be how or why you see attendance values for games in the international stadiums. I'm guessing.

So I guess in some ways, could one method be used for both? Because usually, you wouldn't have two teams that are usually of the same caliber playing each other unless it is nearing the end of the tournament and even then, some teams would be better than the other. Having international teams' attendance values based upon average league attendance doesn't really make sense when they are not really a part of the league or league play. The leagues that the international teams would come from likely wouldn't be ranked the same as the leagues that the national teams are in.

I guess I also wonder how the average league stadium capacity / attendance might apply to international teams. Might that mean that the attendance at an away game for a player's team might have a similar attendance that their regular home games would have, regardless of the rank of their opponent? Could it lead to say a player with a team from England playing a team from San Marino and achieving an attendance value of say 40,000+ while playing in San Marino?? If so, then that is just wrong. Or if it was the other way around and the player was playing a team from San Marino and they were playing an away game in England and the attendance was only around 15,000. Only you know the answer to this question tstellar.

Although you may want to change it, I can see the point for both options as with the national teams when at home in international cups, using their average stadium attendance values as a basis makes sense based upon their expected norms. Of course, additional options found in the constants file would be used to potentially enhance the attendance values for "special" games like international cups, as long as the values fall within the user's stadium capacity. For international teams, having values related to their strength of team and based just on a variable related to their expected capacity, that makes sense to me since they wouldn't have played any league games, only international cup games. And with the limited amount of teams that would show up from any particular league within the international cup, as those other teams in those leagues that don't play in the international cups, as they are not generated, why would you even use them in any calculations. I think the survey size would be too small for using the average league stadium capacity / attendance method in those cases. Also, the attendance values when played in international stadiums would normally just be for show and wouldn't normally affect the user in any way. But you also don't want too high of an attendance value for an international team when the team itself isn't strong enough to support it. I guess I'm just thinking of attendance values for neutral games as those values would apply or affect the player in some way as they would provide a financial payoff, just like a home game would.

So hope this opinion helps. Of course, more discussion is always welcome.

Will aka will_the_canuck