Attendance Models/Mega Events

[The Masked Orange]

Originally I was going to post this as a reply to The Blonde Bomber's post about nerfing attendances, but it ended up being long enough I decided it probably needs its own separate thing. For context: You can get very high attendances for even something like generic monthly live shows with big companies in the right markets, normally around 50,000 a month, in addition to your big event/ppv. That consistent turnout is a bit unrealistic and often as a gameplay result too much money is made by both players and ai.

 

How do you get shows to reflect the very real popularity of a promotion without being able to ride that popularity to two sold-out stadiums every month? Even WWE knows that a lot of its PPVs (or whatever we call them now) can only draw a modest audience relative to the heavy hitters. I think a decent solution might be that based on company size (and how long you've been at that size) you get access to an increasing number of 'mega' events. A company like AEW can have a Wembley show or equivalent twice a year maybe. WWE can have four/five events that are kind of around that stadium threshold (with Wrestlemania being even bigger covered by the Season Finale and Legendary event mechanics already in TEW). You would allocate which events are 'mega' events in the Events tabs. Potentially even a large indy might get access to a 'mega' event (even OVW had a bigger outdoor show every year if memory serves), which would be a fun thing to book and a fun milestone to achieve as a player (and for those that don't always use the Season Finale mechanic it would be a good way to still have a 'mega' show or shows structuring your year). A 'mega' event to WWE or AEW means a stadium, to a large indy it might mean an outdoor venue or just a bigger arena. Small/Tiny companies get laughed out of the room. But it also means that WWE doesn't get to fill a stadium any given month, and that a large indy can't expect to fill out the local convention centre every show, they should have to go back to the bingo hall.

 

If you were to do introduce this mechanic, you could get then probably nerf the overall attendance figures across the board while still being able to achieve those realistic feeling numbers for the bigger events. That way you could even run something like a big MSG-style house show while booking a WWE save without it accidentally feeling like another PPV. There would also be a much bigger incentive for your big events being as successful as possible, as the excess from those bigger events might be needed to help you through leaner periods. The 'mega' events might even have access to different ticketing options, as anyone that's ever looked at the Wrestlemania packages and so on knows. A lot of this logic already exists in game, it's really just adding an additional wrinkle to really double-down on it.

 

Essentially, lower the attendances for (at least medium+) companies universally, but give 'mega' events that will allow players to break through the new attendance ceiling to command those big juicy wrestling-industry inflated attendance figures, and make back some of the difference financially.

 

The only other thing I can really think of would be a complete rework of the scheduling system to work around much more intricate strategies, say having a very deliberate balance of small/big shows or sacrificing bigger show frequency to increase baseline attendance etc. That would allow you to rejig the attendance figures as part of that process. However, with all the hassle I understand the regular/touring schedule stuff has caused behind the scenes over the years in mind, this does seem like a much bigger job that would probably add a lot of unnecessary complexity for the average user.

 

There is also the territorial/modern age thing. Sold-out large venue runs were more common back in the day and in certain markets, especially before TV and PPV. But without coding in a progressive ai that adjusts live attendance behaviours by era I think just going by the last 20ish years for the framework is probably fair enough. The whole 'mega' events thing is the only solution I can think of that doesn't require more work than is probably able to be put into it.

Edited December 18, 2023 by The Masked Orange
Tiny typo I saw that bugged me.

[Mistertbones]

Oh, I agree 100 percent. I also don't think there should be an oversaturation penalty, as that is also unrealistic, especially if running a territory or classic mod.