Hi everyone,

managing team's budget is an important and tough task for every manager in BasketPulse. This week we would like to share TB313 and smart0eddie experience dealing with the moments when everything goes down south and bankruptcy procedures start.

 TB313 - WL 6.9 - 2.000 credits.

In BasketPulse, like in any realistic management simulation, bankruptcy is a looming threat that can derail even the most promising teams. Season 97 was my second full season in the game. After multiple trades that season, things were looking well - I had acquired quite a few young talents who had great potential, but also lowered my salaries. I knew that with the team that I had, I will not go far in the playoffs, and wanted to focus on developing some of these young players. Towards the playoffs and the end of the season, I had saved up over 120k in the bank. At the time, I tried to avoid any unnecessary expenditures, all of the sectors financing levels were set to 0, and I did not spend any money on scouts at the time. The end goal for me was to establish a youth team. In the Norwegian league, there are only 7 active teams, therefore the Norwegian player market is rather small, and with hopes to grow the league, and down the line strengthen the National teams at all levels - the youth team was a priority of mine.

Day 1 of Season 98, my dream of establishing a youth team was finally a reality. Things were looking well, except for the fact that I only had 12 players in my team, meaning 6 went to the youth team, and 6 stayed in the main team. The game even automatically assigned a player to my team due to not having enough players in the main team. Shortly, without even realising - this became a downwards spiral. Not only did I want to bring in more players into the youth team, but I wanted to hire additional coaches too, not to mention trying to increase the number of players in the main team.

Now that I had the youth team settled, I wanted to focus on getting a promotion into a better international league. Being in league 6.9, the finances received from sponsors are naturally rather low, and I made a mistake of looking at the wrong financial statistics. I went onto finances and seen that 'Max sum for personnel's salaries' was then at 58k. I thought that is brilliant. If I get the salaries up to 50k, that will leave me ~8k free and I can leave it from there. I was then trying to sign high rated players, with high salaries- simply because I thought I will still be in ~5 + area. In season 97, I was ranked 8th in the International league, but finished 6th. The goal now is to be in the top 4.

Everything seemed positive until day 7. I logged on, and saw my finances highlighted in red; there was even a note stating that the club is close to bankruptcy. I took a -42,500 in the first week of the game. My heart sunk, the predicted balance at the end of the season was -130.000, yet I was still allowed to spend over 7k. I made a rookie mistake, and genuinely did not know what to do, but first thing's first - I had to invest in 13k game money. The word is going through a living crisis currently, and I did not want to make this a regular ocurence.

I love the game, and want to continue on building the legacy of the team, so I knew that I had to make changes. I was now ranked 2nd in the International league, so the challenge is - how do I retain the top 4 status in the league, all whilst reducing my salary? I accepted that the new players that I acquired - some of which I regarded as the future of the team, will now have to be traded, in hopes of surviving. I had to come up with a plan to trade these players for a players of a similar RT, but a lower price - this is no easy feat, and meant that I had to give away some of my young talent in the process. Whilst this isn't fully complete yet, and I want to offload 1 or 2 more players to put me in a more comfortable spot, things are looking slightly better. Week 2 was - 30,000, which is still horrible, but it also included the firing of some unnecessary players. So far 12,000 was saved, and if we continue in that direction, we may actually survive the year, hopefully get promotion, and build on from there.

My advice to anyone struggling and trying to save would be:

DO:
Play all of your friendly matches. Not only will it help players with experience & game time, but games played at home will bring you extra income.

Make your ticket prices expensive.

Review club arenas - if your matches gather 1000+ fan interest, but your arena only covers 500, make sure to rent applicable arenas for the required number of games.

Borrow players - Utilise the loan feature to your benefit. Only one player can be loaned per season, find a weakness in your team, be it a specific role, position or skill, and loan a player in for for a good value.

If you have good players that you would like to hang on to, but they are too expensive - try to loan them out. You can loan out up to 5 players at a time, and only pay 30% salary to the loanees, the loaner pays the remaining 70%.

Look to make trades that will help you.

Find cheap players in the marketplace that can be of assistance to you.

Offload any players or coaches that are not needed. A short term financial hit makes sense in the long term savings.

CALCULATE FINANCES YOURSELF - See what the player/coaches salaries are, what you make from sponsors, and what you make per match on average. This will be the most accurate tool.

DON'T:

Do not make silly mistakes like me - Pay attention to your 'Change' part of the finances, instead of maximum allowed sums.

Do not invest in sectors if you are struggling.

If struggling, do not spend money on scouts.

Avoid on establishing a youth team until you have more finances available - eg have 200k, instead of 150k required.

Do not overspend in the marketplace. Sometimes good players are available, and the only way to secure them is to overspend in order to beat your competition and secure the player.

Do not give up - there's always a way.

Whilst most of the points may be obvious, I hope this will help someone in need. Every little helps.

 smart0eddie WL 3.2 - 500 credits

How to prevent bankruptcy?

The finance is a long-term management. Like Rome is not built in a day, teams won’t go bankruptcy suddenly.

I would suggest new managers first read this article. It may not be the best in practice but cover most basic knowledge for new managers.

Keep your team in a healthy financial situation is the best way to prevent bankruptcy. If unfortunately, for any reason, your team is going to be broke in a week or two, I would suggest just let it go and take the chance to rebuild your team.

There are few things can turn the tide in short term. Donating Darius a pizza or two may help but it’s should not be a common practice. Sometimes teams may encounter a large increase in expense or decrease in income. For example, the star players signing a new (and expensive) contract, or the team degrading from higher league.

I may take a few actions to get through it. First, in the previous season, try to save as much money as possible. As long as you have enough money, you won’t be broke. Second, prevent signing too many players and coaches with high salary during the limited market and draft. And third, after the new season begins, trade expensive players for cheaper ones, or just fire them.

Besides the player/coach salary, one could also cutoff the spending on scout and sectors to further reduce the expense. Last but not least, NEVER EVER scout old players, especially for new managers. They are very expensive and may crash your team’s finance. Imagine a WL 6 team with about 26k sponsor income find a 24Y youth(?) requiring 20k salary.

The above are my opinions about preventing bankruptcy.

Hope this article could help people to keep their teams away from bankruptcy.

 dwyane3

For the last three seasons I keep seeing red in my team's financial page and I keep planning my own personal finances that I might need to open my wallet for the first time to buy game money with real money. But I work it out without it. :)

The reason behind it are two WL1 level players that I pay 70k per week and that eats up almost a third of my staff expenses. That is really disbalanced, however, one of them is my franchise player Marcelijus Laurinkus and he's just playing incredibly. However, the other one is someone who feeds him passes to the low post - Ca Kuai. He's third highest RT player in the game and still improving, I'm kind of proud of that. However, my pride is costly - I don't have enough money to build solid rest of the roster. 

Last season I fired my starting SF/PF shooter Janez Izidor, after I made it to TOP16 stage just to stay above water. I chose not to buy game money and I think it was a right choice in the long term. However, I thought that this season I was going to have more freedom finance-wise, however, that did not happen as I was one-shot-short of making it to the TOP16 and I have -299k estimated at the end of the season. 

That means another season of no money spent on scouts, and wishing that I have a positive balance on club's bank account by Saturday, when club bankruptcy procedures are handled. This is somewhat I learnt last season - being in debt on Sunday morning is fine, as long as you get enough income throughout the week. :) 

So, the struggle is real and I hope I can find a solution that can work in a long term and the solution may be one - trade Ca Kuai. Can I give my pride away? :)

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Thanks to all participating. If you want to earn up to 2.000 credits - interview BP community member and share it with @dwyane3. We have had a number of great stories, looking forward to getting to know each other even better!

Have a good read!