Introduction to OOTP Finances

Simplifying the complex

Introduction to OOTP Finances

If you’re like me, you’re at least somewhat intimidated by OOTP.

The number of options and potential settings in the game can be overwhelming. For example, this is what the financial settings look like in one of my saves:

And that’s just the “Financials” settings! There are still other variables and factors that will have an impact on how the game is managed and played in the end.

In part to help the community figure this out, and in part to figure it out myself, I’ve decided to go through these settings one by one to help shed some light on them.

First, though, we want to take a look at some of the general financial concepts in OOTP. There are concepts here that are different than other sports management sims you may have played (such as Football Manager).

Most of this information comes from The OOTP Wiki, which replaces the old web manuals that OOTP used to create. I’ll try to explain it in a way that is a little bit easier to understand.

Team Financial Overview

First off — you can play OOTP without the financial system.

In fact, you can still make player trades and do all sorts of things without worrying at all about contracts, team revenue, media revenue, and so on.

However, the setting to change this is hidden, and the instructions on the OOTP Wiki are incorrect.

It’s about halfway down the left hand side of the “Financials” screen in “League Setting” — and it can only be changed in the preseason:

Note that the “preseason” is different than the “offseason” — we’ll talk about that a little bit later. And, yes, this is an absolute headache.

Now, in the financial system, there are 7 ways that teams make money:

• Gate revenue

• Media revenue

• Merchandise

• Playoff revenue

• Revenue sharing

• Owner infusion of cash

• Cash from trades

All of these are settings that can be set to zero, and some can be completely disabled. For example, if you are in a league that doesn’t have playoffs at all, there will be no playoff revenue available to teams that make the postseason.

There are 8 ways that teams spend money:

• Player salaries

• Staff salaries

• Cash spent in trades

• Scouting

• Player development

• Draft costs

• International Amateur Free Agency costs

• Revenue sharing

All of these things can be left on or turned off depending on how your league is set up. For example, if there is no international amateur free agent system, you won’t be able to spend your team’s money on that.

Now, this is a pretty important concept to understand. At its core, OOTP is a general manager simulation with an in-game model attached to it. Much of how OOTP was designed is focused on this general management model.

You can also change setting regarding how much money you can spend as general manager. This is one of the settings under “Team Revenue Settings” on that Financials page:

“Team Owner controls Budget” is a pretty small setting that is not easy to find if you don’t know where to look for it. If you set this to “yes,” the owner of the team will determine how large your overall team budget will be — and the budget will be smaller than the amount of revenue your team is making.

“Yes” is the more realistic option, of course — but there are other ways that owners make money that are not accurately reflected in OOTP. Rogers Communication, for example, has a lot more streams of income than the 7 things listed above. In other words — you could make a case that changing this to “No” is the more realistic option.

Now, as you’ve already seen, a lot of these basic settings are hidden among other settings that are more in the weeds. In the coming days and weeks, I’ll break down each of these settings one by one to explain how it works and what happens if you change them.

Once we’re done with financials, we’ll move on to things like the scouting system, the player development system, and so on.

It’s actually a powerful game engine — but OOTP is also completely overwhelming to new players. Even experienced players will find themselves spending more time than they’d like fiddling with this or that setting to get things set right. So don’t feel bad if you are confused: the truth is that we all are.