The Importance of Fan Factor

It's important to get a high fan factor during team creation since it influences your income during the games to come. Don't buy a 12th player or an extra reroll, but increase your Fan Factor, it will pay back over the games to come earning you the new players and additional rerolls you need.

Another way of seeing it is that money simply bloats your team rating. Teams with high AV and/or regeneration might be able to get by with a slightly lower starting Fan Factor as these teams have less use for money. It will usually result in a team where you have more SPPs (and skills) than your opponent. However, I recommend to not start with anything lower than a Fan Factor of 5. / Christer

Another minor thing to consider is that a lot of people prefer to play against teams with a higher fan factor. Yes, it's more likely to mean that the Pitch Invasion works against them, but higher FF means a higher Gate and more money for everyone. Anything that helps get a game is a good thing and if you can contribute to rebuilding the team you just destroyed, all the better. If you have a bunch of positional players to fill in or RRs to buy up, don't underestimate how important earnings are. - BadMrMojo -

Not to mention that each kickoff roll there's a 5/18 chance (28%) of getting a result you can turn in your favor, instead of against you as is most probable if you have a low fan factor. During games with many kickoffs this alone may pay off. - humbe -

Arguments for a low FF

Compared to buying an extra reroll from start, teams starting with high FF will not be richer for quite a while. It takes around 10 games for the initial FF investment to pay out, since rerolls cost double after team creation. (A similar effect can be found with linemen, who on certain teams becomes reduntant later on.) Add to that the effect that the extra RR might win more matches and avoid injuries, and the return rate of the FF investment becomes even lower. After those games the high FF team slowly gets richer, but before those games it's poorer.

The reason the BB rules allows coaches to choose a low starting FF is that it's efficient in certain environments. It all depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want to build a team that maximizes it's TR/TS in the long run, for example to one day win the FUMBBL Cup, high FF is usually the best choice. If you want to win as many as possible of your first 15 matches or so, low FF will usually be more efficient.

In the Ranked division, the current TS formula gives teams a full +1 TS for every FF. In most situations, this is an overestimate. Thus, for the purpose of gaining CR, the lower your teams FF is the better. However, whatever competitive CR-edge it may provide you with, it still won't make you a better coach...

A particular argument can be made for starting with FF1, because you avoid the risk of early FF loss. This is especially true for teams with a high risk of losing many of their first games. - MickeX -

A specific to this site is the FUMBBL smacks, if you are looking for a very powerful team from the start (known as frontloading) a low FF will be very effective, giving more money for rerolls or players, now the difference between FF9 and FF1 may only be 80,000, but that is usually enough to subsitute lineman for better players, also, the prize for winning a smack is +FF, after winning 3 matches, your likely to be +2 or 3 FF in the long run anyway. -Peter Thorpe-

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