The main source of income for a Sim club comes from the Gate Receipts. Rule 10A - During the 18 home-and-away rounds, the Gate Receipts for each club are determined by adding the Memberships of the two competing clubs and multiplying that figure by the Sim attendance fee of $5.50. The Home side receives 60% of the Match Receipts and the Away side receives 40%. That's pretty straight forward. You can always work out exactly what your Gate Receipts will be in the next round. First you add your Membership to that of your next opponent to give a total Match Attendance. Then you multiply that by $5.50 to give total Match Receipts. If you are the Home side you get 60% of the Match Receipts, or 40% if the Away side. The Sim Draw pits each club against each other twice during a season, once Home and once Away, so it basically evens out over the season. The system is a little different during the finals. Rule 10B - During the four weeks of the Sim finals, the Gate Receipts for each match are determined by adding the Memberships of the two competing clubs and multiplying that figure by the Sim Finals attendance fee of $8.00. The Match Receipts for each match are added together and each of the 10 clubs receives 10% of the total. In the first two weeks of the finals there are four matches, and only two in the last two weeks. The extra admittance charge helps to compensate for fewer games, while the sharing of the total Match Receipts by all the clubs means that no club is financially disadvantaged by playing fewer finals games than other clubs. Gate Receipts are the only form of regular income a club receives, so they are vitally important. Because they are based on your Membership, it follows that your Membership is also vitally important. A club with 13,000 members would receive $297,000 more in Gate Receipts over the 18 rounds, than a club with a Membership of 7,000. That's serious Sim money. In Section 2 we saw how a new club starts with 10,000 members. How does the Membership change? There are two ways. Rule 10C - During the 18 home-and-away rounds, the winner of each match receives 200 additional members. The loser of each match loses 2% of their current Membership. A club's Membership is not affected by a drawn match or a finals match. This rule is designed as a "limiter" to club Memberships. A club gets 200 members when it wins - that's straight foward. But when it loses, the number of members it loses depends on what the current Membership is. A club with 13,000 members would lose 260 members while a club with a Membership of 7,000 would only lose 140. If a club achieved a Membership of 20,000 it would lose 400 members for each loss, meaning it would need to win twice as many games as it loses in order to keep that Membership level. A simple summary is that the higher the Membership, the more Gate Receipts you receive but the more members you lose for a lost match. If you feel your Membership is too low, you can always top it up. Of course, it costs money... Rule 10D - A club may purchase new members using the Market order. The Market order may be used on any Teamsheet up to and including Round 15. Each new member costs $100. The minimum Marketing purchase is 100 members or $10,000. New members are added to a club's Membership after the completion of the round in which they were bought. This is the Sim equivalent of the memberships generated by the AFL club marketing machines. Sim research has shown that for every $100 spent on Marketing, a club will attract one new member. The Big Question is "What is that member worth?" I said it was the Big Question for good reason. This is the only Sim Rule on which I cannot give advice or tips. Over the years I have had many debates - with myself and others - about the pros and cons of Marketing. There are so many variables that make it impossible to work out if it will be financially beneficial or not. Don't even bother try to work it out mathematically, you'll get a headache. The one solid fact I can offer is that one member earns a club a total of $49.50 in Gate Receipts over the 18 home-and-away rounds. Marketing is a very simple concept. Do with it what you will. Gate Receipts are one of the five ways a Sim club can receive money. The other four ways are by using the Loan Facility prior to each season, by Delisting a player for the $25,000 compensation, via a BuyUP order from another club, or via a Pay order from another club. The Loan Facility is discusssed in Section 11 in conjunction with the Priority Drafts. Delisting was explained in Section 9, and Bulk Delisting is also discussed in Section 11. The BuyUP order was explained in Section 8. Which brings us to the Pay order. This has already been mentioned in previous sections and you will probably have figured that it is simply a way of moving money from one club to another. Rule 10E - A club may use the Pay order to transfer money to another club in the same League. The Pay order can be used during the Draft process and on any Teamsheet up to and including Round 15. Each club is allowed one Pay order per week, non-cumulative. In the same way that the Transfer order moves a player from one club to another, the Pay order does exactly the same thing with money. And in the same way the Transfer order cannot be used to specify a Payment, the Pay order cannot be used to specify a Transfer. You can't "Pay Aliens $400,000 for P Bell" - The Pay order only allows you to specify how much goes to which club. As mentioned in Section 9, the Pay order is normally used as part of a deal between two clubs. But there does not necessarily have to be a reciprocal order such as a Transfer. It could be that one club is lending money to another, or maybe paying another club to not bid on a PID. As discussed in Rule 9C, this type of transaction is carefully monitored for potential anti-competitive activity. Back in Section 2, I mentioned that the two "M" words - Money and Members - are vital to a club's existence. You should now be able to see why.

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