I like your idea more though, allow the player to buy these business and upgrade them himself. This means I might get rid of sponsors all together.
But then we need a way to get the money to buy the business
I think you can meet the idea halfway, though. Make the business a cooperative venture of the school and the sponsor. The upside for this is that it would provide for more late game money sinks, including potentially buying out the sponsor at the end.
The downside, though, is that it would need to reward more than just money. It'd need content. And that would require a bunch more work to develop it all <-- that being the downside.
Sponsors should be left as customers of a modeling agency (photo, video, escort)
Maybe reduce the number of contracts, 1-2 per week is more than enough
I could get behind fewer contracts, as currently we sit at around 11 per sponsor per week, once you rank them up? And that means reset day gets pretty crazy, with 5 per sponsor.
That said, I'd suggest reduce the amount of contracts you can accept/fulfill, but give us a bunch to choose from. This would open up some options. You could, for example, choose to focus on a lower rewarding event that levels up the sponsor relationship more. You could pick the easy to fulfill one image require or pick one that wants multiple videos but pays more money. And there could also be some rarer contracts that, while hard to fulfill, if met, trigger an event. Could also have some that have an RNG component, ideally ones that want a girl, and their traits could factor into the success rate. Of course, all that stuff I'm suggesting would be a bunch more work.
Also, it'd be nice if different sponsors reset on different days, rather than all on the same one.
