Footium Prize Pools
This article will outline our current approach to prize pool generation within Footium. Many of the assumptions here are estimations and should not be taken as indications of what the value of the prize pools will be exactly.
The main information we want to relay through this article is the methods by which prize pools accumulate and are distributed within the game, as well as demonstrating how X inputs into the game will result in Y prizes for each league within Footium!
Overview
Building a sustainable game economy is hard. The main goal when designing one is to produce consistent and attractive prize pools. However, one common method within play-to-earn gaming to achieve this goal is relying on a constant inflow of new players to fund the prize pools. This is not a sustainable solution for most of these games (this method is often referred to as ‘Ponzinomics’) and has already had negative consequences for a number of play-to-earn games.
Throughout this article, we will explain the basic flows to league prize pools from within the Footium economy. The specific numbers shouldn’t be taken as fixed, as there are many external factors that may change before the game launches. However, we hope to give the community a better understanding of how prize pools are generated from both in-game and external sources, as well as show expected prize pools per division given a defined set of inputs.
Internal Revenue streams
There are various ‘revenue streams’ which will contribute to the prize pools for each league every season. Some of these can be considered ‘Internal’, in the sense that they are generated from within the game. In this section, we will give a brief overview of each one:
Academy Minting
Each club has a Youth Academy which produces 10 new 18-year-old players each season (roughly a month). The players that are generated in your academy have different ratings and potential ratings, which are determined by various factors (division your club is in, any academy upgrades, coaches and more).
Minting these players from your academy will have a fixed cost depending on the division you are in. This cost increases slightly as you go up the divisions, to reflect the likely improved quality of each academy player.
All of the revenue generated from the 12 clubs in each league minting academy players each season will flow directly into the prize pool for that league. This mechanic is common across several other internal revenue streams and means that the prize pools across leagues in the same division will vary based on competitiveness. A more competitive league with clubs signing and minting more players will create a larger prize pool than one with more conservative clubs.
Player Trading
Another mechanic which creates revenue for individual league prize pools is a small fee taken on player trades. The way this functions is described below.
When a club sells a player in league X for $N to a club in league Y, the seller in league X will receive:
v is the trading fee. The trading fee:
Will then be deposited into the prize pool for the buyer’s league (league Y in this scenario).
To put this into an example with real numbers, consider a player being sold for $200, and a 5% fee on player trades. Upon the sale, the seller will receive:
The prize pool for the buyers league will be increased by:
Club Improvements
There will be various ways in which Footium Club owners can invest to improve their clubs. Some of them are purely cosmetic, whereas others can also have small in-game impacts. On the cosmetic side, potential improvements include Stadium materials, a club ‘Hall of Fame’ within your stadium, kit improvements and more!
On the other hand, some improvements will have the ability to improve certain game mechanics, such as additional facilities for your academy marginally increasing the quality of academy prospects, larger stands for your stadium permitting a larger fanbase and leading to slightly better morale and performance for your team.
Legendary Player Auctions
Each season we will auction off 20 Legendary players (in the first season, there will be 50 Legendary players). These players will have bespoke artwork designed by different artists in different styles, as well as strong in-game stats and a high potential maximum rating.
The revenue generated from sales of Legendary players will go into prize pools split across all divisions. There is also potential to have real-world players as Legendary players in the game in future.
External Revenue streams
Sponsorship
Sponsorship of Footium divisions is something we are really excited to introduce, as this is an important factor in prize generation for real-world football leagues. We believe there is quite a compelling case for sponsorship of Footium divisions due to the exposure it provides to both football fans and people who are passionate about crypto, gaming and NFTs. The revenue gained from sponsorship of each division will be split evenly across the leagues in the respective division.
If you are interested in sponsoring a division (or cup competitions!) within Footium, please contact George via twitter, discord or email (george@footium.club)!
Simulation
In order to demonstrate how these revenue streams act together to sustainably create prize pools within the game, we have simulated below how revenue would be generated and distributed as prizes based on certain assumptions. The exact assumptions and inputs can be found at the end of this article.
We have aimed for these assumptions to be fairly realistic, however, there are many factors that cannot be very accurately predicted, such as the number of players minted each season by clubs in each league. Therefore, the numbers in the simulation below should not be taken as an indication of the exact prize pool values at launch.
Prize Pools
All prize pools are denominated in USD and are for one season (around a month in length). As mentioned above, the below figures are mostly comprised of the internal revenue streams (bar sponsorship).
Assumptions/inputs
Player trading in the simulation assumes a 5% transaction fee on player sales. The total prize pools per league are split between the teams finishing in positions 1–9 in the league each season.
Figures below are denominated in USD throughout.
