What is going on in the Hattrick transfer market? A player I had no trouble buying for €1,300,000 two seasons ago now costs at least €3,000,000(€3,500,000 to be secure). A more reliable source gives data as follows :
The line graph shows players with Titanic attribute (goalkeeping and playmaking, all ages) in sale prices and the bars show the numbers of sales of the specific players in Germany from the end of season 32 to season 35. A very clear pattern any eye could observe is how the line increases and the bar dips at the start of Season 34. More about that later.
In reality, as society progress, price increase is somehow inevitable. With the increase of income levels, the spending power is also increased. It all seems very clear to be an effect of The New Contract at the end of Season 33 – more earnings from supporters and fans. For a look at the price development of Hattrick, take a Titanic midfielder, 22 years and passable form (our subject player). €1,300,000 in Season 33 and shooting up to over €3,000,000 in Season 34 onwards. There was however a little period of time (early Season 33) where a similar player could be bought for a price sub-1,000,000. But that was just a low in the market. A stable price for the past seasons was €1,300,000. The greatest price surge could probably be observe in players Mythical and above, from total worthless (less than €250,000) to a price of around €1,000,000 – 2,500,000 before stabling down in Season 35. For players around the Solid capability, much change wasn’t observed. For the purpose of this article, we will be putting our main focus on the mainstream players (worldclass-titanic).
There are two likely happenings in the near future : one, the transfer market stays within 10% aggregate of now, just like in the world where people earn more and prices increase. A chance of an occasional inflation, but if we are looking at that, we could say that the peak had alraedy been achieved. From the end of Season 33 where prices start to increase day by day, it went to a point where our subject player sells for €4,250,000, stabilizing later at around €3,250,000. The continued rise was unexpected by many, until it finally reach the point where people were not willing to offer anymore. So sellers kept their expectations low. It can be seen like this :
A second prediction would be that it was just a normal Hattrick thing where prices rise, and it would fall back to the €1,300,000 one day. I wouldn’t think that is true. Falling back to the dear 1.3million may eventually happen, but not in the field of our vision. The increase in price we are facing this time has a reason. A clear and simple reason – people getting more money to spend. And unless people lose their income, there shouldn’t be a situation of price stabilizing at a lower value anymore. If we look into the real world, look at Singapore. A develop country today which prices were once lower than neigbouring Malaysia. Singapore just became richer and richer and today, cost of living is more than double that of its neighbour. What I am trying to say here is that when society gets higher (precisely more income), the price of everything increases. It’s natural and not something happening where there’s a shortage of supply and prices shoot up for the moment.
As you can see in the chart above – the green bar moves up a level. Maybe you would observe the difference between the stable black lines and the green bars are different at the stable start and end point of the chart. That’s the point of it, and a glitter of hope for this second prediction. While income had just risen by less than 50%, prices had increased by 200-300%. Would the market drop and make the 200% back to the supposed 50% rise? If so, the stabilized drop should mean €1,500,000 , no longer €1,300,000. Another viewpoint is that we shouldn’t count it by percentage, but by the extra money teams are starting to get, and that we should take the whole transfer market into consideration. It’s terribly hard to predict whats going to happen. Earth faces it and so does Hattrick.
On a lesser perspective, let’s look to the people around us (in Hattrick). Just look in your league and the news of transfers. How many are there? It had been considerably low with only youth players and anything cheap going around these days. And just look at the data of the first chart. The conclusion – people are suffering from the current price. Many are holding off buying plans for the moment, although there are some who can’t wait anymore. However since the changes in the past season had given people deep pockets, I believe I have enough evidence to say that the market will fall not too long from now – only to climb back quickly again.
Credits to HTPE for the use of their transfer market graphs.
Hello,
This is a good article and a good surface analysis of what happens in HT’s economy nowadays.
I would like to point out a pattern that has not been posted in this article, and whose signification may surpass the simple rise of prices.
You have given the example of a a country that had a steep economic rise and thus it surpassed in terms of income, but also costs a neighbour country. From a sociological pow (in hattrick is just as valid) when people start to observe, feel an increase in the income, they tend to spend more – percentage-wise – than the income rise, thus a possible explanation of the difference between the rise of the income and spendings.
As a manager of a team (Kinslayer F.C.) I would like to point out something: the income didn’t rise as much as thought. In the first season after “the new deal” there was a steep rise in the income, the 50% you speak of. The next season (the current) however introduced the supporter’s behaviour which slowed down this trend. I happen to be always close to 0€ in the bank, so the income of my team is independent of the spercator’s approach to rich clubs.
Moreover, the rises happened in the first few weeks of the season, folowed by a downfall. It is not related to any sociological behaviur of the players such as “hey, I’ve spend too much”. Consider that in the first weeks 90% of the teams are in the cup – so overall, the hattrick economy cashes in from the supporters anything from double to ten times the income of the last rounds. It is of utmost importance to accentuate this trend, because it’s this that made the prices to be as high as they are.
The rise stopped in the season after the “new deal” in the 9th week and in the current season after the 7th week, before going down. This means that the money bump received from the early cup rounds is beginning to have less of an impact. The monetary mass that is in the HT’s economy rised after the first season so the impact of the cup in second season was of lesser importance. Based on this trend we can expect the prices to rise the next season only in 4-5 weeks after stabilizing.
The economic changes announced by the Hattrick senior GMs for the next season will slow down things even more, so that we’ll reach a maximum of 3-4 weeks of price rises, and with a diminishing slope vs this season.
These seasonal rises will calm down even more, but they wil exist. Why shouldn’t they? This time we have the same answer: the cup. There are some 10 000 teams entering the cup in any 8 division country. If 5% of them decide to buy some world class midfielder to get them up another round they will make the investemnt. Overall there is an increase of the demand at the beginning of the season, which calms down as the teams are progressively eliminated from the cup.
The final point I would like to expose are the salaries: the new salary system that favours multi-skill players is a welcome addition. By favoiring multiskilled players and introducing stamina training as a percentage, the training value has diminished drasticaly, so there isn’t the danger of reaching at 2M€/week player salaries that leak money.
In the end I would like to thank sitiwan for linking this article and to wish all the readers good luck in Hattrick.
This is a very nice post about the prices in Hattrick.
Keep up the good work.
Greetz
now.. I was looking at it a little too general – season to season.
you got a real good point there, Dre.
- wait in anticipation for what next season brings -
Aside from analysing only the prices, it’s good to think of an ulimate economy rule and that is that the price is always an equation of the demand (based on available money) and offers..
It would be wrong to think that the Larger amounts of available money only influenced the prices and caused the Growth…
In the Graph you posted it’s also very intersting to look at the total number of transfers and its effect on the price.
It easily can be seen that this has dropped even more, therefore, not only has the price grown, but players offered on the market has dropped.
It also shows that there seems to be a direkt relationschiop between price-drops of growth on an ‘microscale (within two or three weeks) and the amount of transfers, if its relativily low, the price tends to grow, with a hiogher amount of transfers, the price tends to drop.
I suspect that a lot of the offers on the market have been players with a relativily high ‘minimum-price’; offered with the idea: ‘there might be a fool desperate enought to offer te money’ (and often enough, this does happen)..
even with players with a low minimum-demand-price; if there’s not much comparable players, but more players looking to buy, they’ve got a big risk of running in a ‘bidding-war’
what i believe is that the larger amount of money influences the price, and the price in turn influence the demand. Economics-wise, it is the demand as usual influence the price while the larger income raises the equilibrium and the cycle goes on.
in the exact time of review here, there wasn’t any big factor causing an abnormal rise in demand and supply of players (seasonwide).
the first graph shows a great drop in sales. But has the supply (players offered on the market) dropped? Probably not. Sellers always look for the highest price they can, and there’s no reason they back off when the prices boom. It’s the demand that decreases.
By the way, it all depends on how you view it.
(and nice of you for the link in your forum : ) )
i do agree well with your last paragraph, though.
correct me (again) if i’m wrong..
A very interesting analysis of the market.
I do think the adjustments made to the economy will take some time to kick in. I believe that Youth Academies will pick up the slack in supply once managers master the system well. Furthermore, I believe YA are the single most important change to the HT transfer system and thus, the economy.
Teams are going to be able to replace their own old mono-skilled players for multi-skill trainees coming out of their YA’s, and still have players to put into the market. The generation of 17 and 18 year olds is barely starting to train, and yet we are seeing low salary lads with high main skill and acceptable level of secondaries. The YA’s, if handled properly, can yield up to 6 decent players per season. Supply will catch up with demand and prices will stabilize somewhere between the middle of what we see now.
This YA strategy will allow teams to capitalize themselves to move up in the Division ladder without necessarily having to speculate heavily in the TM.
Greetings to all.