How pricing works

Tickertaka is free to play. You start with 10,000 credits, which are virtual and can never be bought or cashed out. Everything below is the actual mechanism. The one thing we keep private is each player's current fair-value estimate, so nobody can trade against it mechanically.

1. Every player has a fixed number of shares

When a player is listed we create their float once and never again: no new shares are ever minted. Popular players (by Fantasy Premier League ownership and output) get large floats; fringe players get small ones. Unsold shares sit with the Tickertaka market maker.

2. You trade with the market maker

The market maker always quotes a price while it has shares. Its price rises as it sells and falls as it buys back: buying 1% of a player's float raises the price by about 1%, and selling 1% lowers it by the same proportion. Each night the curve is re-centred on the closing price, so the effect of trading on price is temporary unless fair value moves too. Quotes are exact and path-independent: splitting an order into pieces costs the same as placing it whole. If every share of a player is held, buyers wait for someone to sell.

3. The only fee is the spread

Buyers pay slightly above the mid price and sellers receive slightly below. The spread is 0.3% for the most liquid players and widens to 3% for the thinnest. The order ticket shows the exact spread cost before you trade.

4. Players pay dividends for what they do on the pitch

Every holder of a player when trading in him pauses, 75 minutes before his team kicks off, is paid per share for each event in that match:

goal            0.1 cr
assist          0.06 cr
clean sheet     0.08 cr (GK, DEF)  0.02 cr (MID)  0 (FWD)
save            0.007 cr
all-round       0.005 cr per point above par (par: GK 0, DEF 4, MID 6, FWD 0)
team wins       all of that player's dividends for the match x 1.25

The rate per event is the same whatever the share price. Trading in a player pauses from 75 minutes before kickoff (ahead of the team sheets) until just after full time, so nobody can buy once the line-ups or the goals are known. Goals, assists and saves are paid as they appear in the live data, at the base rate. The win bonus, clean sheets and the all-round score are paid 10 minutes after full time, and everything is spendable immediately. Dividends are finalised 72 hours later, when any stat corrections are paid or reclaimed as a separate ledger entry.

The all-round score is FPL's bonus points system score (built from Opta data on passing, chance creation, tackles, interceptions, clearances, recoveries, dribbles, errors and discipline) with the parts Tickertaka already pays for taken out: goals (12/12/18/24 by position), assists (9), clean sheets (12, goalkeepers and defenders), saves (2 each) and the points for playing (6 for 60 minutes or more, 3 for less). Par is the median score of a 60-minute appearance in that position last season. Only points above par pay, so a poor game costs nothing from this dividend; it shows up in the price instead.

5. Prices are pulled toward a fair value

Each night Tickertaka re-estimates every player's fair value, the way a stock is valued on its earnings: a full season of the dividends his share is expected to pay, divided by a 6.5% yield. That holds at every point in the season, so a price does not run down as matches are played, and the season-end buyback pays the same value. The estimate starts from last season's output (for new or little-used players, from what players at the same FPL price and ownership produced) and learns from this season's goals, assists, clean sheets, saves and all-round scores (after 8 matches this season counts as much as last season), and from how often the team wins. Playing time is forecast separately: goals, assists, saves and clean sheets are estimated per 90 minutes played, then multiplied by the share of the team's minutes the player is expected to get, which leans on his last few matches. The all-round score is forecast the same way, per 90 minutes. A player who is dropped is repriced at the full time of the first match he misses, not a little more after every one. For forecasting, goals and assists are blended half and half with expected goals and expected assists, so one lucky deflection does not reprice a player; dividends are always paid on the real events. A share bought at fair value pays about6.5% a season in dividends and, if the forecast holds, keeps its price. At full time of each match, before trading reopens, the player's forecast is updated with what he just did and his price moves by the same proportion: a goal lifts it, and a match without a return (or without playing) lowers it, because the forecast of what he will earn per match comes down. Overnight, any other change in the forecast passes through the same way, less whatever traders had already moved the price that day in the same direction, so news is never counted twice.

Sustained buying or selling by many different traders also nudges fair value, by at most 3% a night and never more than 49% overall. One account alone, a single day's spike, or a small trade relative to the float each shrink that effect, so a whale cannot move fair value by themselves. NPC fund trades never count.

Buying and selling can push a price away from fair value, and that crowd price is tested by the player's next match. At full time, after the result has moved the price, it closes 40% of whatever gap to fair value is left. If the crowd was right and he keeps scoring, his forecast rises to meet the price and little comes off. If he blanks, the drop comes with the blank. Busy players, traded by many different people, are never pulled back overnight. Thinly traded players, where two accounts could prop a price up, close 15% of the gap each night as well. Every move shows on the player page as either the match or the market estimate. Prices are never pinned to fair value; you profit by being right before the market is.

The exact share of the gap closed varies by up to 40% either side of those figures, player by player and match by match, from a private random seed. On average it is exactly the published rate, but it means prices cannot be solved backwards to reveal the hidden fair value.

In the last 2 gameweeks of the season, trading no longer nudges fair value at all. Fair value then sets the season-end buyback, so it must reflect performance only, never a late buying campaign.

6. Season end

After the last match is final, every share is bought back at the player's fair value at that moment: a season of his expected dividends at the 6.5% yield, the same basis his price was valued on all season. Final standings use the average of your portfolio value across the last 5 matchdays, so a lucky final weekend cannot decide the title. Then everyone starts the next season fresh.

7. Leaderboards

• Portfolios are valued at what you would actually get selling each holding now (after spread and price impact), so buying up a thin player cannot inflate your score.
• Championship (the official title): your return minus the Tickertaka index over the same period. The index is every listed player weighted by market value, with dividends reinvested, so simply being invested is not enough: you have to pick better than the market.
• Return: your raw return on starting cash.
• Income: total dividends received.

Market depth parameter: total float value of 50 million credits across all players.