Your club

Weekly income comes from your sponsor. Every club stands on the house baseline: the full base amount every week, automatically, with no contract and no win bonuses — the safety option, and it is always yours. On top of it, three win-based deals trade part of that guarantee for money earned on stage: each pays a lower fixed share of the base, plus a bonus for every league match win. Deals run half-season or full-season (the full season pays a +5% loyalty premium on every share), and the base itself scales with the league's wage level, so sponsor income broadly tracks an eight-man wage bill wherever you play.

Which deal fits is a bet on your own season — three league games a week, so read the middle column as a forecast of your table position:

Deal	Fixed	Per win	Best when your win rate is	Wins/wk to beat the baseline
House baseline	100%	—	below ~33%	—
Steady	85%	15%	~33–67%	1.0
Performance	65%	25%	~67–83%	1.4
All-in	40%	35%	above ~83%	1.7

Fall short of your deal's threshold and you would have been richer on the baseline — that risk is the price of the upside. And when a week goes perfectly, the sponsor is extra generous: win all three league games in a week and any signed deal pays a flat perfect-week bonus on top — worth more than a Steady win, less than an All-in one. A jackpot for the modest club's great week; a pleasant topping for the dominant. (Weeks 12–13 play no league rounds; every club draws the plain base while the finals are on.)

Two rules of the market: a signed deal is binding until it runs out — no changes, no cancellations, so sign the season you believe in — and the market opens once the divisions are seated at Start game; until then every club simply sits on the baseline. A fresh signature always starts with the coming week.

Weekly costs: player salaries and scout retainers (200 each). The books close every Sunday — Team → Finances keeps the weekly snapshots and the full ledger: every prize, sale, purchase and bonus your club ever booked.

Big paydays come from the competitions: the league prize table at every season's end (champion's money down to a floor for last), the playoff champion's bonus, and the Starleague ladder paid to a player's club at every stage of the run. Transfers move the largest sums of all.

Fall below −10,000 and the club is bankrupt — and your highest earner walks: each week under the floor, the star goes on the transfer market (the sale's proceeds pay the club). Stay buried long enough and the roster thins, star by star. A club beyond saving can instead choose a reboot from the Finances page: the whole roster leaves for free agency, a fresh founding squad reports, the debt is wiped and the founding grant restored — the club's name, history, honours and academy survive.

The market runs three-day auctions on the real-world clock, with the exact closing time shown — and a bid in the final minutes extends the auction a few more, so sniping buys nothing. The minimum raise scales with the price.

Bid from the market page or straight from a player's profile. Your spendable money excludes auctions you're currently leading — you can't promise the same coin twice. If you're outbid, you're notified; Team → My bids tracks every position you hold, leading or losing.

The bidding is open: a listed player's page shows every bid placed on him — who, how much, when — while the auction runs. His weekly salary is public too, for exactly as long as he is listed — the winner takes on the wage with the player, so the wage is part of the lot. The moment the listing ends, the salary goes back behind the curtain.

You don't have to be awake for the finish. Set a standing maximum on any auction and your desk bids for you: it opens at the lowest the ladder allows, answers every rival instantly, and stops dead at your maximum — which stays secret. If two desks fight, the higher maximum wins at one step over the other; on a tie, whoever set theirs first holds it. You pay the final standing bid, never your maximum — but the full maximum counts against your spendable money while it stands, because the desk may need it. A maximum can be raised, never lowered, and if the bidding passes it you're notified. Auctions close on a fixed clock wherever you live; the desk makes sure that's nobody's advantage.

List your own players from their pages. A roster must keep six players unlisted, and a listed player can't be released. Second thoughts get a short grace: an untouched listing — no bids against it — can be withdrawn within 24 hours from the player's page. The first bid, or the first elapsed day, locks it in; from then the auction runs to the hammer, because somebody may already be planning around it. When an auction ends: winner pays, seller collects, the deal enters the permanent transfer record that follows the player forever. His career shows the fee beside the club he joined, with that auction's full bidding kept underneath — it stays there after he retires. The transfer page keeps the world's latest deals and all-time records; the market page has search — race, age, rating, price.

One thing an auction can't survive is the calendar. A player who retires mid-auction is off the market: the sale is void, the leading bidder is told, and nobody pays — bids are only ever promises until the hammer falls.

Free agents cycle onto the market daily at a nominal price — veterans, bankruptcy sales, released men looking for a bench. A free agent nobody claims three times running hangs up the mouse and retires for good.

Every club runs an amateur academy — the cheapest championship you will ever buy, if you scout well. Hire up to three scouts: retired pros, each specialised in a race (or a generalist), each on a 200/week retainer, each entitled to one call per week into the shared worldwide prospect pool.

A call turns up a find: floored current skills only — never potential. Whether the 14-year-old with modest numbers is a gem is your judgement; the pool holds everything from future champions to journeymen, and the good ones don't wait around. You may hold one find at a time, and accept one signing per week into an academy of at most seven. Reject freely; the next call is a week away.

Academy kids train a focus like the pros (set it from the academy page or the kid's own page — young teenagers train fastest of all), recover condition, and play the Tuesday/Thursday amateur league plus the Junior Starleague. Their development is logged in the academy training report; their games get full match pages; their amateur record follows them onto their pro profile.

Promotion to the pro roster: from age 14, after 90 days in the academy, at most one promotion per week per club — the kid carries his condition, experience and training focus with him, and costs his first wage plus a small fee. The pro roster caps at 12.

The academy is not forever: a player who finishes the season he turns 21 in graduates — no more amateur play or training. You then have until the next Junior Starleague draw (week 4's Sunday) to promote him or let him go; a graduate still in the academy on draw day retires. Releasing an amateur has its own short cooldown — sleep on it.

Rename your club once per season (freely during the off-season week); the tag changes any time. Both from Team → Club. Renames are public history — the old names stay on record, and old match reports keep the name as it was on the day.

Team → Club also takes your club crest: a small image (PNG, JPG or WEBP, up to 512×512 and under 256 KB) that flies on your club page and your team header. Replace or remove it whenever you like. Crests are public, so keep them decent — the league office takes down anything it shouldn't have to look at.

Your club page is public: roster, results, honours, the club Hall of Fame — and a ★ so rivals can bookmark you.

Results move the squad's confidence, and confidence walks on stage with them — a club on a winning run gets a small edge, a slumping one a small drag. It swings both ways and fades toward level; think of it as momentum, not a stat to build.

Club news (Team → News) is your private feed: transfers in and out, prizes, promotions, renames, results. Notifications (the 🔔) ping the moments that need you: outbid, auction won or sold, challenge received, a player announcing retirement, a graduate needing a decision. Bookmarks star any player or club you want to keep an eye on. The homepage carries the day: today's fixtures, live matches, latest results and transfers, the press.

One account, one club — and a ladder of grace if life pulls you away. After four quiet weeks you get a warning email; at six, a caretaker takes over: the club plays on — rotating lineups, accepting challenges, training sensibly, promoting from the academy when the roster runs short and the books allow, shedding wages if it falls into debt. Nothing is deleted, only you can claim the club back, and logging in once does it.

Stay away six weeks more — twelve in all — and the seat may be offered to a new founder. If that happens the club is dissolved: its squad enters free agency (their careers continue), and its name, honours and history stay in the archives forever. You'll be told by email, and you're always welcome back — founding a new club takes a minute.

Arrive while a season is running and there's always a way in — and every founder starts the same: a fresh squad, a fresh academy, the founding grant. Your new club claims the weakest replaceable league seat (idle caretaker clubs whose grace has run out, bot-run filler first), whose old club is dissolved — its squad flowing into the transfer market as free agents — so the pyramid stays whole and nobody inherits a head start.

When every seat is taken, your new club enters preseason camp: it is fully alive — the squad trains and ages, your scouts make their calls, the academy develops, the transfer market is open, friendlies are fair game, and your players may even fight through Starleague qualifiers — it just doesn't play league matches yet. At the season rollover, expansion day opens new bottom-tier divisions: every camp club takes its reserved seat, padded with fresh caretaker clubs that become the open seats for the next arrivals. The pyramid grows with the game.