In this beginner’s guide to FootStock, I’ll explain why the platform is booming right now and why so many fantasy football enthusiasts are taking it up.
I’m a relative beginner myself all truth be told. But since playing, I’ve been engrossed in the game (which made me reach out to them for this partnership). I’ve played a few Daily Fantasy games and also briefly tried my hand at Football Index, but nothing has held my attention quite like FootStock. If you’re an avid FPL player, then chances are you’ll really enjoy it (and hopefully make a few pennies along the way!).
Before we begin, this is a gambling platform, so only play with what you can afford to lose.
Also, be sure to check out our sign up offer with this link to get a 50% deposit bonus as contest credit, up to a maximum of £100, plus an exclusive £15 welcome bonus. (I’ve been assured this is the best offer available to new users)
18+ only. BeGambleAware. Terms & Conditions apply.
What is FootStock and what’s all the hype about?
After three years in development, Footstock came to market in April 2019 – so it’s still a relatively new platform. In the absence of real football during the COVID pandemic, and thanks to some quick thinking from the Footstock team, they launched their virtual tournaments. This saw an influx of new players and caused the market to grow significantly. With real football returning, Footstock are back in full swing and its safe to say that they are going to be around for a while. If you’re yet to get on board, the sooner you do the better.
The game itself is a crossover between Fantasy Premier League, a marketplace for players (currently only EPL) and a casino. There’s a real and genuine chance that you can do well in the market and in tournaments – especially if you know your football. The added bonus is that there is a real element of fun to be had while using the platform.
Getting started
If you’re interested in giving it a shot, you can sign up here. This is our affiliate link (so will help us out), but it also gives you the best sign up offer out there, where you get a 50% deposit bonus as contest credit, up to a maximum of £100, plus an exclusive £15 welcome bonus.
18+ only. BeGambleAware. Terms & Conditions apply.
Once in, you’ll see a screen similar to this one.
I won’t go into detail on how to use each section as Footstock do a pretty good job of that. But I will go over the game mechanics and what I’ve learnt during my time playing. It’s worth keeping in mind that they do keep adding to the platform, so things may be slightly different, but we’ll endeavour to keep this article updated.
Understanding the game & buying cards
The whole game revolves around owning player cards (see below for how to purchase these). Each player card has a category (basic, common, rare, epic or legendary) and a price. The price is based on an order book system – effectively what people are prepared to pay. At the time of writing, player prices range from 21p to over £250.
There are two ways of acquiring players.
Player packs
The first is from the shop where you buy player packs. These give you a random selection of player cards with different probabilities of acquiring players of differing rarities.
The probabilities of players that can be acquired in each pack are clearly stated under show details. As the market prices strengthen, the pack prices become better value. It’s also an effective way of topping up on tournament credit, a separate pool of money purely for tournament entries.
Footstock Pack Details for Standard, Premium and Exclusive packs.
Buying player cards in the market
The second route to acquiring players is direct from the Market. If you know the players you want, then this is the place for you. The prices of players are what someone is willing to sell for. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to offer that price. You could go slightly less in the hope that someone will be willing to sell the card at your offer (i.e., an order book system).
One unique feature of trading around the end of the season and the transfer window surrounds inactive players. Any player who is no longer active in the Premier League (perhaps due to a transfer or loan away, or retirement) can be swapped for a small fee to a different player in the same star rating. This means that every card has some use.
Packs vs Market
While I don’t use packs a lot anymore, I’d actually recommend starting off here as you can do very well, especially given you get a discount using our promotion. I was fortunate to scoop a Trent Alexander Arnold in my first Exclusive pack (he’s worth £160 at the time of writing).
At present, the market is perceived to be better value than packs, which are a gamble. However, completing rewards leads to pack discount vouchers which do make them less of a gamble. You can also accrue free players by completing some of these rewards.
It’s also important to think about what you want players for. Do you want to invest in young players that will build in value over time? Do you want to invest in undervalued players that you think will do well next season? Do you want players for the virtual tournaments or roulette? Or do you want to buy and sell short term (i.e. “flip” a player)?
I’ve dabbled in all of these and actually think they are all very viable in terms of turning a profit. That said, I’ve tended to focus more on building a balanced portfolio rather than the tournaments and short term gains. As you can imagine, if you have a specific strategy in mind, then the market is probably the place for you.
Building a portfolio
At the start, my strategy was to invest in youth across the board. I still think this is a good bet and have already seen some decent gains. I’ve tried to have a diverse portfolio of generally young players who I think will be well over the next few seasons.
I’ve also invested in a few players that are likely to gain some minutes in upcoming games and will do well next year and hopefully net a tidy profit. But that strategy is certainly not the only reason to buy players.
The current value of your portfolio is clearly displayed on the collection tab. This value is the midpoint between the current best buy and sell prices within the order book system. This has recently been introduced to prevent huge fluctuations from extreme market values.
Tips for playing the Market
- Start soon. We’re still so early in Footstock that I fully expect prices to continue to rise. The sooner you get involved the more likely your overall collection value will increase.
- Understand price fluctuations. You can either target long term hold or go for short terms flips. An important thing to take into consideration is that a players price is highest when they are about to start in a tournament (because people are buying them to play with). One strategy is to buy players during a downtime. This could be soon after a tournament when they don’t have a fixture, they’re injured or dropped from the starting line up (temporarily). And obviously sell during a high (before a tournament).
- Understand the order book system. An important thing to consider, especially if you’re a beginner, is that you don’t need to pay the asking price (or sell for the selling price). You can put orders in and wait to see if someone excepts your bid.
Playing the tournaments
The tournaments are largely similar to Daily Fantasy. The main difference is that you can only enter players that you own. In theory, this means that you can get steamrolled buy those that have access to a much greater portfolio, but Footstock have made it so people who don’t have a wide pool of players can still get involved.
They’ve achieved this by having beginner, amateur and pro tournaments.
For example, Beginner tournaments have restrictions on them. Typically you can only enter basic and common cards and are restricted by position (mid, striker etc). Beginner tournaments are also cheaper to enter (typically 0.50p or £1).
As you move up to Amateur and Pro tournaments the restrictions get lifted and the entry fees increase. I’ve dabbled in a few tournaments, but only with my free coupons – we’ll come to those soon. Hub contributors are getting into Footstock as well and I know some have been very successful at tournaments in particular, so its something I’ll be trying more in future.
Tournaments come as multi-match and single-match games. The single-match games are limited to around 20 users, in an attempt to prevent multiple lineups. These tournaments will have the benefit of known team news, as opposed to multi-game entry where only line-ups for the first fixture will be known before entries becoming locked. With no substitutes permitted at present, there’s certainly some jeopardy.
As mentioned above, If you take up our offer you’ll also get 50 bonus cards. These can’t be sold, but can be used in tournaments.
Season-long tournaments
Footstock are running a season long game in 2020/21 which will have a £100,000 prize pool. In this tournament, it will be free to enter, with a lineup of 11 players required. There will be stipulations on the number of players in each position and from each star rating.
The highest six scoring Gameweeks count to the overall score, meaning that you’ll still be able to put in an entry until Gameweek 33. Once cards are entered into the season-long tournaments, they can’t be utilised elsewhere, unless you have multiples of a player.
There will be prizes for the top scoring entries each gameweek, as well as big prizes in the overall leaderboard across the entire season. More details are likely to follow in the next few weeks.
If you want to do well in tournaments, I highly recommend giving Holly’s weekly tournament strategy and team reveals a read.
3. Roulette
From the name, you might think that roulette is pure luck, but its actually far from it. If you’ve ever played top trumps you’ll get the gist of it pretty quickly.
We have a guide on roulette tournaments where you go up against other players. The 2 and 4 player tournaments have an entry fee of 2p, with the larger 8, 16 and 32 man tournaments having a card rake of 1, 2 and 4 cards respectively. The 2 and 4 man tournaments are split up into the various card categories.
Footstock Roulette Tournaments
In each tournament, you will need to select a card to enter. A random statistic, from around 24 for outfield players, is drawn and you compete against another user. If your player has the better statistic, then you will progress to the next round, or in the final, win the prize pot and the other users card.
If you lose in any round then you will lose your card, so it’s important to be conservative at times here: don’t risk high value cards without familiarising yourself first with the underlying statistics. If two users match up with the same card, then a random coinflip will decide the result.
The same player cannot be used in consecutive spins, with three different players required between them. Some users pinpoint four promising roulette players to use in an ABCDA cycle. I highly recommend using FF Thinker’s roulette sheet for percentage chances of players winning for each position – an invaluable resource if you want to do well.
4. Virtual Battles
This is a brand new feature on Footstock and something I’m keen to give a shot. In short, you can instantly compete against other Footstock users in a Virtual Tournament. At the moment, this involves eight other users and is based on a single match (e.g., Everton vs Man City)
Join our WhatsApp & Slack FootStock chats
Our Premium Member WhatsApp group is already created and includes some regular Hub contributors (who know more than me) and myself. We’ve also just launched a new Slack channel dedicated to FootStock.
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Is this not just daily fantasy (a la Paddy Power) with the added barrier of having to spend actual money to build the team first?
Also, as more users join and more lacks are bought and opened, wouldn’t the additional supply reduce the demand, and therefore cost of the premium cards?
Good questions
Mry7
It has similarities to daily fantasy, but it’s got so many more levels. I’ve played very few tournaments and still got a lot from it.
In terms of prices going down when new players come on board, we’ve only seen the opposite.
As you can buy direct from the market, there’s more demand than supply meaning prices are going up. Obviously they can go down again, but my hunch is they will continue to rise for a good while yet