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If you’re on social media then it’s highly likely that you’ve seen a few of your contacts throwing Footstock around as a new and interesting platform in which to make some cash from your knowledge of football. Here we take a more in-depth look at the platform with our Footstock review.
What is Footstock?
In a football mad world that already offers trading cards, traditional sports betting and alternatives such as Football Index you’d be forgiven for thinking that the football market is well covered for money-making schemes. Scratch deeper though and it feels like the creators of Footstock are on to something.
Essentially, their model looks to combine the best elements of all those different aspects mentioned with an onus placed on acquiring “player cards”.
What are Player Cards?
There are a few different elements to the Footstock ‘game’ but the basis of all of it is based off old-school trading cards, which are better known as player cards. The player cards form your portfolio. Each card contains several skills, which are given a score with an overall rating awarded based on their real-world performances.
As ratings are linked to the live action of the beautiful game, you may well notice your cards improve or worsen based on the performances they turn in in the real world. Currently, the judgement of good or bad displays are based on the scores achieved in the world of fantasy football. The players are then categorised based on their ratings.
How do I get Player Cards?
So, you know that player cards are critical to dabbling on Footstock but how do you obtain them? If you’re lucky, you’ll find sign up offers that give you a freebie – well a set of free cards – that help to get you familiarised with their website. In the most part though, you’ll be spending real cash to buy packs of cards. Footstock is a form of gambling after all.
The platform is available to most budgets with packs ranging from sub £3 to the best part of £1,000. The packs are split by quantity and quality with categorisation shown as bronze, silver and gold with the latter seen as the more prestigious option. The more you outlay, the more likely you are to obtain the best players – although that’s not to say you can’t land a surprise further down the pricing ladder.
The other manner in which you can obtain cards is through a trader to trader purchase, which resembles the physical act of trading cards i.e. user X will buy card Y off user Z for an agreed amount.
Do I just make money through trading cards then?
No. Absolutely not. The benefit of offering a trade option is to allow people to specifically tailor their portfolios whilst giving an additional channel of profit-making for the traders whether this be by selling off an in-form player or pre-empting the transfer move of a player. There are plenty of other ways to play for cash too.
The first – and easiest to explain – is known as Footstock Roulette although Top Trumps might be a more appropriate name. In a nutshell, you pick one card from your portfolio to go head-to-head with another card (from someone else). Footstock have a computer that selects a skill from the card completely at random. Whoever has the winning number against the randomly selected skill wins the card, which means that player is then part of the winners portfolio giving them the option to bet with it or to sell it via a trade. Either way, if things go to plan, the money will start rolling in.
We’re yet to touch on the most unique selling point of Footstock, which is critical to understanding how you can best make money on the platform.
What are Footstock tournaments?
The tournaments hosted within Footstock are the true lifeblood of the platform; their one real differential if you like. Tournaments are split into different classes – ‘Beginner’, ‘Amateur’ and ‘Pro’ – and they work similarly to the footballing pyramid to provide a more balanced approach for the bets you place.
When entering a tournament, you select a ‘team’ from the cards you own – although I’ll stress you don’t need 11 players with games starting at just 3-a-side! This is where the tournament classes come into play. Think of them as leagues; if Mo Salah is the Premier League of players then it would be unfair to enter him into a ‘Beginner’ tournament where he’d be up against, say, Cenk Tosun.
Once the tournament is underway, the overall scoring is determined by a 27 point algorithm. Like in real life, luck helps but swap your tactician’s hat for an analytical stance and you’ll quite feasibly give yourself an edge on the opposition.
Is Footstock worth playing?
Firstly, social media is awash with people talking of huge portfolios that cost tens of thousands of pounds but don’t be alarmed. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can start from a base almost as low as you wish and, as with any betting experience, only ever dabble with money you’re happy to lose.
In terms of signing up; if you are – or have been – a big fan of anything such as Football Manager, fantasy football, Football Index or just throwing together a weekly football bet then I’d certainly recommend giving Footstock a look.
Good luck!
