This side challenge is my aim at testing what Footstock is like for a new user on a small budget. Starting with just £100, I wanted to see how easy it would be to grow my bank roll and whether I’d enjoy the platform.

Trading

It would be fair to say that the first couple of months have been a bit of a rollercoaster and possibly not the easiest time for a new user to join in term of the trading side. I started this challenge at the end of May, following a period of fast growth on the platform which had largely come off the back of Footstock introducing virtual tournaments. When real football returned, many of the cards that had been useful for the virtual games collapsed in value over night. In terms of my own trading, mistakes have been made.

I’ve made around 150 trades in those two months. 90% of my completed trades have been profitable and I’ve averaged a sell on profit of 18%. That doesn’t take into account that the few losses I’ve made have been far higher in cash terms. I swallowed the biggest loss on Samatta – £6.25 (I don’t know what I was thinking), in contrast to my biggest cash profit on Jimenez of £1.25.

Rewards

I managed to nab a few rewards early on while I had the bonus cards propping up my collection. They’ve now expired so it’s looking increasingly difficult for me to pick up any of the player card rewards. I am sitting on a couple of pack discount vouchers from my tournament entries and a deposit bonus that I packed early on. I might use this and double up my deposit on the platform as I think getting anywhere meaningful with only £100 is going to be a bit of a slog.

Tournaments

I’ve entered 32 tournaments so far, mostly freerolls but some paid entries. I’ve cashed out 7 times and I’m £4.70 up on tournament winnings. Not a disaster but not all that exciting either and, now that my bonus cards have expired, I’m going to need to think carefully about who I want to add to my collection if I want to seriously compete in future tourneys. On the plus side, I’m sitting on £13.65 of tournament credit at the moment so that should give me a head start next season.

I’ll need to do some surgery to my collection to get it ready for next season as I’m left with a bit of a motley crew of two star players, who probably won’t be winning me too much any time soon.

Games

I’ve avoided these since the early days as I don’t have enough of a collection to start risking cards on roulette or attempting any virtual battles. I can see this adds an element of fun to the platform but could be a big turn-off if a new user loses a lot of cards/money early on.

Overall profit and next steps

My current collection plus cash balance is £110.65, so roughly 10% up on my initial deposit. I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed with this as I know I was stung by some really stupid purchases just before the virtuals ended.

Still, I’m in profit so that’s something! What I need to do now is think a bit more strategically about how I want to play this. If I’m going to go all-in for tournaments then I need to build up a decent set of one and two star players to compete at a beginner level. If I want to do some better trading then I need to be smarter and pick players up when they dip or when there’s an obvious rise ahead of them. This isn’t the sort of platform where you can sit passively and wait for players to rise – you really do have to have a strategy to get the most from it.