Season 3 is around the corner, and you’re just in time to join us!

Footium’s third season, arrives Tuesday 17th of December 2024, with matches kicking off Thursday the 19th of December.

It’s holiday season, but football never sleeps, and with it comes a host of updates that will build on your Season 3 Footium experience.

Join over 2,000 active clubs in our Discord to ensure you’re fully prepped for the launch of Season 3. https://discord.gg/footium

tl;dr

• Start Dates : Pre-season begins 17th of December, matches kick off on the 19th of December
• Rewards : Over 24 ETH ($85,000 at current ETH prices) in rewards, funded by academy mints, trades, and legendary player auctions.
• Legendary Players : Auctions return, offering high-potential players (95–99 ratings) to boost squads.
• Training Updates : Cancel training sessions without penalty, warnings for out-of-position training, and improved player prioritisation tools.
• OpenSea Updates : Automatic metadata refreshes for players after matches and training — no manual refresh needed.
• Academy Increase : Clubs now receive 7 prospects per season instead of 5, while maintaining rare spawn rates.

Key Features and Updates

Claiming Real Money Rewards

You’ll continue to be able to claim rewards in Season 3, so make sure to redeem your real money rewards on the Footium hub.

These rewards will be claimable at the start of Season 3, and will allow you to claim all rewards won by clubs in your wallet in one transaction, as well as displaying a breakdown across which Footium Clubs won which rewards.

Season 3’s rewards will also be updated in-game. To view your league’s current rewards, you’ll need to head to the leagues tab in your Footium hub, and click on rewards in the top right. This figure, updated periodically throughout the season, will increase as Club Owners in your division sign academy players, and make transfers directly contributing to your rewards.

For more information on exactly how rewards are calculated, and who will be eligible, read our guide to understanding Footium’s rewards.

Season 3 Initial Rewards

Season 3 rewards will continue increasing throughout Season 3 as more is spent on academy mints, legendary player auctions and player trades. You can read more about how rewards work in Footium here.

Legendary Players

Legendary players are back for Season 3, through limited-supply auctions. These are players that are a step above almost every other player in the Footium Football League and provide a great chemistry boost to your squad, but still require your focus and time to train.

These unique players boast high potential ratings (ranging between 95–99) and add star power to Footium clubs. Legendary players will also unlock potential at a slightly faster rate than normal players.

Legend auctions will kick off on Monday the 16th of December, and will be available on OpenSea to view closer to the time. 50% of proceeds from Legendary Player auctions (after OpenSea fees) will be added to rewards, split equally across all Footium Leagues (and subsequently split across seasons in the 60:30:10 split as outlined in the Rewards article).In Season 3, 12 Legendary Players will be auctioned, with proceeds being split by league.

The Legend auctions will take place in 3 batches of 4 legends (all times in UTC):

• Batch 1: Mon 16th — Tues 17th 5pm
• Batch 2: Tue 17th — Wed 18th 9pm
• Batch 3: Wed 18th — Thu 19th 3pm

Inactive Clubs

Inactive clubs will continue to be ineligible for rewards in Footium, and for clubs who are in the Amateur League, you wont be able to train, play matches, or sign new players. To rejoin the FFL, you’ll need to request access by requesting to rejoin on your club page.

A small set of clubs will be rejoining the FFL from the Amateur League, reducing inactive club numbers down further.You should continue to keep an eye on if your club is flagged as inactive.

If your club is inactive, it will be ineligible for rewards and may be relegated to the Amateur League if it is in Division 8 or Division 7 relegated zone.Your club will display as inactive in the hub homepage, as well as showing green strikes on your club drop down menu. Make sure you’re active on any clubs you own (by completing one of the actions shown above) to avoid missing out on rewards.

OpenSea Metadata Refreshes

In Season 3, we’ve streamlined the OpenSea metadata refresh process for player cards. Now, after training sessions or matches, your players’ metadata will automatically update on OpenSea within minutes. No more manual refreshing — player changes will be reflected quickly and accurately.Here’s how it works:

• Automated Updates : Changes to player stats or attributes will trigger a queue that processes metadata refreshes as efficiently as possible.
• Processing Limits : The system accounts for OpenSea’s API rate limits, ensuring smooth and reliable updates.
• 3-Minute Buffer : A short delay is implemented to allow all relevant data, including updated images, to process fully before the refresh is triggered.

You can test it out in Season 3 by training a player — wait a few minutes, and their updated metadata will appear directly on OpenSea — without a manual refresh!

Training Updates

Training for Season 3 will run from 12pm UTC on Gameday 1 (Thursday 19th December) until 12pm UTC on Gameday 22 (Thursday 9th January). Any ongoing training sessions when this window closes will automatically complete, with all intended rating increases, potential point usage, and condition impacts applied as usual.

To improve usability, and to enhance the training experience and streamline squad management throughout the season, we have made multiple quality of life updates to training in Footium.

A Cancel Training button has been introduced, which allows you to end a training session accidentally started without affecting player condition or skill. Alongside this, updates to the training position selection interface have been implemented to minimise errors, making it easier to assign players to the correct positions.

To support this reduction in training errors, a new warning system will now alert you when training players in non-green positions, helping you better manage player development, and spot when you may be making an incorrect training decision.Lastly, the player interface has been updated to distinguish between starting XI players and substitutes in the training modal and players page. Previously indicated by a generic shirt icon, this new distinction makes it easier to prioritise which players to focus on during training sessions.

Academy Increase & New Prospects

As with all Footium Seasons, you’ll once again have access to new academy prospects to sign on your academy page at the launch of the season. Alongside this, Season 2 academy prospects will be released from your club as of 12pm GMT on Thursday 12th December.

The number of prospects each club can sign is the most noticeable Academy-related change for Season 3, each club’s prospects will now increase from 5 to 7 total. This does not impact rare spawn rates, as you’ll continue to only see up to 1 rare spawn in your academy.

Alongside this, normal players (non-legendary, or non-rare) will now take 400 minutes (instead of the previous 380 minutes) of game time to gain another point of unlocked potential.

Signing players will continue to require you to have Ethereum in your Arbitrum wallet and be on the Arbitrum Network. Signing prospects will add them to your club, with 90% of the payment contributing to rewards in your division.The minting prices for Season 3 can be found below.

Remember: Academy players when signed go straight into the squad even if the registration window is closed. Academy Player prices are set per division, with an increase towards Division 1, to reflect the talent of the players coming through each division, and there may be some difference between seasonal prices — dependent on a variety of factors.

PWA Support Removed

As part of the Season 3 updates, we are officially removing PWA (Progressive Web App) support. This means the app will no longer appear in your dock or home screen, and it won’t be accessible through Chrome’s PWA functionality or available in the App Store.

The decision to remove PWA support was driven by low user adoption, compared to the significant time and resources required to maintain and independently update the app alongside other development priorities.

We’re open to revisiting this feature in the future if there’s enough demand, but for now, we believe focusing on other areas of the game will have a greater impact on improving your experience.

Christmas Elves

Lastly, as the holiday season approaches, the elves at Footium HQ have been hard at work sprinkling a little Christmas magic into the game. Keep your eyes peeled for festive Easter eggs hidden throughout the Footium universe this December. From seasonal surprises to subtle nods to the Christmas spirit, the game is about to feel a whole lot merrier!

Notable Known Bugs

• Very rare occurrences of weird event displays around Own goals
• Division + League in search bar doesn’t update with promotion + relegation
• Players in training don’t show in the best alternatives list on tactics
• Goalkeepers infrequently take and are involved with set pieces
• Sometimes events will freeze when streaming a live match (refresh fixes)
• Sometimes players are unable to train when showing 45% condition in the UI (this is due to rounding, they are likely 44.8 for example, and you’ll need to wait up to an hour for them to actually reach 45% before you can train them currently)
• Can’t move red-carded players into different positions on the pitch during games
• It sometimes takes a while to be able to access matches when they start, meaning you miss the first few minutes of the game
• Penalties aren’t counted as shots in stats
• Shots can be cut off by half or full time before their result occurs

Development Progress Report

As part of our Season announcements, we’ll now include a progress report for game development progress and priorities.While the much-anticipated registration feature remains under active development, we’ve decided not to release it this season.

This is a fairly significant change to how clubs and players are managed, and we want to ensure it’s stable and well-tested before going live. We will release a full article on the new registration and player contract system in the near future.

We’ve also made improvements to address issues with goalkeeper goal attribution. We have identified the issues which lead to some oddities around Goalkeeper Goals and own goals in rare occurrences, and have fixed some of these ahead of Season 3. We know that there are still some outstanding issues to resolve around these event flows, and these will be worked on in future.

Looking ahead, the retired players feature has finished the design phase and is heading into the build phase. This feature aims to add a new layer of strategy and squad planning for club owners. Meanwhile, the registration system is progressing steadily, and we’re making significant strides toward completion.

Many items in the “Building” phase of our roadmap (see here) are either finished or nearing completion, reflecting our commitment to delivering on long-term improvements.

For Season 3, our focus has been on quality-of-life updates to ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience. With stability as our top priority during this busy holiday season, we’ve opted to hold off on any major feature updates until the new year.Your feedback continues to drive our progress, and we’re excited to see how these changes shape gameplay in the weeks ahead!

How do I prepare for Season 3?

• Step 1: If you haven’t already, set up your wallet on Arbitrum, and transfer ETH in preparation — find out how here:
• Step 2: Buy a club! Make sure you’ve budgeted for players, or negotiated a deal with a club owner in our discord for a club & players. Here’s our official guide:
• Step 3: Use the transfer market and academy effectively to strengthen your team, keeping an eye on the strategic composition and potential of your squad.
• Step 4: Get involved with our Twitter, Discord and Newsletter for upcoming announcements and competitions for the chance to upgrade your club for the launch of Season 3.

How you can help

Word of Mouth

As we gear up for the full launch of Footium’s Season 3, we need your help! If you know anyone who already owns a Footium club — friends, fellow managers, or people you’ve convinced to join in the past — give them a nudge. Let them know that Season 3 is about to start, and they’ll want to get their club sorted ASAP to be able to excersise their skill to earn another season of real money rewards.The same goes for anyone who’s shown interest before, or members of the web3 groups you’re part of. Now’s the time to remind them that Footium is LIVE with serious rewards on the line.

User Feedback

As always, your feedback and thoughts are important to us. Your feedback is invaluable, and this season provides another opportunity to gather insights and make adjustments based on your experiences and suggestions.To submit feedback, bug reports, or to request help, make sure to head over to our official discord, and keep an eye out for feedback forms at the end of the season.

Post-Season 3

We recently published an article on the future of Footium, and what we’re working on so-far. If you’d like to read more, head here.Get ready for the Season 3 launch on 17th of December, and prepare your club for the exciting updates ahead. Make sure to join our Discord for real-time updates, Q&As, and to stay connected with the Footium community.Your football management journey is about to kick into high gear — see you on the pitch!