Season 14 — The Hard Launch 🚀

Season 13 was a turning point for Footium. It introduced fiat onboarding, social wallets, referrals and Starter Bundles, opening the door for more new managers than ever before. We also maxed out our Caretaker system, hitting all 400 available slots and bringing in a record number of new managers in a single season. That wave of activity gave us a huge amount of insight into how players discover the game, how they move through the sign up flow and what helps them take their first steps.

Season 14 is about acting on everything we learnt. After our biggest season of new managers since Season 0, this update focuses on accessibility, clarity and scale as we get Footium ready to grow. There is some big news arriving next week that sets the scene for Footium’s full send.

Season 14 is Footium’s hard launch.

As we head into pre-season, expect to see a lot more activity across Discord. We’ll be running quizzes, competitions, fun themed challenges and even a live chat with Sam and George. Keep an eye out for those announcements.

Pre-Season Begins: Monday, 1st December 2025

First Matches Kick Off: Tuesday, 9th December 2025

✨ TL DR

📄 New Contracts - The new contract system powers automated fulfilment of Starter Bundles and lays the groundwork for future onboarding improvements.

🧭 Sign Up Flow Improvements - Smoother onboarding, clearer steps and faster routing into Caretaker clubs or Starter Bundles for anyone landing on the signup page. These upgrades should also improve our marketing funnel as we begin to drive more traffic into the game.

🎓Academy Cohorts Return - After last season’s temporary switch to Free Agents, your normal academy cohorts will return on launch day with a full reveal.

👥 Caretaker Improvements - A clearer, more intuitive path for the highly popular trial season of the game. Better guidance and instant access without having to wait for a club assignment.

📈 Caretaker Scale Expansion - We hit capacity with 400 Caretaker managers last season. Season 14 includes updates that allow Footium to support far more Caretakers at once.

🏟 Caretakers Can Now Buy Their Club - Caretakers can now convert their temporary club into full ownership through a clean in-game purchase flow, letting them continue with the club they have grown attached to.

🔗 Referral Improvements - Cleaner tracking, smoother invites and a new Season Bonus. Earn $100 dollars when you bring in 3 or more successful Starter Bundle referrals this season.

🎮 Friends League Boost - More tools and incentives to spin up mini competitions with friends, creators or communities.

📢 Social Leaderboard Incentives - More ways to reward clubs for building a presence on social as we continue pushing Footium toward becoming the ultimate competitive social football game.

📰 Animated In-Game Ticker - A new animated ticker that brings the Footium world to life with live news, updates and offers directly inside the game.

🪙 Legendary Auctions Return - GBM Bid to Earn Legendary Auctions are back for Season 14.

🗣️ George Update - A candid look at what we learnt from Season 13, what is improving and what comes next.

👀 Huge News - [REDACTED]

🫵 We need you 🫵

Let’s start with referrals, because this is where we want to go big. When you bring friends into Footium, the league gets stronger, the competition gets better and the whole game becomes more alive.

This season we’re dialing it up. On top of the usual 20% cashback and the milestone ladder, anyone who brings in three successful referrals during Season 14 pre-season will receive a $100 cash bonus. A more meaningful reward alongside the milestone ladder for strengthening the competition across the league.

Note: These referrals have to be made between December 1st & December 9th

Just as a reminder, inviting friends is simple. During pre-season you’ll see a Referrals Live button at the top of the game & within the social tab. Your personal referral link is right there, along with a live view of your progress on the referral ladder so you can track how many people you’ve brought in and what rewards you’re moving towards. If you’re ever going to spread the word about Footium, this is the season to do it.

Thank you, as ever, to our amazing community for helping us grow the game and bring more managers into the Footium world!

📄 New Contracts

A huge unlock for the long term health of Footium arrives this season! Our new contract system is now live across the game and it enables the automated fulfilment of Starter Bundle purchases behind the scenes. This reduces friction, eliminates manual steps and gives us a more robust foundation for future onboarding improvements.

Players won’t notice much changing on the surface, but this update matters. By removing a huge amount of manual work for the team, it frees up development time to focus on building the features and improvements you actually see in the game. It is a quiet change with a huge impact, and it lets us scale with confidence as more new managers join the league.

🎮 Friends League

Friends Leagues was a really fun feature to drop in the middle of Season 13. The community picked up the feature straight away and we quickly started receiving feedback about what would make it even better. A lot of managers/creators asked for more customisation options so they could set up proper workplace mini-leagues or creator-led leagues for their audiences.

This season we’re improving Friends Leagues again. The biggest change is that rankings inside a Friends League are now based on points, not division, while still displaying your division for context. This means you can properly compete against your mates, your coworkers or your favourite influencer without needing to be all the way up in Division 1. If you perform well, you move up. If you fall behind, you drop down.

We’ll also be launching Season 14 with a new Friends League competition to get everyone involved right from pre-season!

🗣️ Before We Continue… A Word From George

Season 13 was our first marketing push out to the general football gaming crowd, now possible thanks to the simpler onboarding flows in-game. We’ve learned lots of lessons across which marketing messages and channels make sense for Footium, as well as where the current onboarding flow falls over.

A lot of our development focus for Season 14 has been around improving these areas to ensure it is as easy as possible to join Footium and get started playing, as we know that once people start managing a club they usually get hooked. New Users can now instantly be assigned a Caretaker Club once registering, or instantly receive their Starter Bundle after purchase, a huge upgrade to both of those onboarding experiences.

We’re also iterating on our marketing approach this season, expanding the range of content creators we work with to get the message out to more potential Footium users, and doubling down on our referral system.

Looking forwards, we’ll continue to analyse and iterate on both our marketing and onboarding flows, as well as continuing to add to the in-game experience!

🧑‍💼 Caretaker Improvements

Caretakers first launched back in Season 10 as a very simple feature designed to make joining Footium easier. Over the last three seasons it has become one of the most popular ways for new managers to experience the game for the first time. With so many players choosing the free trial route, we learnt exactly where the experience shines and where it needed more structure.

This update improves clarity, onboarding speed and long term scalability, while also freeing up a significant amount of manual work for the team. It is a big step forward, both for new players joining Footium and for the future growth of the league.

👥 Instant Access & Smoother Early Experience

Season 13 highlighted how important early clarity is. New Caretakers now get instant access to the game, with improved guidance and clearer steps to get started. It reduces friction, increases confidence and helps new managers understand Footium much quicker.

🏟 Caretakers Can Now Buy Their Club

One of the most requested features. When a Caretaker becomes attached to their temporary club, they can now convert it into full ownership through a clean in-game purchase flow. This creates a natural path from trial to ownership and keeps clubs in the hands of managers who have already invested time and emotion into them.

📈 Scaling for More Caretakers

Season 13 pushed our Caretaker system to its absolute limit, hitting full capacity with all 400 slots filled. Season 14 introduces upgrades that allow Footium to support far more Caretakers at once, giving us the scale needed for future marketing pushes, creator activity and onboarding improvements.

📰 Animated In-Game Ticker

The Footium world should feel alive, and the new animated in-game ticker is a lovely little step toward that. At the end of last season, we introduced a dynamic ticker that runs across the game, surfacing live news, updates, offers and key announcements as they happen.

It creates a clearer link between what’s happening around Footium and what players see while managing their club. Whether it is referral windows opening, Friends League competitions going live, transfer deadlines approaching or important updates during pre-season, the ticker makes the game feel more connected and responsive.

It is a simple addition on the surface, but one that brings Footium closer to feeling like a true football platform rather than a static interface. This also gives us a flexible tool to communicate during busy windows without relying solely on Discord, X or email.

📢 Social Leaderboard Incentives

The social side of the game has become a big part of Footium’s identity. Season after season, we’ve seen clubs fire up full social accounts, document every twist of their season and build real followings around their badge.

We introduced the Social Leaderboard rewards late in Season 13 but Season 14 is your first full chance to take advantage of it and earn coaching sessions simply by growing your club’s presence on X.

The rewards are straightforward:

• Hit 1,000 impressions → 5 coaching sessions
• Finish top 3 → 20, 15 or 10 sessions

With a full season ahead, there’s never been a better time to get your club active on social. Match reactions, academy reveals, transfers, big wins or banter with rivals all help build your fanbase and push you up the leaderboard.

Joining is simple:

1. Connect your Twitter account to your club profile
2. Head to the Social Leaderboard page in-game and press Apply to Join
3. Once added to the Footium Clubs List on Twitter, every impression counts

It’s an easy way to earn rewards while bringing the Footium world to life on social. Season 14 is the perfect time to jump in.

🪙 Legendary Auctions Return

Legendary Auctions return for Season 14, once again powered by GBM’s Bid-to-Earn technology. These are always some of the most exciting moments of pre-season and your chance to secure one of the rarest assets in the Entire Footium Football League.

Legendary Players are unique 1/1s with huge potential and careers that can define your club for seasons to come. Winning one can transform your ambitions overnight. And even if you don’t win, you can still earn ETH by placing early bids and letting others outbid you.

How It Works

• Three individual Legendary Auctions per batch
• Classic English auction format
• Highest bid at the deadline wins
• No bid removals
• Any bid in the final 5 minutes extends the auction by 5 minutes
• Hosted on our Footium-branded GBM auction site

Why Get Involved

Bid to win a Legend… or earn ETH along the way.

There are opportunities to come out ahead whether you leave with a superstar or with a positive balance.

Auction Schedule (GMT)

Batch 1 — Wednesday 3 December, 3–4pm

Batch 2 — Thursday 4 December, 2–3pm

Batch 3 — Friday 5 December, 3–4pm

⏱️ Reminder: Auctions may run longer if bids arrive in the final 5 minutes. The fight for a Legend only ends when the clock truly runs out.

👀 What’s Cooking

As we come to the end of the year, the whole team want to say a genuine thank you. Footium has gone through a lot of change over the past few seasons and you’ve supported us through every onboarding improvement, every tweak and every learning curve along the way. We know many of you want more new gameplay, more features and more big moments, and we want you to know that the team are working incredibly hard behind the scenes to get us there.

Next week we’ll be sharing some very exciting news for Footium. It’ an important moment and it helps set the stage for Footium’s Hard Launch in Season 14. We’re looking forward to showing you what’s coming and why it matters.

Forza Footium.