Futhead Blog
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Post-TOTY Analysis. Why are the prices increasing? Where’s the crash?
soooo, when is the market gonna crash?!?
prices have not dropped much, some cards got even more expensiveWhy are the prices increasing? Sry if this has been asked b4 but weren’t they supposed to drop after TOTY?I bought Chiellini for 25k but now he’s between 30-35k so what’s gonna happen next? and why did that happen in the first place?Those are actual questions from the EA forums and I have seen dozens of posts questioning whether a market crash happened at all.
This article will make it certain and beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a market crash and it will also explain why prices increased.
Let us begin by reconnecting with an old friend…
Note: if you’re impatient the TL:DR version is at the very end.
What is cardweight on UltimateDB?
Readers of futguide.com may remember this post on UltimateDB’s cardweight metric: http://futguide.com/2012/02/27/what-does-card-weight-mean-on-ultimatedb/
A quick refresher on this handy little metric:
Cardweight is a metric used by UltimateDB to estimate how often a particular card is traded on the FIFA Ultimate Team marketplace.Why is this important? It’s important because it helps us understand how players are priced on FUT13.
The two factors that determine the price of a player on FUT13
1) Odds of pulling a specific player*
For example, the odds of pulling an 88-rated Ibrahimovic are a lot lower than the odds to pull an 81-rated Ramires.
This means that Ibra’s rarity should make him much more expensive than Ramires and he is. However, an 88-rated Falcao is just as hard to pull as an 88-rated Ibrahimovic, so why does Ibra cost 470K** while Falcao costs just 28K?
2) Cardweight and popularity of a card
Cardweight, as stated in the refresher, tells us how likely a particular footballer will be traded on the FUT13 auction house compared to the rarest and most popular player on the market (guess who?).
Think of cardweight as a measure of popularity.
The lower the cardweight, the more popular the player is and the less likely he’ll show up on the auction floor (because people would rather keep him in their team than sell him).
The lower the cardweight, the lower his supply AND the higher his demand in the marketplace because he’s so damn popular.
This explains why certain players have a higher price, especially when compared to players with the same rating.
Ok, let’s roll with our first set of sexy stats and charts.
Why you lie? Prices of Dani Alves increased! Why!?
(Click to see larger version)
Look at that price trend graph of Not In Form (NIF) Dani Alves over the last 30 days!
The blue line showing average price clearly says Dani Alves is now worth more than before TOTY!
In fact, the average price for Dani Alves before TOTY on 17th of December was 171,346 coins and today’s average price is 175,885.
The price increased by 3%!
What went on here? Two things happened.
One, timing is as they say, everything. The lowest average price recorded for Dani Alves was between the 7th and 8th of January, not after TOTY. In fact you can see that little dip on the chart above. Dani Alves was available at the average price of 135,186 coins, a saving of 21%.
If you wanted to buy a NIF Dani Alves when he hit rock bottom, then 7th or 8th of January was your best chance…
The ‘market crash’ happened on the first day of TOTY - 8th of January
The 8th of January was the day after the TOTY was first announced and the first players were released by EA. It also happens to be the day when the TOTY crash actually happened. How do I know? Because almost 2 million items were available for auction on the 8th of January (XBOX marketplace). This was by far the largest number of items I had ever seen for sale at one time. If you don’t believe me, check out the number of items currently available for sale - it’s sitting around 715,000 at 2PM GMT:
Not too shabby, but nothing like the +1.8 million items for sale during the first day of TOTY. The more items there are for sale, the higher the supply and the lower the prices become as each new seller attempts to undercut the existing sellers.
If you check out practically any player on the market, regardless of their cardweight, the 7th or 8th of January is when their price bottomed out.
Second, how do we explain Dani Alves price increase after TOTY?
This is relatively simple when you look at the cardweight metric. Dani Alves has a cardweight of 11. Not only is this incredibly low, it completely blows the cardweight of other 84-rated players out of the water:
(Click to see larger version)
Dani Alves currently has an UltimateDB Cardweight (CW) of 11. That means Maicon (21) is almost twice as likely to be available for trade while Ashley Cole is 5.5x more frequently found for trade. It’s saying Dani Alves is almost 7x as ‘popular’ as Chiellini and these three are just the three nearest 84-rated players to Alves’ CW! Spare a thought for poor guys like the 84-rated Diego Milito or Joao Moutinho, who are barely worth the discard value!
Also note how Maicon, with his excellent CW of 21 saw a tiny -2% reduction in value post-TOTY while Chiellini saw his price fall by 37% post-TOTY.
Let’s compare pre-TOTY and post-TOTY prices using cardweight!
+86 rated players
(Click to see larger version)
84 and 85 rated players
(Click to see larger version)
The higher the player rating and the lower their cardweight, the more the card retained its value post-TOTY
Look at how well the lowest cardweight players fared in price change post-TOTY. Iniesta, Xavi, Ramos, Silva all increased in price while Robben, Ronaldo and Vidic barely moved.
Yes, there are some exceptions (like Neymar’s -18% drop) but it’s shockingly clear the trend is for players with higher CW to have fallen more in price post-TOTY.
The less popular the player is, the more his price fell.
Makes kinda sense, doesn’t it?
Further observations regarding post-TOTY prices
- Ronaldo has the lowest CW of 1
- For every Cristiano Ronaldo on the market, there is likely to be 2 Messis, 3 Ibrahimovics, 11 Dani Alves… etc.
- TOTY players and low CW BPL players held their prices the best post-TOTY
- Bundesliga and in particular Dortmund players suffered horrific falls in value (46-59% drop)
- Alba and Pedro, two Barcelona players currently out of packs due to TOTW held their value post-TOTY extremely well
- Extraordinary events like excessive bid/price bumping or price fixing can cause prices to deviate from the above observed trends
Bonus: Prices before TOTY and prices at the 8th January peak
+86 rated players
(Click to see larger version)
84 and 85 rated players
(Click to see larger version)
TL:DR - The crash happened on the 8th of January and the lowest cardweight players in FUT13 have held or increased in price
Hope this article helped you.
Show it to anyone who keeps questioning a market crash or to anyone interested in how the market determines a FUT13 player’s price.
*The odds of pulling a card is also known as the ‘pull rate’, ‘drop rate’, ‘seed rate’ or confusingly enough, EA Sports also uses the term ‘cardweight’ to represent odds of pulling a card, which is different to UltimateDB’s concept of cardweight.
**All prices are from XBOX, 15/01/2013
