We are not in a deflating market. I challenge that.
The transfer market has crashed in mid-2010. Transfer fees have been relatively stable for a calendar year now with regular up and down trends and except a few special cases, namely monsters.
It is hard to correctly assess the situation for us because the biggest part of the market is transfers in the 0-500k range and we tend to focus on more expensive players to make a case. The BBs have macro numbers.
The former market levels were too high partly because of speculation.
In the early stages of BB, the game environment was evolving fast.
Players were getting better and better each season with training.
WC final season 8 :
(5988)WC final season 16 :
(15778)Season 9 top salaries :
(78289.189)You may notice small improvements here and there ;p
Money was created very fast with each new team. The game went from 0 team to close to 50k in how much ? 18 months maybe ?
Much more money was created than destroyed. The increase of the money supply is usually the main culprit of inflation.
Managers try to be smart and take advantage of the trends.
They used day or skill trading because players market value was constantly on the rise thanks to the increase of money supply. You simply couldn't fail as a day-trader, you could only be more or less successful.
More dangerously , they speculated on players future market value. This drove young players market value very high up with the expectation that their value would skyrocket after a few seasons of training. Good move. Of course, it worked and was a way to make big money.
But as the game environment develops and matures, needs become different.
Players get better skills but their salary rise, weekly benefits fall, teams reach their salary cap, the number of teams stabilize, possibly managers become more conservative on their expenses sensing they will not recoup as quickly as before.
The transfer market was on amphetamines because the "economy" was growing fast and we were speculating on future growth. But at one point, teams don't need better players because they can't pay 5x100k salary. They don't want to pay huge transfer fees anymore because they need money to pay the players salary.
The market had to crash, it was inevitable. Before it crashed, many here were saying that young players were selling for way too high. They were signs of the crash.
To help stabilize the market, BBs have taken action on income. Tv contracts are higher, salaries have decreased. This helps teams to earn more money.
FAs appear by tons on the TM, money spent on them is destroyed. This helps tackle the increase of money supply.
They can take it further by helping income even more and we would return to an inflating market. The first consequence would be that new teams and teams at lower level won't be able to even pretend competing with higher level teams.
Remember that today's 10k C were selling for more than 1M and their salary were higher when the market was high.
We will all stop the game one day regardless of how it develops, we will get bored or have less time at hand, it's normal.
Other gamers will replace us.
It's still important and interesting to train, arguably more, maybe not to sell the trainees but to fulfill your needs.
I find it intriguing BB's economic agents (we) are depressed and pessimistic seeing a deflating market when this is not the case in my opinion. You are not helping the market with your pessimism.
BBs need to restore confidence ! What drives the economy is confidence ;p Or WAR ;(
There are certainly mechanisms that could be perfected and I think mistakes were made but I don't feel the market is a disaster at the moment.