Welcome to my first Rabona weekly update as an 1UP Cartel operator. I will try to post one update every week from now on but posts could be delayed from time to time since I am really busy with my upcoming exams at the moment.

Okay, let's get to this weeks report. We have plenty topics that I will dive into, so you can expect a lot of numbers and decision analysis.

Season 65

I want to cover several important aspects of the game, that's why I devided this part of the post into different chapters. I will list my decisions and explain how I operated. You can find information about...

• Buildings
• Training
• Game results
• Financials
• Preparations for the new season

Buildings

It's important to upgrade certain buildings from time to time in order to increase the income of the club. So I decided to do the following upgrades:

• Youth Academy ➡ lvl 7 🔜 lvl 8: At the moment scouting youth players is not profitable for me because those players are usually far too bad for my team and won't help me out that much. They won't increase the strength of my line-up and I can't sell them for a good price even if I train the scouted players a lot. In the long term my plan is to rely more on scouted players though, so I'm trying to increase scouting efficiency. I can afford the costs of 128,000 RBN and 500 RBN / match, so that's not a problem. However, the expansion of the Youth Academy takes almost 2 weeks, therefore I will not benefit from the upgrade in the near future.

• Building Yard ➡ lvl 7 🔜 lvl 8: Upgrading the Building Yard also costs 128,000 RBN and 500 RBN / match and is therefore not particularly expensive. The advantage of an upgrade is that the upgrade time for buildings will be reduced by 2% in the future. It doesn't sound like much, but getting the Building Yard to a high lvl has a noticeable effect. My current reduction rate is 17%, which means a building that normally takes 7 days to upgrade now takes a little less than 6 days.

• Office Building ➡ lvl 7 🔜 lvl 8: The Office Building will reduce players' salaries upon contract renewal. Why is that important? As the club gets bigger and the players better, the players' salaries increase a lot. So it's not unusual that the salaries add up to a fairly large amount, which of course is offset by higher income at the same time. Nevertheless, it is a great advantage to reduce the running costs when extending a contract, even if only by another 2%. The upgrading costs of the Office Building are a little lower than those from the other two buildings, but unfortunately it takes just as long to finish.

• Stadium ➡ lvl 8 🔜 lvl 9: Currently 3,200 people fit in my stadium. However, this is significantly less than the number of fans of my club "BTCSam FC" - My regional fans alone amount to more than 500,000. So I think I can increase the capacity without any problems and still achieve 100% average utilization.

  
  However, the upgrade is a bit more expensive: I had to pay 4,500,000 RBN directly and in addition to that 3,500 RBN per match. But I can also almost double the capacity by upgrading - from 3,200 to 6,000 seats. Therefore, I assume that this investment will be worthwhile.

• Shop ➡ lvl 5 🔜 lvl 6: My merchandise sales, i.e. shirt and scarf sales, actually generate most of the income. Since my club has been able to gain a significant amount of fans lately, it is a smart decision to upgrade the shop to increase these earnings even further. The costs are reasonable and my sales will be increased by 600 shirts/scarfs. Fortunately, the upgrade "only" takes about 3 days, so I should see the first results of this investment soon.

I didn't upgrade the Catering Capacity because it generates too little income (~ 30,000 RBN / season). I'm not sure if an upgrade would be profitable right now, especially because it would cost 300,000 RBN and an extra 2,100 RBN per match (!). So I won't focus on catering for now, although I might experiment with the beer & bratwurst prices in the next season.
The hotel and parking lot won't be upgraded as well because they are not profitable at the moment. I actually made a loss with them during the last seasons. So there's no reason upgrading those buildings right now.

I would love to hear your Catering / Hotel / Parking Lot strategies - Is it possible to turn them into a worthwhile investment? Let me know in the comments!

Training

I focused only on speed and endurance since my players already had good passing, shooting and defending/goalkeeping stats for their corresponding position. Endurance is important to avoid injuries and to ensure that your squad can always perform like they should. I also like to train speed because for me it seems like this can make a real difference.

• 08/02/2022: Trained Speed with 15 players
• 09/02/2022: Trained Endurance with all 20 players
• 10/02/2022: Trained Speed with 19 players
• 11/02/2022: Trained Speed with 17 players

Game results

The home game against the best team in the league - the Aung San FC - was kind of the preliminary decision of the promotion to a higher league. I had to win the game to get closer to Aung San FC and keep my good chances of reaching place 1 in the last games alive. Unfortunately I lost 1:2 which made it really difficult to conquer #1.

I won the important following match against the Eastcoast CLINTS with 2:1 but our best defender Marco Medina (OS: 90) was blocked for 4 games due to his red card and was replaced by Antonio Azevedo (OS: 81) which was a big disappointment in the race for place 1.

Dramatic end of season finish

With the 2:0 victory over D. Revolution and the defeat of Azhim FC (3:1) & RGH FC (3:2) my team could recover lost ground. Everything will be decided within the last 3 games and it couldn't be a tighter season finish.

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Unfortunately luck wasn't on my site because 2 of my most important players got injured: Zeren Balci (OS: 82) and Badreddine Faria (OS: 87) will miss the last matches.

One thing was certain at that point: I will reach place 1 or 2 in the end. Azhim FC, the team on third place, was 9 points behind mine. So unless they win all their games with a huge goal difference and I lose all my remaining games there's no way that I can lose the second spot. But the race for the first place - which would be equivalent to getting up to a level 1 league - was closer than ever.

The game against Caen United was won with 3:1 which was a really important victory. Only problem: Lukas Nowicki, my attacker with 80 OS, received a red card after 86 minutes. So there's another player missing the final matches.

I realised that it would be important to sign new players in order to replace the blocked/injured ones. So I bought Zeng Dong, a 31 years old 84 midfielder, for 150,000 RBN. He has a salary of 45,450 RBN / match but I think he will strengthen my team in the last matches and the next seasons as well. In addition to that the attacker Edgar Cruz joined the club for a 300,000 RBN transfer fee. He's 31 years old as well and has an overall strenght of 83.

Both players were added to the lineup for the last 2 games.

But the dream of rising to a higher league was already over after the penultimate game against Atletico. Despite a 2:0 lead due to 2 goals by the new striker Cruz, the hard-fought away game was lost 2:3. Since Aung San FC won at the same time, reaching first place was no longer possible at that point.

The last game of the season ended with a 3:3 draw against Excalibury, a team against I normally should've won. But that didn't mattered at that point anyway. Good news is that Cruz scored three goals in this match, so he will probably be of great value for the new season.

In the end 72 points weren't enough to reach the first place and get up to a higher league. Finishing in second place is a good result though and the goal for season 66 is to get even stronger and win the league that time.

Financials

The HIVE reward for season 65 was 0.186 HIVE. That's not a lot but better than nothing. I hope I can increase that reward in the future by getting to a higher league.

The income generated in season 65 sums up to 75,332,102 RBN. Most of that comes from merchandise (95,7%). Earnings from ticket sales (3,44%) and advertisement contracts (0,57%) are quite small compared to that but make up another 3 million RBN which I can really use for the next season, so that's okay.

The season costs amount to a total of 44,365,863 RBN. Merchandising costs (60,3%) and player salaries (35,1%) are especially high but that's no reason to reduce them. Sure, the salaries are huge but necessary to keep good players in the club. That's the only way how the club can remain successful. And the merchandise costs are no problem either because merchandise also comes with enormous income as well.

In the end the club generated a profit of 30,966,238 RBN (1.548 HIVE at current exchange rate). That's a good result because it shows that the club is growing and the profitability is going up as well. It's actually the highest profit I made so far and the next goal is obviously to top that next season.

The financial report shows one huge income source and that's merchandise. This is why I'll try to especially focus on this field in the future.

Preparations for Season 66

First of all the contracts of some important players were extended. Badreddine Faria (midfield, OS: 87) signed a new contract while his salary decreased from 46,478 to 44,206 RBN / match. Seems like he already reached his highest OS otherwise his salary wouldn't go down. He's still an important player for BTCSam FC, so I am glad I could extend his contract for 4 seasons. Additionally Ryuki Iwasaki (midfield, OS: 83) will stay for another 2 and Yuan Yu (offense, OS: 81) for additional 4 seasons. Their salaries changed slightly. I also decided to let some players with OS < 80 go for free because I didn't needed them that much and there's no way I could've sold them for a good price on the market.

I also signed a few new players. I was able to strengthen the defense by signing the 33 years old Eriko Suarez (OS: 83) with a salary of 35,948 RBN / match. I've got him for free because his previous club canceled his contract. Sure, he's quite old but still an improvement for the team and he requires no purchase fee. I canceled the contract of defender Fernando Garcia (OS: 70) in return because he's now replaced by Suarez.

Piero Morelli (midfield, OS: 71) and Victor Mora (midfield, OS: 71) also left the club for a total fee of 460,751 RBN. They were not good enough for my team anymore and would've cost 1,548,720 RBN in salaries for the whole season. So now I have five > 80 OS midfield players which should be enough for a 4-3-3 formation (with 3 midfield players) even when one or two of them are blocked / injured.

Let's take a look at the offense now: I letÜ Gabriel Mariani (OS: 68) & Kilian Hauser (OS: 75) go to decrease the salary by 38,865 RBN per match. Now the club owns only 4 attackers but I didn't bought a new one to replace potentially blocked/injured players because I couldn't find a good one for a reasonable price. So let's just hope for the best.

So at the start of the season the club has 18 players with an average OS of 82.31, over 64 million fans and a stadium with a capacity of 3,200 seats.

Season 66

Buildings

No new buildings were build until the time this post is published. The shop capacity is the only upgrade that has been finished so far. I'll keep an eye on the financials to see how the upgrade effects the profitability. You can read about this in my next update.

Training

I trained endurance and speed again. This time I also increased the 4-3-3 stats once because I only play with a 4-3-3 formation and some of my newer players weren't that good at playing with this formation.

• 12/02/2022: Trained 4-3-3 with all players
• 13/02/2022: Trained Endurance with all players
• 14/02/2022: Trained Speed with all players

Game results

The start in the new season was not ideal since the first game against Dynamo Dresden was lost 4:1. Although 2 out of next 3 games could be won, the first 4 games were not satisfactory. The club is on 8th position after those first matches. Sure, the season has just started but we're already 6 points behind the three top teams.

Fortunately the team started a win streak after that. 5 matches were won in a row, followed by 2 defeats and 2 further victories. At the time this post is published the BTCSam FC has secured the 5 place with 27 points.

Financials

BTCSam FC signed a contract with a new advertising partner. McMoneyMachine will be the teams sponsor for 4 seasons and will be paying 434,163 RBN / season.

That's it for this weeks report. A lot has happened and I hope I could give you an idea of what I did this last week & how it effected my results. There's still a lot of things to accomplish - like increasing my income or getting to a higher league - but for now I am happy with what I've achieved so far.

Not playing Rabona yet? Start your football journey now by signing up here. See you on the pitch!

What do you think of my report? What did you like and which parts need improvement? Let me know in the comments 👇