The idea of
Hattrick International was to give all existing users in Hattrick the chance to experience what it is like to start over with a team in a fresh league, a place where there are no established teams blocking the way to promotions and titles. With the first season now running, I can personally testify that this has been a very interesting competition to take part in, as every match really counts and the impact of the strategic choices taken now will be huge in coming seasons. In other words, it’s been a lot of fun.
Right now, we have 4 500 teams battling it out in the 6th division of Hattrick International, and a little less than half of them will get the coveted promotion slots for Division 5. There is still a long way to go to the very top, though - and to keep the momentum rolling we would like to make sure that the pioneers get plenty of fresh competitors coming in.
As a first celebration of our upcoming 20th anniversary, we will be handing out Golden Tickets to all our Supporters (also Silvers and Golds, who have never had the chance to try any kind of additional team before) to try one season of International for free.
This is how it will work:
* Everyone that is a Supporter on April 11 will get a Golden Ticket, it does not matter what type of Supporter you are.
* The Golden Ticket will entitle you to one free season of Hattrick International. If you are already in International, it will instead be used to extend your HTI subscription.
* We will spread out the new registrations from Golden Ticket over two seasons, to ease the impact on the league and transfer market.
* Your starting date will be decided by your seniority as a Supporter. We calculate this by how many days you have bought Supporter for yourself, across all years of Hattrick history. Most loyal Supporters will get the chance to enter first, obviously!
* Your Golden Ticket will tell you the first date on which it can be activated for the registration of your team. For Season 2 this will be April 24. For Season 3 this will be in mid-August.
* When you activate your Golden Ticket, you need to have enough Supporter to cover the season that is about to start (this is how it already works for Platinums that buys access to International). If you don’t have enough subscription time, you can either extend Supporter or keep the ticket for later. It’s valid for 2 years.
* The Golden Ticket needs to be activated by noon Friday before the new season starts, to give us time to ensure the league system is set up correctly. If you don’t use the ticket in time for Season 2, you’ll have to wait until Season 3 instead.
* A new division will be added to accommodate the new teams. These new teams will be distributed between the existing Division VI and the new Division VII by order of registration of their HTI teams (so wake up early on April 24!).
* The rules for demotions this current season will not change, this means no teams will demote from Division VI at the end of it, the only ones leaving will be the promoted ones.
With this campaign, we want to give all Supporters a taste of International, because we think it is a cool thing. Also, we want to give International more momentum, to make sure there is plenty of fresh blood coming in as the first teams get promoted upwards.
Finally, we want to begin celebrating the upcoming anniversary, by starting out with doing something for our Supporters, without whom we could, obviously, never have gotten here in the first place.
There will be more to come and not only for our Supporters, you all matter and you are all important to us!
Just a final note on this thing about Supporter seniority. We had to find a way of separating the Golden Tickets into two batches, and we didn’t want this to be something that could be bought or “gamed” in any way. So - in the spirit of this anniversary - we decided to look at the accumulated days of Supporter that our current Supporters have bought for themselves - or time spent as volunteers - over the years, and use that as the yard stick.
It is pretty crazy, but to be sure of getting a spot in the early group, we think a minimum of 8 years spent as a Supporter is needed. That says something about the incredibleness of the Hattrick Supporters (and about the longevity of this game, too).
Thanks everyone!