@Dr-Jan-Itor said in Perspective:
I disagree. This is not perspective, I think this is apologist. Let me show you why.
Since the last dividend increase, the top 400-500 players have increased on average by about 30%. Most of these players have seen very little value increase today with pretty all the value going to keepers. Essentially, compared to 1st of November, you are paying more for the player and getting less out. And that's day 1 after the increase. If the product growth 20% in the next 6 months, new purchases will be getting even less value.
TOTM is great and I love. But when you think about TOTM, all they have done is add a one gold day and one silver extra a month. But they will be removing the promotion that is on anyway so there will be less gold and silver days anyway. Most players value then has not really changed in the last 24 hours. Most players on the Index have seen a 4p dividend rise, with the potential to win an extra 10p once a month. That is tiny considering how much prices have changed.
Now this would be fine, if the product was stalling or not growing, or even growing slowly. But even with Covid factored in, this is how much the product has grown since the last dividend increase
Since the 1st of March, the market has grown around 30%. That is more in a few months than the entire increase today, and thats not considering that those few months only cover partial growth since last div increase. The actual market gorwth is more in the region of 70-80%. Why would anyone pay say 12 quid for Neymar now? Thats why I dont like people hiding behind covid, whilst there was a small downturn in March, the market quickly recovered. Whilst FI did that by increasing spreads, was it too much to ask for a bit more in return for also standing by the product?
In fact whichever way you cut the data, it looks pretty bleak if this is meant to push the market over the next 12 months. If I apply todays dividend table across the entire season, I dont get particularly amazing numbers. Only 9 players would have got more than .50p worth of PB divs, Messi of course smashes, but the second best is Neymar (.78), TAA (.61), Lewandowski (.60) and the rest are all under 60p. In fact, only 21 players even get to 30p.
From a market point of view, dividends should drive the values, otherwise it is sentiment driving it. Now the product may grow, and I think it still will. But it wont be dividends driving the markets. In fact you ask traders to be proactive rather than reactive, but I have only ever known FI to be reactive such is the case here. They missed a huge opporunity to show the market a clear way forward for 12 months and missed.
I don't expect free money or anything like that. And in fact, I think you are being lazy by suggesting people want that, rather than engaging in their very real concerns. This is not reactionary or a panic, but trying to understand the data and facts behind todays figure. I am worried that the dividend increase is miles behind market growth, and have worries about how the market is expect to grow against the fact that traders will be getting worse and worse value for money.
This for me is the best post I've seen on on the situation and perfectly sums up my feelings towards the huge letdown of the announcement. Its just nowhere near enough to drive the top end of the market, which then in turn drags the rest of the market along with it. You only need to look at the yearly graphs of players such as Sancho, Mbappe and TAA to see that they've doubled in price in that time, so it really wasn't unreasonable to be expecting an increase of at least 75%. Especially with all the hype of £billion company etc. And then they also come to the bizarre decision to add GKs to the mix to stunt growth even more. If this had been introduced alongside a bigger dividend increase it could have offset it. But people are seeing the value in GKs so are looking to get money out of the expensive players.
I saw someone on another thread say that it looks like FI are struggling for cash but I really don't see how that can be the case. There is no IS any more so they are not having to buy any shares back at all. So every new share bought is 100% profit for them. They'll never have to pay that back. They get 2% commission on every single sale, and eventually they will even charge commission on matched purchases. The commission they recieve will surely dwarf the dividends they have to pay out over the year.
This was a big opportunity missed, and people saying we should be happy with an increase of roughly 30% are missing the point. This barely brings us in line with the growth of the market over the past year and definitely doesn't provide the scope to grow the business towards £1bn. With talk of a big marketing push and the full implementation of nasdaq order books to come, I can't get my head around why they've not been bold here. They could have blown all competition out if the water. That lack of ambition could end up costing them more.
