Dear Adam,
Congratulations on making Football index the most enjoyable and engaging football betting platform ever. I've been on here for a couple of years or so and absolutely love it!
However, my personal enjoyment does not seem to echo the general consensus of late, so I have to accept that I'm in the minority (which is incredible, given we've just had a dividend increase!)
The thing is, you guys keep making mistake after mistake after mistake, with alarming regularity. You never learn. Removing yourself from Instant Sell liability WITHOUT NOTICE was a clear breach of trust and showed a complete disregard for traders who may have spent months building a portfolio of the more risky holds. A calculated risk that faced a potential 50% loss if the old IS had to be resorted to, but that was suddenly removed, despite your promises to us on numerous occasions that it would always be available once order books came in. Effectively, traders have been missold shares over the last 12 months or so, buying with confidence that they could always sell them back to FI (at a big discount) via the "guaranteed" IS. This will need addressing and rectifying, which I'm sure you are already well aware of, so I won't go on about that.
This is what is more concerning to me - after almost 2 years, I've come to the conclusion that none of you at Football Index HQ actually truly understands how your own product works. Either that, or you are allowing those on your board with "traditional betting" backgrounds too much influence over a product they really can't fathom - you even said it yourself. that the gambling commission doesn't even fully understand what FI is!
Possibly the most important aspect of FI and it's USP is the ability to build a portfolio of players that can potentially win dividends and grow in value over their 3 year share lifespan - this is important, and listen carefully... even though you've stated the average length of hold in a share is generally less than a month (I find that difficult to believe personally), the reason people are selling & buying others is usually down to performance, rumours, injury, fixtures etc. Football is fluid and uncertain at the best of times. You only need to look at recent PB winners to see it's still very much a lottery!
So, with all this uncertainty impacting our 3 year "bets", it is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that the rules of the game are static. This is something you guys just don't understand!
Change is BAD. Just the merest indication of a PB matrix change can stifle trading on many players, for fear of devaluation. Your disastrous Q&A, stating there would be a PB matrix review proved this and caused the market to freeze. Nobody was buying, despite some superb performances happening on the field which ordinarily would see traders pile in.
You guys rectified the problem fairly quickly with a very professional release which detailed NO matrix review within the clear roadmap issued, as well as the date the dividend review changes would be announced...EXCITING!
Trading once again came flooding back and the market was booming in the run up to the 9th July. Why? Simple. The promise of no changes to the rules of our bets (*glossing over the media review, which the community has clearly asked for) and the increase in potential payouts for the players we've been researching and adding to our portfolio over recent months/years even. It was all looking so good, it appeared that you guys finally understood what traders want and what causes them to invest more - stability. Of course, you just had to put out a tweet a couple of days before the announcement which only served to kill trading once again, with your indication of "generous and sensible" increase on the way (contradicting all the rockets and hype previously tweeted!) Communication really is one of the Index weak points but, like the removal of IS, that's for another time.
But anyway, then came the dividend review announcement on 9th at 5.13pm. I initially was wowed by the Team Of The Month dividend (I still absolutely love it ) but it distracted me from the facts - just when I thought you guys understood your product and what traders value most (stability, clarity, road map etc), you flip the entire market on its head again by adding two completely new dividends! TOTM, as I've said, is amazing, I love it. But to add a GK category completely out of the blue? THAT IS A MASSIVE CHANGE that impacts our bets! Don't get me wrong, I now think it's probably necessary to have a GK category going forward but to just drop it in like that? Huge faux pas.
I am really hoping that once the media review is complete and the sell orders of the ME come in (with FI also offering some form of IS), we are set up for the future. You need to stop interfering with our 3 year bets. Every little structural change you make is like throwing a pebble in the water - there is a massive ripple effect. There is already too much uncertainty in the game of football itself (making it hard for us to win) without you guys moving the goalposts constantly.
This platform really could reach that £1 billion target you've set but you've really got a lot to learn, about your own product and it's client base, before you get near that. Football Index isn't the only fish in the pond any more so you guys really have to understand just what it is about your product that is keeping most of us on board and what it is that separates you from the current also-rans.
I was over the moon initially after the recent divs announcement but now, after acknowledging the sentiment of most other traders, I'm feeling deflated and disinterested. It shouldn't be like this.
Yours Sincerely
Scouse Ste