FIFA Ultimate Team and the Auction System
As an avid FIFA player, perhaps the best at Cornell, I decided to apply the principle of Auctions in FIFA’s newest game mode Ultimate Team. In Ultimate Team, you build and manage a team and play competitively against other community players. As a Manager, you have the freedom to buy and sell players via a real-time auction system. Here are the key elements of the auction system:
- 1 Hr time limit
- Seller sets a price floor
- Bidders can bid any value above the price floor
- Buy Now Option
Given the aforementioned rules, this auction system is closest to a first-price auction. In order to gain value from the auction, the bidder must bid a value slightly less than their true value for the player being bought. Given that the auction is transparent, bidders have a sense of certainty.
A new addition to the game this year is a transaction cost of 5% of the auction value split by both the buyer and seller. Therefore a buyer must at a minimum bid 2.5% less than their true value in order to have a non-negative payoff. What makes the game interesting is that there are multiple copies of the same player. Thus, buyers face the opportunity cost associated with each player. Is there a chance that the buyer can get a higher positive payoff if they wait for a future opportunity? Thus, my personal strategy is to try to achieve a 5% minimum positive payoff and thus bid 7.5% less than my true value.
Every buyer has their own set of rules with regard to the auction. But as long as the team you assemble helps you win, there is no wrong set of rules.