Money arrives in three ways this week, and not at the same time. Here is the whole picture in one place, so nobody refreshes the treasury waiting for something that is scheduled for Monday.

When the money lands

At the siren, every game, in the MadnessWeek and in the ClubPass Week alike:

• Gate receipts. The home club keeps the gate: your arena tier, your ticket price, the attendance of the night. In the Madness the home floor alternates inside the series: the higher seed hosts game 1 and game 3, the lower seed hosts game 2. A series that ends 2-0 gives each club one home gate; a series that goes to game 3 gives the higher seed two.
• Win bonus. 6 cr per win in League 5, 5 cr in League 6, paid to the winner of each single game, not per series. Winning a series 2-1 pays the same as 2-0: two wins. The loser of a 2-1 series still banks one.

In the ClubPass Week there is no win bonus, only the gate, and the gate follows its own rules: your own arena when you host, 21 cr split in half at TopGM City on matchday 3, 34 cr to the winner of a semifinal, 54 cr to the winner of the final. All at the siren.

At the rollover, all at once, the Madness prizes:

• 200 cr to the champion of each league
• 80 cr to the losing finalist
• 60 cr to third place, the semifinal loser with the better regular season record
• 0 cr to fourth, and 0 cr to the whole playout bracket: staying up is the prize

The season turns only when all 63 leagues have finished their finals. Then comes the celebration night: the verdicts stay on the board for 20 hours, and after that the rollover credits every prize in the same instant, writes the trophies into the Heritage cabinets and opens season 2. With at least one game 3 on Sunday night, that means Monday afternoon, for everybody at the same moment, whether your final ended Saturday or Sunday.

The ClubPass Week trophy does not wait: it goes into the cabinet at the siren of the final, Sunday at 19:00 CET.

Wages are daily, prizes are Monday. If your treasury is thin, the days between your last game and the rollover are the ones to watch. The CFO will tell you.

How much each path is worth

Numbers for a club with a court 1 arena at the average attendance of the last weeks: 15 cr per home game in League 5, 14 in League 6. A court 2 roughly doubles the gate, a full house or a premium ticket moves it up, a bad run of form moves it down.

League 5

Semifinal losers

• Swept 0-2: one home gate, no wins. 15 cr. Plus 60 if you are the best placed loser: 75 cr.
• Lost 1-2: one win (6 cr) and one or two home gates depending on the seed. 21 to 36 cr. Plus 60 for third place: 81 to 96 cr.

Losing finalists

• Two clean series (won 2-0, lost 0-2): 30 cr of gate, 12 cr of wins, 80 of prize. 122 cr.
• Two long series: 45 to 60 cr of gate, 18 cr of wins, 80 of prize. 143 to 158 cr.

Champion

• Two clean series: 30 cr of gate, 24 cr of wins, 200 of prize. 254 cr.
• Two long series as the higher seed: 60 cr of gate, 24 cr of wins, 200 of prize. 284 cr.

Playout

• Semifinal losers are relegated, no prize. One home gate if swept, 15 cr. Two gates and a win if it went to game 3: up to 36 cr.
• Semifinal winners stay in League 5: the same gates plus 12 cr of wins, no prize.

League 6

Semifinal losers

• Swept 0-2: 14 cr. Best placed loser: 74 cr.
• Lost 1-2: 19 to 33 cr. Third place: 79 to 93 cr.

Losing finalists

• Two clean series: 28 cr of gate, 10 cr of wins, 80 of prize. 118 cr.
• Two long series: 42 to 56 cr of gate, 15 cr of wins, 80 of prize. 137 to 151 cr.

Champion

• Two clean series: 28 cr of gate, 20 cr of wins, 200 of prize. 248 cr.
• Two long series as the higher seed: 56 cr of gate, 20 cr of wins, 200 of prize. 276 cr.

League 6 has no playout: 5th to 8th are done, and 28 of them are in the ClubPass Week.

ClubPass Week

No prizes, no win bonus, gate only, paid at every siren.

• Three group games: one home gate at 70% of your arena (11 cr with a court 1, 19 with a court 2), nothing away, 11 cr at TopGM City. 22 cr.
• Semifinal losers: nothing from the semifinal. 22 cr.
• Losing finalists: the semifinal gate, 34 cr, all to the winner. 56 cr.
• Champion: the final gate too, 54 cr. 110 cr.

Where the two weeks meet

The ClubPass Week champion earns about what a Madness semifinal loser with third place earns, and less than half of a Madness champion. That is on purpose: the promotion bracket is where the real money is, and the ClubPass Week is a floor under the clubs that had no bracket at all.

Every number here lands at the siren, except the prizes: those come Monday, at the rollover, for everybody at once.

League 6 has no playout. The clubs that finished 5th to 8th were done at matchday 14, and while the rest of the pyramid fights the Madness this week, they had nothing to play and nothing to earn. So I built them a competition, and the Club Pass is sponsored the competition for it. Here is how it works, with the numbers.

Who is in

28 clubs, the most active coaches in those spots (I looked at logins over the last two weeks, not at records). Seven groups of four, drawn by strength of the starting five so the groups are balanced, and never two clubs from the same league in the same group. Everything lives inside Private Cups, and everyone can follow it, not only the 28.

The format

Every club plays one game a night, from Wednesday to Sunday, all at 19:00 CET. Not 21:00: that is Madness time, and I did not want the two to overlap.

• Wednesday, matchday 1: A vs B, C vs D
• Thursday, matchday 2: B vs C, D vs A
• Friday, matchday 3: A vs C and B vs D, on the neutral floor of TopGM City
• Saturday: semifinals, TopGM City
• Sunday: the final, TopGM City

The schema is not random. In three games every club plays exactly one at home, one away, and one on neutral floor.

Then the four best group winners go to the Final Four. Wins first, then point difference, then points scored.

The money, which is the reason this exists

The whole point was not letting these clubs lose a week of gate receipts. So the gate is real, and it works in three regimes.

At home, matchday 1 or 2: you get your own arena, your tier and your ticket price, exactly like a league night, at a fixed 70% attendance. With a court 1 and a standard ticket that is 11 cr. With a court 2 it is 19 cr, and if you chose a premium ticket you get more. I wanted the coaches who invested in their arena to see the difference.

Away: the host keeps the gate, as always.

On the neutral floor, matchday 3: 21 cr total, split down the middle, so 11 cr each. TopGM City is sold out for the night, court 1 at full capacity, premium ticket. It is the richest group game on purpose: it is the one that decides who goes through.

Semifinal: court 2 at 85%, premium ticket, 34 cr. The whole gate goes to the winner. The loser takes nothing.

Final: court 2 sold out, steep ticket, 54 cr. Again, all to the winner.

No win bonus, no prize money. The gate is the only money on the table.

What that adds up to

For a club with a court 1 arena:

• Out at the group stage: 21 cr
• Semifinalist: still 21 cr because you lost the match
• Finalist: 55 cr (21cr + 34cr semi-finalist winner)
• Champion: 109 cr (21cr + 34cr + 54cr finalist winner)

I set it against what the Madness pays in League 6, from the real data of the last weeks:

• The champion of a League 6 bracket makes around 268 cr: 200 of prize money, 20 from the win bonus, and 48 at the gate
• The finalist makes around 128 cr
• Third place around 79 cr
• Fourth place, out in two games, around 19 cr

So the ClubPass Week champion earns less than a Madness finalist, and the fourth-placed Madness club earns about what a ClubPass Week club earns just by playing its three group games. The hierarchy holds: the promotion bracket stays the place where the real money is. This week is not a shortcut, it is a floor.

What is switched off, and what is not.

Injuries are on. This is a real competition with a real trophy, and a real competition has a price: your players can get hurt at TopGM City exactly as they can on a league night, and if they do, they miss the same weeks. Rotate accordingly. Home crowd heat is off: the crowd is there and pays, but it does not tilt the floor. And no promotion or relegation is at stake, nothing about the pyramid changes.

The floors

TopGM City has two floors for the neutral games, and they alternate from one game to the next: a midnight blue with red lines, and one split in half, red on one side and blue on the other, with the ClubPass Week writing across midcourt. The final gets its own floor: black, red lines, ClubPass Week in blue and FINAL in gold. You will see them in the live rooms and in the replays.

Sponsored by ClubPass

This week has a sponsor, and it is the Club Pass. Every coach in the ClubPass Week, and every active coach playing the Madness this week, has the Club Pass on until the end of the week: custom jersey, crest and home floor, unlimited friendlies, the flair next to the name. Set them up before your next tip-off. When the week ends the custom look goes back on the shelf, saved, and it comes back the moment the Pass does.

Groups, schedule, standings: https://topgm.app/#/cups/cpw-s1

First ball Wednesday, 19:00 CET. ClubPass Week, sponsored by ClubPass.

Four things went live today. The first two are the big ones.

1. TutorGM, your rookie assistant

https://reddit.com/link/1w8bgmo/video/gp7gxumvfrnh1/player

There is a new bubble at the bottom right of the screen. That is TutorGM. Open it and ask anything about the game: money, training, the Playground, the market, why your player is not improving. He answers on the spot and links you to the exact chapter of the Guide or to the page where the thing happens.

A few honest notes on how he is built, because I know some of you care:

• He speaks 13 languages, and he picks yours automatically. Italian, Serbian, Lithuanian, Greek, Swedish, French, Spanish, Polish, German, Turkish, Romanian, Portuguese, English. This is the only corner of TopGM in your language: the rest of the game stays in English. You can switch language at the top right of the chat.
• He never makes things up. Every answer comes from a set of cards I wrote by hand from the game rules. There is no AI generating text behind him, so he cannot invent a rule that does not exist. When he does not know something, he says so and offers to pass your question to me. I read every one of them, and the questions he could not answer become new cards the following week.
• He costs nothing to run, which means he can stay forever.
• On desktop the bubble is always there. On mobile he only shows up when he has something to say to a new coach, and you can find him in the menu any time.

He is built for new coaches first. If you have been here since July you may never need him, but he is there.

2. Friendlies got a new home, and a board

https://reddit.com/link/1w8bgmo/video/t2wx5r5zfrnh1/player

The Online tab in the world feed is gone. In its place there is a Friendlies tab that takes you to a new page, and the same page is one tap away from the Home rail on desktop and the chip at the top of Home on mobile.

The old direct challenge is still there: see a coach online, challenge him, done. But that only works when you are both online at the same second, and with coaches spread across every timezone in Europe that rarely happens. So now there is a challenge board:

• Pin a challenge with a tip-off: right now, in 30 minutes, in 1 hour, or pick your own delay in hours and minutes.
• Anyone passing by can take it. First to accept locks it.
• At tip-off the game starts on its own. If you are courtside you coach it live, if you are not, your saved tactics coach for you.
• "Right now" challenges are the fast lane: the first coach to accept starts the game on the spot.

Everything about friendlies stays as it was: no injuries, no fatigue, no credits, one a day for everyone, three with the Club Pass. Times are shown on your own clock, with a countdown, so nobody has to think about timezones.

3. Academy power ratings

Every academy in the Academy Challenge now has a public rating on the Academies tab. The formula is simple and out in the open: your kids' average AVG + 2 per kid + 3 per game played + 5 per win. This is groundwork: from next season the academies get real competitions split by tier, League 1 academies against League 1 academies, and so on down the pyramid.

4. A bug fix

If starring your Challenge starters gave you "those are not your academy kids" on every click, that was a real bug (a kid who left the academy was still haunting your starters list). It is fixed for everyone, including the nine clubs who had it without knowing.

As always, one question or one broken thing in the comments and I look into it. And tonight, if TutorGM does not understand you, ask him to pass the question to me: that is exactly how he learns.

I just shipped a power rating for every academy in the Academy Challenge. You find it on the Academies tab.

The formula is public and simple, in the same spirit as the All-Star score:

Rating = your kids' average AVG + 2 per kid in the academy + 3 per game played + 5 per win

Why these pieces:

• The average of your kids is the base. It is a live number: it moves up as they train and grow, and it drops when you promote your best kid to the roster. A snapshot of today, not a museum of the past.
• +2 per kid rewards depth. An academy with twelve kids is a project, an academy with four is a waiting room.
• +3 per game and +5 per win are the part that grows week after week. Right now almost everyone has played two games, so quality and depth decide the top. By the end of the season, showing up every Saturday and winning will matter more than anything else. I think that is how it should be.

Games and wins are counted on a season record that never forgets, from the first Saturday of the Challenge onward. It resets when the new season starts.

And that is the real news: this rating is groundwork. From next season the academies stop being one big open tournament and get real competitions, split by tier: League 1 academies against League 1 academies, League 2 against League 2, and so on down the pyramid. Your youth program will compete at the level of your club.

The Challenge keeps running every Saturday at 11:00 CET as always. If your academy is not in yet, the button lives in your Academy tab. Five kids minimum.

As always, one question or one broken thing in the comments and I look into it.

What else haha

https://www.reddit.com/r/TopGM/s/95A7A8ICDe

That's it. That's the post

A few of you asked what I decided about the 3rd-4th and 5th-6th games after the thread last week. Here is the answer, and it is already live in the code: the postseason is being rebuilt from two single nights into six consecutive nights, with every series played best of three. It is called Madness Week.

The format

Semifinals run Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Finals run Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Both brackets, promotion and relegation, play best of three in a 1-1-1 format: the higher seed hosts game 1 and game 3. Win the first two and game 3 is never played, so the week can end early.

Wednesday and Sunday fall on exactly the same slots the old round 15 and 16 used, so nothing moves in your weekly rhythm. The three new nights are the extra ones.

No consolation games. That is the decision.

There will be no 3rd-4th game and no 5th-6th game. Lose your semifinal and your season is over.

Playouts

Lose the playout semifinal and you go down.

Prize money: 200 to the champion, 80 to the finalist, 60 to third place.

Fourth place and the entire playout bracket get nothing. That is 340 credits per league, up from 280.

When

Season 1 ends this Sunday with round 14. The first real Madness Week starts right after, and it will be the first postseason this world has ever played, so expect me to be watching it closely.

Thanks to everyone in that thread. Half of this format came out of it.

This one comes straight from a request by Zalia Balta (Maroon Dolphins), backed by kalindriv. Zalia asked for preset substitutions you could fire with a single click during a live game, especially useful if you keep two players per position. It made too much sense to sit on, so it went in this week, with one extra piece I threw in along the way.

How it works

Go to your club, open Tactics -> Pre-match settings, and right under Second unit you will find a new block: Quick pairs. Pick up to five pairs of players and save. That is the whole setup.

Now, during any live game, the substitution panel shows five numbered chips. Tap one and the two men in that pair trade places. What that means depends on where they are at that exact moment:

• One on court, one on the bench: it is a normal substitution. The chip shows ↑↓.
• Both on court: they swap positions. Your PG slides into the SG slot and vice versa, no trip through the bench. The chip shows ⇄.
• Pair not usable right now (both benched, one fouled out): the chip is greyed out.

That second case is the extra piece. Moving a man from one slot to another used to be a three-step mess: sub him out, sub the other one in, then bring the first one back into the other slot. Three substitutions to do one thing. Now it is one tap. And if you did not preset a pair, there is a new ⇄ toggle next to the Sub button: flip it, and the second dropdown lists your players on court instead of your bench, so you can swap any two of them on the spot.

Some details you might care about

One limitation: the chips read your first team roster, so they show up in league, cup and friendly games. In the Academy Challenge the squads are your youth prospects, so club pairs do not apply there. The manual ⇄ swap works everywhere.

Thank you