The Exchange is Open
Le Council is pleased, and faintly alarmed, to announce the close of Hockay's Series H funding round.
The round was led by Graine Wetsky Funds, an institution whose paperwork is impeccable and whose origins Le Council has elected not to examine too closely. The term sheet arrived already signed. The terms are unusual: rather than dilute the fans, the round hands them the equity. Le Council read the document twice, found no trap, and signed.
Effective immediately, you may hold shares in the teams.
To mark the opening of The Exchange, S.L.U.S.H. is halving its brokerage fee on all trades for the first three days. The reduced rate will be applied automatically. No code required. No paperwork. S.L.U.S.H. handles it.
What you are buying
Every team has issued a fixed pool of one million shares. You buy them with Looneys (Ⱡ) and you sell them back for Looneys. A share is not a bet—it does not resolve, it does not expire, and you may hold it for as long as you can stand to.
The pools are fixed at one million for now. The current agreement sets out no terms for diluting or expanding them—and, Le Council notes, no terms against it either. Read into that what you wish.
The book is settled by S.L.U.S.H.—the Société for the Liquidation of Unsettled Share Holdings, a joint venture between Le Council and Graine Wetsky Funds. S.L.U.S.H. does not sleep. There is no waiting for a buyer to meet a seller; you always trade against the team's pool, at any hour, in any volume the pool can bear.
How the price moves
The price of a team is what its fans make it. When fans buy, shares leave the pool and the price rises for the next buyer. When fans sell, the price falls. Buy a large block and you will pay a premium as you climb the curve—the market re-rates a team the moment conviction enters or leaves it.
Beside each price, the S.L.U.S.H. analysts publish a fair value: a figure drawn from a team's record—points, goal differential, recent form. It is not a price you can trade at. It is a second opinion. When a team trades below what its results suggest, the analysts note this, and decline to elaborate.
On the brokerage
S.L.U.S.H. takes a modest fee on every trade—both when you buy and when you sell. The fee is shown before you confirm. On occasion, for reasons it does not disclose, S.L.U.S.H. waives the fee entirely; when it does, you will see it struck through, and the trade will settle free.
The fee is not arbitrary. S.L.U.S.H. runs on infrastructure: settlement systems that must reconcile every share, trading terminals that must be kept lit and humming, and a quantity of paperwork that Le Council has stopped trying to measure. The fee keeps all of it running—and what remains services the financing, repaid to Le Council and Graine Wetsky Funds against the terms of the Series H round. A book this large does not settle itself for free.
Why a fan would hold
Three reasons, in ascending order of respectability:
- Appreciation. Your shares may rise as other fans pile in.
- Dividends. S.L.U.S.H. pays a dividend at the close of each season, weighted by how far your teams went.
- Shelter. Shares are not counted by the wealth tax. Looneys parked in equity are not idle, and are therefore not idle wealth. Le Council notes this carefully. Make of it what you will.
On Graine Wetsky Funds
The Funds did not merely write a cheque. As part of the financing round, Graine Wetsky Funds is also partaking in the Exchange itself—taking positions on teams as they see fit. The Funds buy teams they judge to be rising and sell those they judge to be falling, and their stake in each team is published—set apart from the fans—on every team's page. When the Funds are loading up on a team, you will see it. What the Funds know, and how, is glacified.
The Almighty Ice has been informed that fans may now own the teams that play upon it. It has not responded. Le Council interprets this as neither blessing nor objection, which is how The Ice handles nearly everything.
Own a piece of The Ice. Mind the curve. S.L.U.S.H. will settle the book.