# Release clauses

Release clauses let a manager choose a percentage of market value at which a player on their senior roster can be redeemed during transfer-market phases.

This is a seasonal feature. An admin must first enable it in Seasonal Limits and complete its configuration before the season starts.

# Admin configuration

During the New season phase, authorized admins configure:

one or more inclusive, non-overlapping overall bands;
the minimum and maximum number of players under clause in each band;
the minimum and maximum market-value percentage allowed in each band;
the time other managers have to join a redemption request;
the dedicated auction duration;
a 1 to 5 minute late-bid extension for exclusive auctions;
what happens when a team misses its minimums.

Available minimum-compliance effects are:

Warning only: no operation is restricted;
Block all redemptions: any missing minimum blocks every redemption;
Block all market operations: any missing minimum blocks redemptions and other market operations;
Block redemption band: only the non-compliant band is blocked;
Unlock lower bands: the compliant band with the highest maximum overall unlocks itself and every lower band. For example, complying with 86–99 also allows redemption from bands whose maximum is below 86, even when one of those lower minimums is missing.

Every band must satisfy:

minimum overall <= maximum overall
minimum players <= maximum players
minimum percentage <= maximum percentage
maximum overall of band N < minimum overall of band N+1
maximum players >= 1

Bands must therefore be submitted in increasing order and cannot overlap. Percentages may be set up to 1000%; the redemption window and auction duration must be positive.

The configuration becomes immutable after the season starts.

# Manager workflow

The Release clauses page has two tabs:

Available clauses, selected by default, lists redeemable players owned by other teams;
My clauses contains the band summary and eligible players from the manager’s senior roster.

During a transfer-market phase, the manager may add, edit, or remove a clause. Its percentage must remain within the player’s band and the band maximum cannot be exceeded.

When a new clause is added, the server treats every player on that team with an active clause as sold, including the newly selected player. The clause is rejected if this projection falls below the senior-roster minimum, the minimum overall-point total, or a department roster minimum. Redemption requests made by that manager for players on other teams are ignored in this projection.

The displayed amount is calculated as:

effective market value × percentage / 100

Effective market value includes any league-specific custom value. Until the first redemption request, the amount follows market-value changes automatically. The first request freezes a snapshot that is reused throughout the redemption and any dedicated auction.

Managers may save their work progressively. Minimums do not block every partial change, but they are enforced before a transfer-market phase closes. If fewer players are eligible than the configured minimum, the effective minimum equals the eligible-player count.

A clause becomes immutable as soon as another manager requests its redemption.

# Conflicts with other market operations

A player involved in a pending transfer or already listed in a Player sale auction cannot be placed under a release clause.

While a clause is active, the player cannot be traded or loaned, moved between senior and youth rosters, released, or listed in a Player sale auction. The UI hides or disables these choices, and the server repeats the checks inside the transaction that creates or completes each operation.

While a team has any active redemption request, it cannot start or complete transfers, releases, general-auction bids, or Player sale operations. It may still request more redemptions until it is already involved in an auction, manage clauses on its other players, and participate concurrently in the exclusive auctions created from its requests.

# Redemption requests

The server checks league and season ownership, current player ownership, available funds, pending transfers, involvement in public or exclusive auctions (through any bid, including an outbid one, or as an invited participant), total and department roster capacity, available contracts, the wage cap, total/goalkeeper/department overall-point limits, compliance mode, and duplicate requests.

Every active request is treated as an already completed acquisition by later request checks: the player is added to projected roster, contract, wage, and point totals, while the frozen amount—or that team’s highest exclusive-auction bid—is reserved from available funds. Active clauses on the requesting team’s own players are not projected as sales during this check.

The same acquisition checks run again for every bid in a dedicated auction and, under lock, immediately before the transfer. If a sole requester is no longer eligible when the window expires, the redemption is cancelled and the clause becomes available again. In an auction, an ineligible highest bidder is skipped in favor of the next valid bid; the redemption is cancelled when no eligible team remains.

The first request freezes the current calculated amount and opens the configured participation window. Lists and notifications expose only the total number of requesting teams, never their identities.

With one valid requester, the player transfers automatically at the frozen amount when the window expires.
With multiple requesters, the system creates an open-bid exclusive auction for those teams only. Its starting bid is the frozen amount.

Multiple exclusive auctions may run concurrently. Global minimum-bid increment rules still apply. A bid made during the final configured minutes extends the deadline by that interval.

# General-auction priority

Scheduled general auctions always have priority and can never overlap release-clause auctions.

Before accepting a request, the server protects this conservative interval:

request-window duration + exclusive-auction duration + 2 × late-bid extension

The request is rejected if that interval overlaps a created or active general auction. Conversely, while a redemption is pending, an admin cannot create or move a general auction to a time before the redemption’s protected completion. A general auction may start exactly when that interval ends.

If an external or concurrent change would make a late extension overlap a general auction, the bid remains valid but the exclusive-auction deadline is not extended. Exclusive-auction processing is scheduled for its deadline, with the once-per-minute processor retained as a recovery path.

# Economy and history

When redemption completes, the buyer pays the winning amount, the seller receives it, the roster relation is moved without changing the global player record, and both transactions and player history use the Release clause reason.

A forced release-clause sale is not blocked by the seller’s seasonal limits. After the transfer, the selling manager receives one notification containing the player, buyer team, amount, and whether the sale was direct or auction-based. The same notification lists minimum-limit violations newly caused by the sale, including roster size, total overall points, department roster minimums, and release-clause band minimums. Violations that already existed before the sale are not reported as new consequences.

Release clauses