Squads

What a squad is

A squad is a group of players who put their capital behind one leader so that together they can afford a prediction none of them could pay for alone. A squad enters the same global pool as individual players — there is no separate squad pool.

Width is expensive. Backing two outcomes in seven of the ten matches spans 128 columns, and 128 columns cost 128 times the unit price. That kind of coverage — the kind that survives a surprise result because the alternative was already covered — is simply out of reach on an individual budget.

How the buy-in works

Members buy into the squad in whole units, and one unit is the price of one column. A member can buy as many units as they want.

When the buy-in window closes, the leader knows exactly how many columns the squad has to spend and builds the prediction — or the handful of predictions — that spends them. Those predictions enter the global pool like anybody else’s, at their full derived cost.

Every member owns the fraction of the squad they paid for, and that same fraction of anything it wins. When a squad prediction lands in a tier, the prize is split across members in proportion to their units, minus the leader’s commission.

Buying in whole units is what keeps this exact: the pot is always a whole number of columns, so it is always spendable to the last one, and no member’s share depends on rounding.

What a member is actually buying

Members commit their capital before they know the picks, and that is the deliberate shape of the thing. What a member buys is not a particular set of outcomes — it is a leader’s judgement, and the width that judgement gets to work with.

Two rules keep that trust bounded:

• The leader never holds the money. The pot is held by the protocol and can only ever leave it as a prediction or as a refund.
• Failure to submit refunds everyone. If the leader does not submit before the matchweek closes, every member is refunded automatically, with no human intervention required.

A squad is not a way to punch above your weight. The same capital deployed individually earns exactly the same claim on the pool — distribution is proportional to winning columns, and every column costs the same regardless of whether it was paid for by one wallet or by forty. What a squad buys is not leverage, it is affordability of coverage: access to a breadth of prediction your own budget could not reach, in exchange for owning only a fraction of the result.

The leader

The squad leader decides the picks and how to spend the squad’s width. Their reputation is on the line every matchweek.

The leader sets a commission — a fixed percentage of any prizes the squad earns. It is set before the squad is created, visible to all members before they buy in, and enforced on-chain at distribution. There is no way for a leader to change it after members have bought in.

This creates a natural market of leaders: those with the best track record raise the most, and raising more is what lets them go wider. It turns anyone with football knowledge and an audience — content creators, sports journalists, analysts — into a natural squad leader with real economic incentives to recruit members and get the picks right.

Why the picks need no secrecy

Once submitted, a squad’s predictions are as public as everybody else’s, and nothing about that hurts the squad.

A prediction is not information that can be cheaply duplicated — it is a position that costs what it costs. Replicating a 128-column prediction means paying for 128 columns. Anyone able and willing to put up that capital was never going to be a member, and anyone unwilling gains nothing from reading the picks.

This is why PitchMkt needs no scheme for hiding or committing picks in advance: capital, not concealment, is what protects a squad’s work.

Member mechanics

• Members buy units in a squad before the buy-in window closes.
• Each unit costs the unit price — the price of one column.
• The leader submits the squad’s prediction or predictions on behalf of all members.
• If a squad prediction wins, the prize is distributed to members in proportion to the units they bought, net of the leader’s commission.
• Members claim their individual share through the standard claim flow, covering every tier the squad’s prediction won.

Leader reputation

Every leader’s on-chain record is publicly visible: matchweeks played, accuracy history, best result, active streaks, and total prizes distributed to squads. This record is immutable — it cannot be edited or hidden.

As with any player, the most consistent and accurate leaders earn a rank that identifies them across the platform, ranging from Rookie to Iconic.