Icon Players: Keeping a Star Out of the Auction
Retention is what lets a franchise keep the player it built its identity around. Done well it makes the auction more interesting. Done badly it empties it. Here is the difference.
What an icon player is
An icon player is handed to a franchise before the auction opens. They never come up for bidding. When the room starts, that franchise's squad already contains them and its purse has already been charged whatever the League Owner decided they cost — which may be nothing at all.
The idea comes straight from professional franchise leagues, where it goes by two names that mean slightly different things. Retention is a team keeping a player from last season. An icon player is a local star a team is handed because they belong to that town. In a neighbourhood league the distinction rarely matters: both are “this player is already theirs”, and both are set up the same way.
What matters is the consequence. Every icon player is a name removed from the pool and points removed from a purse — and both halves of that trade have to be visible to everyone bidding.
Four decisions to make first
Decide how many each franchise may keep
One or two is the usual answer for a local league. Every icon player is a player who never reaches the auction, so a league with six franchises keeping three each has removed eighteen names from a pool that may only hold sixty.
Decide what each one costs
The price you set is deducted from that franchise's purse before bidding starts. A star kept at a token price is a bargain everyone can see; kept at a fair price, it is a real trade-off against the squad they still have to build.
Check the maths still works
A franchise that spends most of its purse on icon players must still be able to fill its minimum squad at base price. Gaim.zone enforces this — it will not let you lock in a combination that makes a legal squad impossible — but it is worth thinking through before auction night.
Tell everyone before the auction
Icon players are the single most argued-about rule in local auctions, and almost always because someone found out too late. Publish the list, the prices and the reasoning in your league group before the room opens.
Four ways retention ruins an auction
Every franchise keeps its best three players
The auction has nothing left worth bidding on. Cap the count low enough that the pool keeps its stars.
Icon players cost nothing
Retention becomes free, so the franchise that kept the most simply has the strongest squad. Charge something, even if it is below market.
The list appears on auction night
Franchise owners built their strategies around players who were never available. Publish it days ahead.
Nobody can see who was kept
Suspicion. In Gaim.zone the seeded squads, the reduced balances and one activity-feed entry per icon player are visible to everyone who enters the room before it starts.
Setting icon players up takes one step in the wizard
Scheduling an auction walks through four steps — when it runs, the points economy, icon players, and a review of everything about to be locked in. The icon-player step is optional: skip it and scheduling behaves exactly as it always did.
Pick a franchise, pick the players it keeps, set what each one costs. The screen shows that franchise's remaining budget and squad as you go, so you can see the trade-off you are making rather than discovering it on auction night.
- Assign players to any franchise before the auction opens
- Any price you like, including free
- Budgets and squad slots checked as you assign — an illegal squad cannot be locked in
- Seeded squads, reduced balances and a feed entry visible to everyone in the room
Actual app footage — a Practice Mode auction
Keep planning your auction
Download Gaim.zone
Everything before match day, in one app. Free on Android and iOS.
🎯 No real-money auctions · Pure strategy · Free to download