Hattrick (commonly abbreviated to HT) is an online, browser-based, football management game (MMOG) developed in Sweden. Currently the game contains 128 different countries, each with its own league pyramid, and 51 different language versions (as of march 2011). As of October 1, 2011, the game had over 700,000 users (although the user base has been declining since February 2009), each with their own team. Hattrick is in its 45th season and has been running since August 30, 1997. Most users cite Season 11, which began October 15, 2000, as the beginning of Hattrick as it is today.
The basic idea of Hattrick is to manage a football team wisely, whether it be in buying and selling players, setting the team’s lineup, or expanding the arena to the perfect size. Every user in Hattrick has a team of his/her own. The user has wide control over their team, and gameplay is mainly limited by economic and tactical restrictions. Many different types of teams exist within Hattrick; the team’s type is generally shaped by the training program set up by the user, as well as the formations played.
League and National Cup
Each included country has a league which is divided into series. The series below the main divisions are also groups, where teams play each other in two legs, the number of sets and groups are defined according to the number of users in the country.
Each included country also has a national cup that is played by all teams through a knockout system.
The winners of the top division and cup of each country gain spots in the Hattrick Masters. If one team is champion of the crown and major league, it is the sole representative of its country. The countries with the largest number of users are Argentina, Denmark, Germany, England, France, Italy, Mexico, Finland, Sweden and United States. The United States and England are in the 41st season of league.
Over the last years Hattrick’s supporter numbers -and thus its profitability- have been on the decline. An attempt was made to attract new members by launching a new service called Hattrick Open, a real-time football management game. Hattrick Open however didn’t catch on with their existing members, nor did it attract big numbers of new members, adding to dwindling profitability.
In an attempt to make up for the lost profit, Hattrick bought major CHPP tool provider Alltid, dismantling their initial free services and integrating them into the paid Hattrick Supporter package. Meanwhile, Hattrick added a new authorization scheme for CHPP (oAuth), frustrating a major part of the CHPP programmers into stopping the upkeep of their free websites, thus reducing tool competition.