How it works

Sportfolio Golf is a stock market game based on the 2026 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale (Jul 16–19). Every golfer in the field can be bought, priced by their leaderboard position. As the tournament unfolds, prices shift. Buy low, sell high.

Starting out

• Each player starts with $10,000
• You must invest at least 75% ($7,500) before Round 1 begins
• Pre-tournament, golfers are priced by betting-odds tier: the field is split into 12 tiers, $0.15 apart, from $1.00 (longest shots) up to $2.65 (the outright favourite)
• The "Post R1 Index" column on the Market page is just a preview — what that golfer would be worth if their tier ranking were their actual Round 1 leaderboard position. It's not real until scores come in

Trading windows

• Pre-tournament — from launch until Round 1 begins
• After Round 1 — window opens, then closes before Round 2
• After Round 2 — window opens, then closes before Round 3
• After Round 3 — final window, then closes before Round 4
• No trading during rounds or after Round 4 finishes

Rules

• Maximum 25% of your portfolio value in any single golfer per trading window
• Brokerage fee of 1% of your portfolio value is charged on every buy or sell
• Golfers who miss the cut drop to a base price of $1.00 immediately — they can still be sold, and the cash reinvested into active players
• Every golfer in the Open Championship field is tradeable — no restricted list
• Equal scores = equal leaderboard position = equal price
• Highest portfolio value at end of tournament wins

In-game price scale

Once round scores are saved by the admin — including via the automatic ESPN leaderboard fetch — every golfer's price recalculates immediately based on their live position. You don't need to wait for the round to fully finish or for the round to be formally advanced; prices can move mid-round as admin checks in.

• Last place (among golfers with a score) = $1.00
• Each position up the leaderboard = previous price × 1.01
• So price = $1.00 × 1.01^{(field size − position)} — the bigger the remaining field, the bigger the gap between 1st and last
• Ties share the exact same price, ordered by whatever order the ESPN leaderboard lists them in
• A golfer who hasn't teed off yet in the current round keeps their last known price and shows "TBD" for position until they post a score
• Missed-cut golfers are pinned to the $1.00 floor and dropped out of this ranking entirely

Leaderboard bonus

Holding a golfer who's ranked in the top 4 at the end of two consecutive rounds pays a cash bonus on top of any price gain, credited automatically when the admin advances the round:

• 1st place: +4% of your holding's value, paid in cash
• 2nd place: +3%
• 3rd place: +2%
• 4th place: +1%
• A golfer only qualifies once they've held a top-4 spot across two rounds in a row — a one-round spike into the top 4 doesn't pay out by itself
• Shows up in your trade history as "Interest"