S97 Trade Deadline: Where is it?

[badcolethetitan 984]

S97 Trade Deadline: Where is it?

 

What's happening?

 

Many people are wondering, where are the trades? As of 1/22/2025, we've had not a single trade this week with the trade deadline currently set for tomorrow, 1/23/2025, however, why is this? Well, this trade deadline there are essentially two big reasons why there is really no market for buying and selling. The first reason is the NA Wildcard Race, with currently NYA, SEA, TOR, and CHI all in the running for three spots. Usually at this time each season, there are teams that are looking to be in the playoffs and teams that are obvious sellers, ready to sell the team away and build for the upcoming season. However, all four of these teams are very close together, with only 5 points separating the difference between 3rd in NA and 6th, hence why none of those teams are selling and are instead, looking to buy. Most of these teams have valuable assets, or players that only have a season or two left and could get fairly good return in value if they were to trade them away, however, all of these teams are so close in the standings and making the playoffs, why would you? Every team wants to compete and try to slide in and are betting on their chances in the playoffs, and we all know once you make the playoffs, anything can happen. This then makes it so there are more buyers than sellers at the TDL, however, that should be good for the sellers right? Well, not necessarily if there are no sellers. Currently DC and LA are for sure out of the playoffs in NA barring a miracle for DC to win out and same with LA. As for EU, I mean I guess every single team is still in playoff contention with PRG, LDN, HSK, and WAR all battling it out for the last playoff spot, but none of those teams really want to make the playoffs. The second big reason why there is no market is a lot of these lower tier teams either have very young prospects that they would never do away with unless you extremely overpay (which no one is going to do), or they have old players that are not really much of an upgrade, if any, for the top teams. Basically, this means there is nobody being traded at the end of the day. These two reasons are the big reason why there isn't really going to be any movement near TDL and completing an offer at this point is almost impossible. There is not any big names on the market, there are almost no upgrades, and bottom teams are fine staying put with what they have. It's unfortunate because people are for sure looking for big moves to be made on TDL day, or even before, but at this point, it will be very unlikely there's a trade. There could be one or two very small ones potentially, but as of writing this, I doubt there will be any. Most teams will ride it out and see how their season goes, however, we could be in for a huge off-season at this point. Teams will re-evaluate their roster and we could have lots of movement in the off-season.