Underwriting a season
Read the Tape runs in dated seasons: twenty sessions of five blind charts, scored on calibration, settled on a Monday. Each season’s book clears on an underwriter’s line. Until a partner takes that slot, the house underwrites it, and the current season runs exactly as a sponsored one would.
What an underwriter is
An underwriter supports the season, not the answer. The right verbs are “supported by” and “underwritten by”, never “presented by”; the right nouns are underwriter and award, never jackpot. What underwriting buys is association with a measured, audited exercise in calibration: open data, real historical tape, and awards that go to the best-calibrated desks rather than the luckiest.
The slot
| surface | what it carries |
|---|---|
| Settlement slip footer | the clearing line on every settled desk’s slip, for the whole season |
| The register | a permanent entry on /seasons and the season’s own record page |
| Honours | naming credit beside the season’s awards, engraved permanently |
| Mentions | the season-open and settlement posts name who clears the book |
| Backlink | one followed link from the season’s permanent page |
| Post-settlement offer | at most one disclosed offer to players, after settlement, never during |
Standard terms run the other way too: a season-open mention to the underwriter’s own audience and a link to the season page are part of every arrangement.
What an underwriter can never touch
- The chart canvas and the reveal. No sponsored windows, tickers or annotations; the tape is blind and stays blind.
- The scoring and the rules. Frozen before entry, stamped on every board, not for sale.
- The findings. Our published research says what the data says, including about chart reading itself, whoever clears the book.
- Player data. No identifiers, no tracking scripts, no retargeting, no data exchange of any kind. Tap counts on an underwriter link are first-party and aggregate only.
- Per-account economics. Nothing conditional on deposits, funded accounts or trading volume, at any price.
- Qualification. Entry and honours can never be bought, gated or advantaged by anything an underwriter offers.
The house slot
Season 1 clears on the house account: no external money touched it. The house runs the season exactly as a partner season would run, produces the same settlement record and delivery sheet, and holds the slot until a partner buys it out; the slip footer itself stays blank for a house season, held unspent. A season with no partner is never an empty record line; it is house-underwritten again.
Disclosure
Every season’s clearing line names who held the slot, permanently, on its record page. Where a partner holds it, that page discloses whether the arrangement was cash, in-kind or affiliate. Awards fulfilled by a partner are stated as such in the season rules for that season.
To talk about a season: data@readthetape.cc.