PrisonBaLL › How to Play › Crews and Divisions
Forty crews, four tiers, one yard. Three proper divisions of twelve and a four-crew pool at the bottom that everything else drains into.
The bottom tier is not called Division 4. It is the Promotion / Relegation Pool, and the name is the mechanic: four crews, the smallest budget in the game, and the shortest distance in either direction.
| Tier | Crews | Squad rating | Starting cash | Weekly income | Wage budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Division 1 | 12 | 22 | £950,000 | £14,000 | £9,000 |
| Division 2 | 12 | 18 | £600,000 | £9,000 | £6,500 |
| Division 3 | 12 | 14 | £350,000 | £5,500 | £4,500 |
| Promotion / Relegation Pool | 4 | 10 | £180,000 | £3,000 | £2,800 |
The rating column is the one to read carefully. Each tier is roughly four rating points above the one below it, while the money roughly doubles between Division 3 and Division 1. Promotion buys you a bigger budget and a bigger problem at the same time.
A new Manager Mode career begins in Division 3 — two tiers below the top and one above the pool. Close enough to the bottom that a bad first season genuinely hurts.
The top tier. Rated 22, and the only place where a £9,000 wage budget is normal rather than reckless.
The tier where promoted crews find out whether they were good or just lucky. Rated 18.
Where your career starts. Rated 14, £350,000 in the bank and a wage budget of £4,500 a week.
Four crews, rated 10, on £3,000 a week. The smallest tier in the game and the one with the least room to make a mistake.
A ten-season world drifts if nothing holds it. An earlier version of the campaign was measured ending season ten at sizes of 13, 11, 12 and 4 — one crew had quietly moved tier without a matching move back. The fixed sizes above are enforced, so the league you finish in is the same shape as the one you started in.
The game's data files also contain a wider pool of ninety team names. That list is not what a career uses: the fixed ten-season world overwrites it with exactly these forty. If you have seen a crew name that is not on this page, you have been reading the pool rather than the league.