Several-day online auctions are passé: too long-winded, too little enthusiasm and not transparent enough, says Hippochamp.

In contrast, there was a lot of enthusiasm this week at the very first LIVE online auction of Hippochamp. At least for those visitors who were able to listen in. Unfortunately, at this time, not all browsers support the Realtime software necessary to play the auction LIVE. This will be optimized for the following auctions.

New also during HippoChamp's LIVE online auction was the complete transparency on minimum pricing. As soon as the minimum price of the breeder was reached, the message "On the market" appeared, signaling that from here on the foal could be assigned to the highest bidder. A conscious but especially daring choice by Hippochamp, which aims for a completely transparent approach.

Quite remarkable was the fact that the foals with weaker sport performance pedigrees proved significantly less popular.

Once again proof that the market is becoming more selective and demanding and, above all, is willing to pay more for quality.

However, Hippochamp aims to bring a wide and diverse range of foals to the market and thus provide a platform for breeders at every level.

As far as the auction itself is concerned: 32 Belgian-bred foals came under the virtual hammer of the Dutch auction master Chris De Heer. After a somewhat hesitant start, the bids came in smoothly, with, aside from a large number of Belgian bidders, a lot of foreign interest from the Netherlands, France, Germany, Estonia, Poland, UK, Ireland, USA, etc.

The absolute top seller was Dua Lipa by Hidalgo Z. This daughter of Diabeau VD Heffinck went for 12,200€ and will remain in Belgium. Sidan VD Bisschop (Opium JW VD Moerhoeve) and Sien VD Bisschop (Denzel van't Meulenhof) also cleared the 10,000€ price level. The average price was 7,000€.

Also new at HippoChamp is the fact that from now on, potential buyers can still make an offer on unsold foals via equinia.com. Unsold foals display the message "make an offer". In this way, Hippochamp hopes to bring together buyer and seller in those cases where supply and demand were close, but unfortunately not close enough.

The next Live online foal auction will take place on October 2nd. The registrations for the "Breeding" auction of Tuesday 6 November are also open from today. At this auction, HippoChamp will present later-born foals, pregnant mares, embryos and yearlings. The photo shoot for this auction will take place on Sunday 7 October at the QC Stables in Sint Niklaas. Prior registration at www.hippochamp.com is necessary.