Now all they have to do is create the same database of player stats based on last transfer available to supporters/anyone for like half the price of what these jokers are offering.
You can't be serious with that. Fighting with cheating by making it legal, is the worst possible solution, and this may lead to even further problems (and so the changes). Basing on my experience from different game, this leads to significant user loss (on peak times they have ~60% less users online compared to few years ago).
So how to solve the problem? You already said it.
Another option is to remove player name, number and current owner as well as transfer history...this would make tracking and reporting money transfers near impossible though...
That site works, because we see more than we need. Does it matter what is player name or how does he look like? No, we only need skills and statistics, but the site need also player id.
The changes to be made:
- Create a pool of fake player ids and assign one to each new transfer listed player.
- Don't show that player is tranfer listed on teams roster page. (just like no one would be transfer listed)
- Don't show player id, name, owner on transfer list, instead show player fake id, skills, stats.
- Don't show links to matches in statistics. (this one sucks as it could give more info about player)
- When you enter player page through player id, show like he wouldn't be transfer listed.
- When you enter player page through fake player id, show only skills, stats and option to bid player.
- After transfer, fake id gets reused again in new transfers.
This way, that site can copy skills, but they won't know who they belong to. Tracking and reporting money transfers would be impossible for you, but not for GMs. I believe that adding some code that checks if the transfer is suspicious isn't hard (if they doesn't already have it).