Transcription
It's time for my favorite video of the year, and that is the 2026 Ball Python state of the market. And just like every other year that we have done one of these videos, we are going to focus on the economics. We're going to focus on projects and we're going to be talking about where we think the ball python industry is going in the future. My name is Steven with Leviathan and let's get to it.
Starting from a macro level, I think that the ball python industry actually has quite a bit of headwinds right now in November of 2025. So, there has been, at least in the US, a massive string of layoffs in pretty much every single one of the major employers across the country. Now, for the most part, these are focused in the tech industry. But even if they are focused in the tech industry, I think that this has a negative effect on the ball python market because if places like Facebook or Amazon or Google or Microsoft are laying off tens of thousands of people, it creates uncertainty in the employment market. Because if there is a smaller company that isn't doing well and they have seen that these big companies have had these massive layoffs, it is possible that the smaller company will be emboldened and will be willing to lay off a let's say 500 people that might have nothing to do with the tech industry.
And this makes a situation where everybody who is employed is worried that there might be something that comes up and they might not have their job in a year, 2 years or 3 years down the road. So because of this, it puts negative pressure on businesses, specifically new businesses, and people don't want to spend money to start a new commercial endeavor, including a ball python breeding business. So I think that what this does, this economic uncertainty given all of the layoffs that are happening, is going to reduce the amount of people who decide that they want to start trying to breed ball pythons as a business. And if there are not as many people getting into the breeding side of the hobby, a massive amount of the demand when it comes to the ball python industry isn't going to be growing. Now, this doesn't mean that it won't grow at all, but I do think that there's going to be some major macrolevel conditions that are going to have to pass before we really see a strong resurgence in the ball python breeder market.
Getting into the industry itself, last year, one of the big predictions that we made was that there was going to be almost a changing of the guard event and that there were going to be several large prominent big brands in the reptile industry either decide to get out of breeding ball pythons altogether, switch to other species, or drastically reduce the amount of animals that they are producing. And pretty much across the board, every single one of these things have happened during 2025. But what I said last year was I don't necessarily think that this is a bad thing for the entire hobby. One, it rebalances the supply and demand issues that were going on during 2023 and maybe even a little bit in 2024. And now if we are looking at the available animals on morph market, they are about half of what they were at the peak during 2023. So, it's very obvious that people have continued to buy ball pythons, and there hasn't been nearly as much supply produced in 2025 as there had been in previous years.
So, with some of the large, well-known breeders moving away from ball pythons, it also opens up opportunity for smaller breeders to come in and take some of the market share that those breeders previously possessed. Because just because a breeder stops producing animals or maybe stops producing ball pythons doesn't mean that they didn't have customers. And there were people who are willing to buy from those individuals even if it wasn't to the point that they felt that it was worthwhile for them to keep producing animals at least at the level that they were doing beforehand. But those customers aren't necessarily disappearing forever. Instead, they are going to other people and that demand is redistributed out. And this provides a lot of opportunity for smaller breeders to sell their animals and grow and level up in their operations.
There's also a level of attention that those well-known breeders commanded when it came to the ball python industry. And often times people don't look at the idea of attention as a resource that breeders or businesses overall can utilize in order to achieve their goals. But the truth is everybody has limited attention. We can't pay attention to every single message, every single video, every single post that everyone makes in the entire industry. But with some of these well-known breeders who had really, really strong marketing presence in the industry getting out, there are going to be viewers, there are going to be watchers of these individuals who are still craving the reptile content that they used to produce, but now there is a gap and they are going to be looking for people to produce content in those realms. So, I also think that there is an opportunity for newer breeders to move into the spaces that these well-known breeders previously inhabited and make content that roughly addresses the same issues, the same problems that those bigger, more well-known breeders previously were hitting at. And if people do this really really well, again, I think that there is a lot of opportunity here because they can grow an audience fairly quickly and in the next 5 years they can be established as one of the well-known brands in the reptile industry, which in my opinion is absolutely critical to compete in a very very competitive market.
This brings us to the next point and that is competition. So it is very common. It has actually been something that has ran through the entire reptile industry since we started and it's something that I have very much disagreed with and that is the idea that if you are running a ball python or really any reptile business that it is the animals that are going to determine whether or not you are successful as a business. And while the animals definitely have a huge factor into it, I actually think that the most important aspect when it comes to the business side isn't necessarily the animals. You can make animals at just about any level in the industry. And if you are really, really effective at sales, if you're really effective at marketing, if you're really effective at making sure that your operations are efficient and you're not spending too much money compared to what you're getting in, you can have a successful business.
But the problem comes when people completely ignore all of the business side because they absolutely love the animals and they're so focused on the animals. They think that if they are paying attention to the money that means that they don't love the animals as much. But again, if you're focusing on a business, it's important that you are treating it like a business. Because if you're not, there are people in the industry who absolutely love the animals, are passionate about breeding, and they are incredibly skilled at the business side. And those individuals will 1,000% out compete the people who ignore marketing, who ignore their expenses, who ignore their salesmanship. And those people who are really, really good at both the business and the animals are going to be the ones who continue to grow and end up becoming the industry leaders down the road.
But the problem with this is that there are a ton of people who do not like this reality. Instead, they feel that if they love the animals so much that people should value them and they should buy from them because obviously they care about their animals so so much. But when it comes to this situation, the people who end up getting out competed get very jaded. They get very bitter and ultimately they trash the entire industry when they realize that they are not going to be able to achieve the goals that they thought they were going to. So, I think that while the industry has a lot of opportunity right now, that doesn't mean that it's easy. And in all reality, it is a competition. And you do have to find ways to get people to want to buy specifically from you and not necessarily only rely on producing amazing animals because at this point in 2025, especially with genetic testing, everybody is producing amazing animals.
This leads us into the next realm and that is genetic testing in 2025. So at this point genetic testing has been out for probably about 2 or 3 years give or take. And realistically I think at least in the ball python world the entire industry has adopted it. Everybody knows the benefits of genetic testing and they know that if they want to keep up especially at the high-end leading edge of a project they absolutely have to be genetically testing their animals. But with this it has created a couple interesting economic realities. And one is that I think that the speed of progress progressing has actually made it a little bit hard for the middle range of the market. So before genetic testing, if you bought a $5,000 animal, you are pretty confident that you are getting one of the best animals in that project, even if it wasn't at the very tippy top leading edge of that project. And by the time that you end up producing babies with it, you are going to realistically be able to recoup your money fairly easily in the very first clutch.
But with genetic testing, it is entirely possible now that somebody can pair a head-to-head or maybe a triple head to triple head, get really, really lucky. Not even hit the triple visual, but suddenly somebody that is not even known in the industry has a incredible double visual het animal that vastly outpaces everything else that was available on the market. And I think that this reality has created a little bit of downward pressure on the prices of the mid-range because it is really hard to know if that animal that you are buying for 34 $5,000 is actually worth $5,000 or if next month there's going to be an animal that is an entire generation ahead that is posted for either the same price or even lower. And I think that this makes people hesitant to buy in this price range because again, we don't know exactly how fast the projects are going.
That said, there are some aspects of genetic testing where if you can produce an animal that absolutely leapfrogs projects, like let's say that you were trying to work the sunset ultramale project and you paired a double head sunset ultraml to a ultramale clown and you got some ultramls that are everything is hat clown and then you test for sunset and now you have some ultra male double hat sunset clowns. That is an amazing animal and it is probably going to sell really really well because everybody knows that you can't really get much further than that in the project unless maybe you got some incomplete dominant genes. So if you are able to make some really good pairings using genetic testing and get immediately to that leading edge of the project, I think that there's a lot of opportunity there. But again, it's the leading edge that's doing really, really well. And in a completely different avenue, the pet range is doing really well. But those mid-range animals are the ones that get tricky because it's really hard to know if they are actually worth the value or if they are going to be outpaced well before you're even able to breed them.
Quick shout out to Rare Genetics Incorporated for sponsoring the channel and for offering genetic testing to the entire industry, not just ball pythons, but lots of different reptiles. Because this is absolutely critical in leveling the playing field between the newer small breeders and the industry leaders who have dominated the breeding game for the last several years. But if you guys are looking for a genetic test, definitely head over to their website, go to Morph Market, or go to Clutch and help support Rare Genetics Incorporated. And if you're on their website and you want a little bit of a discount, you can type in Leviathan to get 15% off your entire order.
But back to the video, switching gears a little bit from the business and economic side of the industry and going into projects. I'm really, really excited about the state of the current ball python project world. So right now I'm going to highlight three projects that I think are super hot, like the most in demand projects when it comes to the ball python breeding industry right now in November of 2025. And the first one I think is the DG xanthic clown. I think that this is the premier triple recessive project that exists right now. There have recently been some combinations made with the DG Axanthic clown that look absolutely incredible. Obviously, Kenova is leading this project, but there are several other breeders who are also making some incredible things in this project like Bob's Balls or Steel City Feeders, Mark Bailey. Plenty of other people are really, really heavy in DG Axanthic Clown. And I can't wait to see the amazing combinations that they continue to create. And I think that this is definitely going to be one of the premier triple recessive projects that will continue to exist in the hobby for probably decades to come. Show me what you got. Let me hear you say.
Project number two is one that I think has been picking up a lot of steam over the last several years, but we are now seeing some absolutely incredible combos come out and that is the hypo puzzle project. So the thing that is really really cool about the hypo puzzle project is I don't think that there is one really really big breeder who is absolutely dominating the hypo puzzle project and instead it is a collection of smaller really amazing niche breeders that are creating the incredible combos in the hypozle world in showcasing the absolute incredible directions that anybody can take the hypo puzzle project. So breeders like this are Barry Swope of Elusive Propagations as well as Prague Morphs over in Europe. But the thing that I think is really really cool about the HypoPuzzle project is that it is at a price point that everybody can afford to enter it. But again, there isn't a single dominant force that is vastly going to outpace everybody else. So I think that there is still a lot of room and a lot of opportunity to continue growing the hypo puzzle project, especially if you look at a triple recessive using hypo puzzle. Ourselves, we are trying to focus on the hypo sunset puzzle project, and I absolutely cannot wait in order to see that triple visual.
The last project is one that had been hit a couple years ago, but I feel like that it was 2025 where it really caught fire and everybody has been talking about it, at least to us, and that is the ultrasound project. So, this year we had actually gotten really, really lucky and we ended up hitting three different ultrasound combos. We hit a normal ultrasound, no other genes in it. We hit an orange dream ultrasound and we hit the super orange dream ultras. Every single one of these babies are absolutely incredible. But what's really really cool about this project is again, these aren't the very first ultrasounds that have ever been hit. Instead, this project has been around for at least 2 or 3 years. But this means that there are adult ultrasounds that are already in existence, so people can see how they age, and they look absolutely amazing. They look so good. And this has been a huge boon for the sunset project and for the Ultramell project because with sunset, one of the biggest criticisms that it gets is how it ages. But when you combine it with Ultraml and they age absolutely perfectly, even people who disliked Sunset really, really like the Ultras project. And this has changed a lot of different opinions on the Sunset Morph itself. In addition for Ultraml, because there had been quite a bit of debate between Ultraml and Monarch for the previous years, Ultramell was almost viewed as the poor man's version of Monarch. But with the Ultral Sunsets being produced and them selling for more than five figures, now Ultraml has a very very clear high-end project at the very leading edge of the ball python industry. So, everybody who had invested in Ultramill has an avenue in order to get to those top tier $20,000 prices, which is again really, really good for both of these projects. So, overall, I am really, really excited about this and this is probably the favorite project that I have right now. I want to make every single combo that we have in an ultras version.
Not all projects have been really kicking off. In fact, I think that there is one that hit some roadblocks during 2025 that I actually think are ultimately going to help out the project in the long term, and that is the lace project. So, lace is one of the hot jeans. It was really, really popular. It still is really, really popular. But the problem with lace is that it is incredibly difficult to ID as a baby. And before there was a lace test, essentially a lot of people were selling and buying lace animals that weren't actually lace. So when the lace test ended up coming out and a bunch of people figured out that they didn't actually have the jeans that they thought they had paid for, it made a lot of issues and it drastically slowed the progress in the lace project. But the reason why I think that this is actually a good thing for the project longterm is that the lace project was really, really hot. A bunch of people all jumped in at the exact same time and bought lace animals, which meant that once they grew those animals up and they started breeding them, everybody was going to be producing lace animals at the exact same time and that there would be a flood of supply on the market, but everybody who was interested in lace probably had already bought their animals and they didn't need to buy anything. So, I feel like that before all of this lace controversy ended up happening, lace was poised for a crash. But once it has come out that actually a lot of the people who had loved the lace project and bought in turns out that they didn't actually buy lace animals that means that they are not going to be producing a bunch of lace animals in the future and it also means that they probably still love the lace morph and they need to go out and buy some lace animals. So this reduces the supply but it also keeps the demand rather high because people still need these animals. So I think that this is going to result in a situation where the people who had invested in lace already are going to have a longer time frame where they're able to recoup their money before there becomes an imbalance between the supply and the demand and ultimately the prices will fall to the point where they are more in the pet range rather than the breeder market.
Moving away from more established projects, there have also been a couple of projects that have recently turned up. not necessarily saying in 2025, but that they are gaining industry attention during 2025 that I think are really important to talk about. And the ones that I want to discuss are Cosmos, Tornado, and Malice. So, all of these morphs are granite type jeans. They really pixelate the pattern. They busy things up and they look absolutely incredible, especially if you are looking at the Cosmos clown stuff. But the thing that I think is really really interesting about these specific projects is that they have those $20,000 price tags for the most part and a lot of people are buying into them. So I think that this shows that there is a huge demand for that high-end side of the ball python breeding market that still exists even despite the macroeconomic conditions that we've already talked about. Now, when it comes to these specific projects, Cosmos and Malice are incomplete dominant, as far as I'm aware of, and Tornado is recessive. I don't necessarily know which one I like the best. I think all of them are amazing, and I don't think that anybody can go wrong picking any single one of these projects. Personally though, because of the recessive aspect and the fact that Tornado does not have a shed test available, I think that Tornado is probably going to have the longest legs when it comes to a project from a breeding perspective because it's going to be more difficult to hit those animals. Also, Tornado is going to benefit from the idea that you can make multi-recessive animals with it. So, if you make a cosmos clown, that's awesome, but it's just a single gene clown with one incomplete dominant gene. If you make a tornado clown, that is a double recessive. If you make a hypo tornado clown, if you make a DG tornado clown, if you make a DG Xanthic Tornado Clown, those are going to be really, really amazing projects. And I am very, very excited to see how all of them go in the future. But if I were going to pick one that I am the most bullish on, it's probably Tornado. And if you're in the United States, you should definitely be hitting up Jeremy Ba or Justin because as far as I know, they're the only people who are actually producing Tornado stuff in the United States right now.
The last project I want to highlight for the 2025 ball python state of the market video is something that I feel like is coming back into popularity and that is undoubtedly paint. I think that there have been some incredible paint combos that have been hit during 2025, specifically paint clown combos. I really want to highlight this animal that I believe is a spot-nose yellowbelly paint clown that was produced by Recck Room Snakes. This is hands down the best paint animal that exists. It is the best paint animal that has ever been hit. And it shows that there is an absolutely huge potential for the paint project because not only do you have an incredibly busy pattern, you also have some really, really good contrast and you have a lot of things that you can play with. Again, adding in something like hypo or xanthic or DG or anything like that is going to take this animal to a completely different level. Even though it is already amazing, I am really really excited for the paint project. And again, if you are interested in it, you should definitely hit up Rec Room Snakes, but there are lots of other people like Ink Lady Morphs, Savage Morphs, as well as Ebony and Ivory who I know personally are really invested in the paint project. and I can't wait to see all of the animals that they are producing for the 2026 season.
So, with all of this said, where do I think the future of the ball python industry is going? And I think that the best way to describe it is that it is going to be incredibly competitive. And I think that this is different than how it had been in previous years. Previously, there have been established breeders who were really, really good at essentially dominating the market. But with a lot of them moving away from ball pythons, a lot of them getting out of the hobby altogether, it has created a vacuum where there is market share that people can capture. But people are going to have to compete for it. It's not just going to be handed to somebody. So the people who are able to convince everybody else in the industry that they should be buying animals from them are going to be the ones who excel at this. And it is going to be a competition. I think that there will continue to be very aggressive pricing during 2026. I think that the people who put in the work on social media, on marketing their brand, on networking at shows are going to excel and they are going to continue to thrive. And the people who don't put in all of this different work are not going to get the results. They are going to get out competed and ultimately they will probably end up getting out as well unless they keep it small and only focus it as a hobby if that is their goals. But what ends up happening between 2026, 2027, 2028, I think is going to set the stage for the industry leaders and the next generation in the ball python industry. I think that the people who stand out, who compete really, really well and produce amazing animals right now are going to be the next generations. Bob Vu, Brock Wagner's, Justin's, things like that. But my name is Steven with Leviathan, and I hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you did, please don't forget to hit the like button, leave a comment, and subscribe. But we will see you next week.