START A PROJECT

10 ways to improve your fantasy football league

Improving fantasy football league consistently can often lead to more exciting fantasy games. Here’s a complete guide to improve your league.

Fantasy football is getting wildly popular by the day among NFL fans. It has helped grow the game as more and more people join leagues each year. The season will be here before long, now that draft and free agency are over. And with a new league year approaching, it's time to take a look at how to improve your fantasy league.

Below are 10 suggestions to help make your league better this year. Not every suggestion needs to be implemented, but just adding one or two could improve the quality of your fantasy league.

1. Have the right people

In fantasy sports, the quantity and quality of the owner's matter. There's a proper range in numbers of owners, which is somewhere between eight and 14. Any fewer and every team is loaded, while anymore than 14 (which is pushing it) and the teams are too thin. But quality also matters. Most leagues have at least one "Taco" (the guy who lacks effort), but too many careless or clueless owners will drag down the league. So if there's that one guy everyone hates having in the league but he keeps hanging around because no one wants to hurt his feelings: it's okay to remove him from the league.

2. Have fun determining the draft order

Rather than just picking the names out of hat, go in reverse order of last year's standings, or whatever, have some fun figuring out your league's draft order. Try an actual draft lottery system, do a drinking competition or even a skills challenge. Adding an event around the draft order can help increase the hype around your draft and get your league excited about a new year of fantasy football.

3. Do your draft live

A live draft is simply way better than the short online-only version. Rather than sitting in front of a computer screen watching the ESPN / Yahoo / NFL.com draft screen, get together with all your league mates. It can be a bit tricky to get everyone's schedules matched up, but it's far more fun to do a live draft and talk trash in-person.

4. Put money down

If you're struggling with the Taco of your league and his inability to set his lineup, increase the stakes. Have a buy-in for your league: 10 bucks, 50, whatever. Then have the winner, second place and even third place - get some percentage of the pool.

5. Punish the last placed team

Ever noticed how the teams that don't make the playoffs totally stop trying once they're eliminated, even if it's still the regular season? Here's the way to prevent that: Implement a "Sacko" type punishment. Any number of things or events can qualify as a solid Sacko. The team placed last could pay more money, they may have to do something embarrassing in public, or they get the last choice of draft pick in next year's draft or something like re-take the SAT. Whatever it is, you can be sure that the bottom-tier teams won't quit over the final few weeks.

6. Add some type of in-season money bonus

While playing off the most recent point, another way to keep league interest up during the season is to have some type of in-season monetary bonus that can be earned each week. The easiest option is to give team with the most points a certain amount of money (five bucks, 10 bucks, whatever). You could give a bonus to the team with the highest-scoring player or something unusual like highest-scoring kicker.

7. Consider moving to a dynasty or keeper league

If your fantasy league doesn't have much turnover in terms of owners, moving to a dynasty or keeper league is a good option. Dynasty leagues feature the same rosters each year, save for the drafting of new players and cuts throughout the season. Keeper leagues allow owners to keep a few players (normally 1-2) each year. But be warned: once you start a dynasty or keeper league (especially dynasty), it's tricky to go back to a re-draft league since the draft strategy changes.

8. Tweak the scoring

If your league is getting stale, some point changes could provide some new energy. It can be as simple as moving to (or away) from PPR or adding IDPs (Individual Defensive Players). Do you wish to be more creative? We recommend incorporating punters into your league, though you will need to have flexible league settings to make that work.

9. Use social media to your advantage

You may not be able to pull off the fake Adam Schefter twitter account which leaks information about various trades in your league (like a league in Matthew Berry's Fantasy Life book did), but social media can help out your league. Consider setting up a Facebook group for all the league members that acts as a center for everything short of making roster moves. You may propose rule changes, put players on the block and talk trash all in one spot.

10. Use your veto power wisely

A successfully fantasy league provides the element of veto. It can help prevent obvious lopsided trades where there's collusion involved. However, that should be the limit of the veto power, be it in the hands of the commissioner only or via a league-wide vote. It should not be used simply because one owner made a bad trade. Use the veto in cases of obvious collusion.

IN A NUTSHELL
  • Do your draft live
  • Put money down
  • Punish the last placed team
  • Add some type of in-season money bonus
  • Consider moving to a dynasty or keeper league
  • Tweak the scoring
  • Use your veto power wisely

About Vinfotech

Vinfotech creates world’s best fantasy sports-based entertainment, marketing and rewards platforms for fantasy sports startups, sports leagues, casinos and media companies. We promise initial set of real engaged users to put turbo in your fantasy platform growth. Our award winning software vFantasy™ allows us to build stellar rewards platform faster and better. Our customers include Zee Digital, Picklive and Arabian Gulf League.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE…

Opinion Trading Games: The Ultimate Solution to User Engagement Challenges for Betting Companies

Dec 6, 2023

Opinion Trading Games Development - Empower your financial platform with custom opinion trading games similar ...

Dec 6, 2023

Partner with Vinfotech for unparalleled sports technology and iGaming solutions, driving revenue growth and en...

Nov 20, 2023

Explore the innovative proposal to introduce DFS Tournaments in Casinos and Sportsbooks, revolutionizing user ...

Nov 17, 2023

How to build a fantasy cricket website & mobile app like Dream11?

Read More
Trending Now
vinfotech-up-arrow