Are you bored of every Fantasy team in your mini-league captaining Sergio Aguero? Are you tired of seeing the same 20 players in every team? Are you frustrated by budgetary restrictions while building your roster? Do you enjoy making transfers so much that you always end up taking points-hits and undermining your success? Do you want to promote interaction in your mini-league, bringing managers in direct contact with one another on a regular basis? Are you looking for a new challenge?
If your answer is “yes” to any of these questions, then it’s time to start a draft league. At its most basic level, this intensely popular Fantasy format from American football replaces the major limiting factor of FPL (player price) with player availability—every player exists only once in your league. There is only one team with Sergio Aguero. Only one with Eden Hazard. Only one with Alexis Sanchez. Instead of managing a team to compete against the world, draft leagues work like head-to-head mini-leagues, pitting you against a different team each week. You play against your friends and co-workers, and your team can win or lose on a weekly basis.
These leagues begin the season with a draft. All the managers sit down with a list of all the available players and each one picks one player at a time until each squad is full. The most common draft format is the snake draft in which the pick order reverses after each round. For example, Manager A gets picks 1, 20, 21, 40, 41…, Manager B gets picks 2, 19, 22, 39, 42…, Manager C gets picks 3, 18, 23, 38, 43…, Manager D gets picks 4, 17, 24, 37, 44…, etc.
Annoyed that your archrival beat you last weekend? Don’t burn that bridge yet. The head-to-head format isn’t the only factor to promoting manager interaction. Rather than purchasing players you want from a transfer list, managers must instead trade for players who are already owned. Do you want Sergio Aguero? Would you be willing to give David Silva and Romelu Lukaku to get him? Negotiation between managers plays a key role in this game since there is no arbitrary pricing or algorithm to establish a player’s value.
Last season, a group of friends and I organized our first-ever draft league. It proved to be a roaring success. While there was only one eventual winner, there were only two points separating the top three teams heading into gameweek 37. Fierce competition characterised our league, and even the biggest underdog could pull off an upset on any given game week.
Are you interested? There are some websites out there that offer draft style games and leagues but I personally managed the league myself manually through a variety of spreadsheets in Google Docs. I’d be happy to answer any questions about my experience thus far or share any information I have. Also, depending upon the response to this article, I would be happy to write a drafting guide for those taking the plunge (or already involved) in a league.
Here’s a sneak preview my personal top 10 draft picks for this season (subject to change, of course):
1. Sergio Aguero
2. Harry Kane
3. Eden Hazard
4. Diego Costa
5. Alexis Sanchez
6. David Silva
7. Sadio Mane
8. Nacer Chadli
9. Cesc Fabregas
10. Olivier Giroud
