Field guide
How to split a league pot
What the calculator is doing
Three numbers decide everything. The teams and the buy-in give you what the league collects. Anything the league has to spend before prizes — a hosting fee, a trophy, the cost of the draft-night pizza — comes off the top. What is left is the prize pool, and the percentages divide it.
The part most calculators skip is the rounding. A pool of $600 split 60/30/10 lands on whole dollars, but the moment you have eleven teams, an odd buy-in, or a 40/25/20/15 split, the maths produces amounts like $233.34. Nobody hands over 34 cents. This tool rounds every place down to the increment you choose and then states plainly where the leftover goes: to first place, because that is the convention and because the alternative is a commissioner quietly keeping it.
Read the rest
Read the rest
How many places should cash
The honest answer is that it depends on how many teams are still trying in Week 12. Paying more places keeps more managers interested late, which is the single biggest problem a league has. Paying fewer places makes winning mean more.
- Eight teams or fewer: two places is usually enough. A third prize in a small league can end up smaller than the buy-in, which feels like a refund rather than a win.
- Ten to twelve teams: three places is the common shape, and it is the default here.
- Fourteen or more: three or four, often with something set aside for the best regular-season record so that the team who led all year is not left with nothing after one bad playoff week.
A rule worth keeping: no prize should ever be less than the buy-in. Getting your own money back is not a prize, and a league that pays fourth place $45 out of a $50 buy-in has invented a participation trophy nobody wanted.
The three shapes
Standard is the middle ground most leagues land on — roughly 60/30/10 for three places. First place is clearly the prize, but second and third are worth playing for.
Top-heavy pushes more of the pool to the winner (70/20/10, or 70/30 for two places). It suits leagues where the championship is the whole point and the trash talk matters more than the money. The risk is that a manager who cannot realistically win by Week 10 has no reason left to set a lineup.
Flat spreads the pool more evenly (45/30/25). It keeps more teams engaged deep into the season, which is the right call for a league with a history of people checking out. The trade-off is that winning feels less like winning.
None of these is correct in the abstract. The shape should follow what your league actually struggles with.
League costs, and taking them off the top
The League costs field exists because most leagues have some. A paid hosting tier, a trophy that gets engraved every year, the printing for a draft board. Taking these out before the split — rather than out of the winner's cheque afterwards — keeps the percentages honest and means nobody is surprised.
If your league sets money aside for weekly prizes or a most-points-scored bonus, put that total in the same field. The pool the calculator splits is then the championship money only, which is the number the percentages are actually meant to describe.
Regular season or playoffs
Fantasy playoffs are short and swingy. A team can lead the league for thirteen weeks, run into a good week from a bad team, and finish with nothing. Plenty of leagues answer this by paying the best regular-season record separately — often around ten per cent of the pool, taken off the top the same way costs are.
It is worth deciding this before the season rather than after it, because the argument only ever happens when somebody has already lost.
Practical notes for commissioners
- Collect before the draft. Chasing a buy-in in December is the least pleasant job in fantasy football, and it is entirely avoidable.
- Write the split down where everyone can see it. That is what the link button is for — paste it in the group chat before the season and the terms are settled in public.
- Round to something people can actually pay. If the league settles up in cash, rounding to $5 saves a lot of fumbling with small notes.
- Do not change the split mid-season. Even a fairer split, introduced in November, will read as favouring whoever is winning.
This tool is an organisational aid for leagues that have already decided to play for a pot. It does the arithmetic and keeps a record of what was agreed; it takes no position on whether your league should have a buy-in at all, and it handles no money.
Running a pool for a single game rather than a season? The football squares generator handles the other commissioner job: a 100-square grid, random digits drawn after everyone picks, and the per-quarter payout math worked out for you.