Some people live and breathe Fantasy Football all year round, no matter what. They’re probably constantly listening to Fantasy Football podcasts and keeping up with everything going on, even in the off-season.
Then, there are people who love Fantasy, but only during the season, although they stay completely engaged the entire time.
There’s a third group that might start to lose interest as the season starts to draw to a close. If you run a fantasy league, that’s one of your big challenges—keeping everyone engaged all the way through.
You want your owners engaged in your league to make it fun and competitive.
The following are tips that can help commissioners keep it lively and engaging for everyone.
Consider Adding Money to the Equation
Everyone likes to make money, so add a bit of spice to your league with weekly payouts for high scores.
You can give everyone a chance to win back some of the buy-ins for the league, and that’ll keep even your most easily distracted owners completely engaged.
The cost of your league is what’s going to determine how much you pay out for the high score every week.
Some leagues who do this make it so that payouts are only made from weeks 9-13 because this is when teams are eliminated from potentially going to the playoffs. If the payouts on those weeks were higher, it’s definitely going to help with engagement.
You can use this strategy in a redraft or dynasty league.
Run Side Tournaments
Side tournaments are something you can run at the same time as your regular season. There are different ways you can approach this but set up a schedule at the start of the season, and then you might have two teams that are remaining in the same week as your championship game.
Depending on how you structure it, you might have teams not in the playoff do well in a different format.
Another option here is to have non-playoff teams competing for something, even if it’s not money. For example, maybe you have them competing for draft order the next year. You could even make there something fun the biggest loser of the league has to do, like hosting next year’s draft. Everyone is involved, and you’re stopping the loss of interest among owners.
Keep the Waiver Wire Open
It’s less likely that people are going to disengage in a dynasty league, but if they do, you can keep the waiver wire open.
If a team in a dynasty league is eliminated from the playoffs and can’t add players from the waiver wire, then they aren’t going to have the chance to add a great player. If your non-playoff teams are locked out from waivers, then it’s like a punishment to the very teams that most need to be able to improve their rosters.
Even small improvements to a bad roster are helpful.
If an owner isn’t able to add players after a team is eliminated from the playoffs, then they’re probably going to lose interest in their league, and that’s going to mean one owner who’s less active.
Think About Changing Your Playoff Format
If you can give more teams a chance at the playoffs, that’s, of course, going to be a good way to keep your owners involved and engaged all season long.
If you have the majority of your teams make it to the playoffs—6 of 10 as an example—then it’s going to make sure your league is lively well into the season.
Give Awards
There are a lot of ways to give awards to people that don’t necessarily indicate anything about whether or not they make it to the playoffs. You can make it serious, or fun, or a combination of both.
Send An Email
If you’re the league commissioner and you want to keep everyone’s attention, do a weekly writeup and send it out as an email.
Your emails can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. Maybe you just go over the scores from the past week and highlight some of the key players. You can also go deeper with your analysis if you prefer.
You may have to use some creativity, but there are a lot of ways to make it so a team’s record isn’t the only thing that matters in Fantasy Football. It might be the most important thing, but not the only thing. You may need to have a few perks along the way to keep everyone interested to the end of a season and then beyond.
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