Footy tipping is a season-long game where everyone picks the winner of each match, scores a point for every correct pick and climbs a leaderboard week by week. To run a comp, choose your code (AFL, NRL or both), decide the scoring and tie-break rules before round one, invite your people and let the leaderboard do the arguing. Fanzava runs the fixtures, locks and scoring for you. A spreadsheet works for a small group, and gets harder to run every week.
What is footy tipping?
Footy tipping is picking who will win each game before it starts. A round is a weekend of matches, from Thursday night to Sunday. Get a tip right and you score points, get it wrong and you score nothing unless you have set otherwise, and the leaderboard adds it up across the season.
“Footy” means Australian rules in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory, and rugby league in New South Wales and Queensland. If your group spans the border, run both. The 2027 NRL season opens on Saturday 27 February and AFL Round 1 runs from Wednesday 17 March, so NRL comps open first and AFL comps follow a few weeks later.
How do you set up a footy tipping comp?
- Decide who it is for and which code. A workplace, a club, a pub, a family. That tells you how many people to plan for and how much scoring they will put up with.
- Write the rules down before round one. Format, scoring, byes, late tips, tie-breaks and prizes. Anything you decide in June, after the leaderboard turns upside down, will start an argument.
- Create the competition. On Fanzava, sign up free, create your hub, then create the competition and choose AFL or NRL. The scoring section is where you set points per correct tip, the late-tip policy, confidence, the tie-breaker margin and jokers. Jokers are fixed when you create the competition, so decide them first.
- Invite your people. Invite by email, share a join link or import a CSV.
- Check the reminders. You can set how long before a round locks the reminder emails go out.
- Launch and leave the rules alone. You can change scoring after a round has been scored, but it publishes as a new version that applies from then on. People do not like the goalposts moving.
Which format should you run?
Most comps run straight tips and add one or two extras. Each extra changes who wins and how the comp feels.
| Format | What it rewards | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Straight tips | Picking winners | Mixed groups, where most people just want a reason to check in on Monday |
| Margin | Knowing how a game will finish | Groups who watch the footy, not just follow it |
| Joker | Trusting your best read of the round | Keeping people 40 points back still in it in August |
| Confidence | Knowing how sure you are | Tipping nerds who want a harder game |
Straight tips
Pick the winner of every game. A correct tip is worth 1 point on Fanzava unless you change it, and a wrong tip is worth nothing. Everyone understands it in one sentence, which is why it works for a mixed audience.
Margin
Margin tipping asks for the winning margin as well as the winner. A margin is worth a margin weight when it is called exactly and loses one point for every point of error, never going below zero. The weight defaults to 3, which pays almost nobody in the AFL, where a 40-point margin is an ordinary result. Set it high enough that a good guess is rewarded.
Margin can ride on top of a correct winner pick, or stand alone and pay whether or not the winner was picked. Fanzava also runs Margin as its own competition type, where everyone enters a margin on every game.
Joker
Every tipper nominates a tip to score at a multiplier, from ×1.5 to ×3. Get it right and it pays. Get it wrong and it costs nothing extra, because the multiplier only ever applies to a correct pick. Set jokers per round, or as a bank of jokers each person spends across the season. That asymmetry is what keeps someone who is well back still playing.
Confidence
Tippers rate how sure they are of each pick. In multiplier mode the rating scales a correct tip between 0.5× and 2.0×. In ladder mode people rank every game in the round and a correct pick is worth its rank, which is a harder game with bigger swings. Choose the mode before round one. There is more on the confidence format.
How should scoring work?
Keep it simple: one point for a correct tip, nothing for a wrong one, and add a mechanic only when you can explain it in a sentence.
- Every game locks on its own. Each game closes at its scheduled start, with a two-minute grace period, so a Thursday-night game closes on Thursday and Sunday games stay open until Sunday.
- Decide what a missed game costs. The late-tip policy can record nothing, score zero, or give the tipper an automatic pick for the home or away side.
- Decide about draws. You can let people pick the draw as a third option beside the two teams. A team pick on a drawn game is a wrong tip.
- Consider a perfect round bonus. It is a flat bonus, paid once, for tipping every game in a round correctly. On a nine-game round at one point a tip, five extra points is a real reward without deciding the season on its own.
What do you do about byes?
Both codes have rounds with fewer games. With 18 clubs across 24 rounds, every AFL club has a bye, so some rounds carry fewer than nine games. NRL rounds vary in size too.
Fanzava scores each round over the games actually played, and every game is worth the same, so a six-game round is worth fewer points than a nine-game one. Say so on the rules sheet and move on. If you want a perfect round to mean the same whatever the size, the perfect round bonus is a flat amount per round.
Joining mid-season leaves someone behind. If that bothers your group, start a second competition at a later round, which a Fanzava competition can do from its advanced options.
How do tie-breaks work?
Decide the tie-break before you need it. On Fanzava, a tie is broken in this order:
- Total points.
- Tie-breaker margin. Every round has a tie-breaker game, the round’s first game by kick-off, where tippers can also predict the winning margin. Each person’s error is added up across the season, and the smallest wins.
- Later-round form. Correct tips weighted by the round they were made in, so a correct tip in round 20 counts for more than one in round 2.
Anyone still level after that shares the place. Someone who leaves the margin blank is given the competition’s default margin as their error, which is usually worse than a real guess, so it pays to enter one every round. The tie-breaker margin is switched on when you create the competition. If a prize depends on a final place, decide in advance how you will split it.
What prizes can you offer without cash?
Fanzava never handles entry money. The organiser or a sponsor supplies the prize, and it works best when people can see it from round one.
- A trophy that moves. The weekly leader holds it until someone takes it off them.
- Lunch. The winner chooses the team lunch, or the office shouts it.
- The wooden spoon. A small joke prize for last place keeps the bottom of the ladder playing.
- Round prizes. A coffee for the best score each round gives people a reason to care in round 12.
- A charity donation. The business gives in the winner’s name.
Add the prizes when you create the competition so people see what they are playing for from the start. Recording who has been given what is prize administration, which is on paid plans from Starter.
How do you get people to join?
- Go where they already are. Share the join link in the team chat, the intranet or an email. Print it as a QR code for the kitchen wall.
- Make it quick. There is no app to install. People join in their phone browser, in under a minute.
- Announce the prizes before round one. People who can see the prize are more engaged from the start.
- Keep a rhythm. Reminder emails before each lock and a leaderboard to check on Monday mean the comp does not depend on you nagging the group chat.
Spreadsheet or platform?
| Spreadsheet | Fanzava | |
|---|---|---|
| Fixtures and results | You type them in every week | Come from the live data feed for AFL and NRL |
| Locking | Nothing stops a tip after kick-off | Each game locks at its own start time |
| Missed tips | You police them | The late-tip policy applies them |
| Scoring, jokers, margin, tie-breaks | Your formulas, checked by hand | Built in |
| Reminders | You nag the group chat | Reminder emails before each lock |
| Leaderboard | You repost it each week | Updates as each result comes in |
| Look | Your file | Your logo and colours |
A spreadsheet is a fair choice for a small group over a short season, especially if you enjoy running it. The trouble shows up mid-season: someone edits a tip after kick-off, the results need typing on Sunday night, and the formulas only you understand break while you are away.
The Free plan holds up to 25 participants and 1 competition at a time, with no credit card. Running both codes means two competitions, and Starter at A$39 a month (GST included) runs 3 at once for up to 100 participants. See how each code plays on the pages for AFL tipping, NRL tipping and footy tipping, or look at the tipping product. Running a sweep for the Cup first? Start with our guide to running a Melbourne Cup sweep.
Frequently asked questions
Can you run AFL and NRL tipping in the same comp?
Run one competition for each code. Each gets its own leaderboard and its own scoring settings, and both sit on the same hub, so people sign up once and can enter either or both.
What happens if someone forgets to tip?
That is the late-tip policy, and you choose it when you create the competition. A missed game can record nothing, score zero, or be given an automatic pick for the home or away side, so someone who missed one deadline stays in touch with the leaderboard.
Does the joker cost you points if it is wrong?
No. A joker only multiplies a correct tip. A wrong joker scores exactly what any other wrong tip scores, which is nothing unless you have set a penalty for incorrect tips.
How do you break a tie on the leaderboard?
On total points first, then on tie-breaker margin, which adds up how far each person's margin guess was from the real margin on each round's first game. After that comes later-round form, and anyone still level shares the place.
Is footy tipping free to run?
Fanzava is free to start, with no credit card. Paid plans add room for more participants and more competitions at once as your group grows.