NFL tipping
An NFL tipping competition run from Australia, where picking the winners is the easy part and getting people to tip before kick-off is the actual job. Eighteen weeks, 272 games, locks that follow kick-off and reminders that arrive while your audience is awake. Your logo, your colours, your domain.
Free to start. No credit card.
Thursday night football is the first lock of the week and it lands on Friday morning here. The full slate arrives in your hub with kick-off times already converted to your audience's time zone and a countdown on every fixture, so nobody is doing arithmetic in their head about what 8:15pm Eastern means.
Most of the week kicks off in one block between roughly 3am and 5am on Monday, depending on which side of the clock changes you are on. This is the part that breaks NFL competitions run from Australia. Move the late reminder earlier, so it lands on Sunday evening rather than an hour before kick-off, because an hour before kick-off is the middle of the night.
Monday night football closes the week around midday Tuesday here. Results score as each game ends, the ladder moves in real time, and the recap goes out on Tuesday afternoon while the office is still there to read it and argue about it.
Almost nothing that goes wrong in an Australian NFL competition is about the picks. It is about the clock. The week runs Friday to Tuesday, the bulk of the games land while your audience is asleep, and the time difference changes twice during the season.
The main Sunday block starts between 3am and 5am Monday in eastern Australia, and earlier again in Perth. The standard 75-minute warning arrives in the middle of the night and does precisely nothing. Set the late reminder's offset so it lands on Sunday evening (ten hours before a 4am lock is 6pm) and keep the 24-hour one as the backstop for the Thursday and Monday games, which are the only two that land at a civilised hour.
Australia goes onto daylight saving on the first Sunday in October and the United States comes off it on the first Sunday in November, so the gap goes from 14 hours to 15 to 16. Any competition that publishes fixed Australian deadlines in a welcome email will be wrong twice before Christmas. Locks have to be tied to kick-off, and reminders to the lock, so both shifts happen without anyone touching a setting.
Thursday night football lands on Friday morning here, roughly four days before the Monday night game. A single weekly deadline set at the Thursday kick-off locks people out of most of the week's football. Per-fixture locks are the right default. If you want one deadline because your audience is casual, set it at the first Sunday kick-off and leave the Thursday game out of the competition entirely, rather than scoring a game nobody could tip.
Sixteen games in a full week, fourteen when four clubs are out, thirteen in the heaviest bye week. Straight pick 'em absorbs that without anyone noticing. A confidence ladder does not: the top rung is worth 16 one week and 13 the next unless you renumber. Decide whether the ladder shrinks with the slate or the point values stay fixed, and say which before Week 1.
The playoffs run single elimination across four weekends: six Wild Card games, then four, then two, then one. Scored as ordinary rounds, the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl are worth almost nothing and your competition ends with a whimper. Either weight the later rounds upward, run the 14-team bracket as its own competition, or close the tipping at Week 18 and start something new in January.
A winner in every game, up to sixteen a week, eighteen weeks. The default, and the only format that survives an audience where half the field could not name a starting quarterback.
Rank every game in the week by how sure you are, from 16 down to 1. It rewards the people who actually watch, and it is the format most affected by bye weeks shortening the slate.
One team a week, never twice, one wrong call and you are out. Thirty-two teams against eighteen weeks means running out of teams is almost never what ends you. Bye weeks taking four or six clubs off the board is what actually does it.
Fourteen teams, thirteen games, four weekends, ending in Atlanta on 13 February 2028. Fill it out once in January and run it as a separate competition for the people who never tipped a regular-season week.
Every fixture shows its kick-off in the reader's local time with a live countdown, and reminders are timed from the lock, so they move with it. Both the October and November clock changes pass without you editing anything or fielding a single email about it.
Your logo, your colours, your domain on every screen and every email. Pro and above run on a custom domain with a custom email sender, so the Tuesday recap arrives from you and nobody sees a Fanzava logo at any point in eighteen weeks.
Friday morning to Tuesday lunchtime is a long week to hold open. Fixtures lock individually at kick-off, so the Thursday game closes on its own and the Monday night game stays open until it starts. One missed deadline costs one game, not the week.
Split your audience into groups by office, department or conference allegiance. Group leaderboards run alongside the overall one, and the Banter Board keeps the Tuesday morning argument somewhere other than your inbox.
Free to start. No credit card.