How do you handle an office spread across time zones?

Locks follow kickoff, so nothing depends on where anyone sits. Each player sees kickoff times and countdowns on their own clock, and reminders go out on that clock too: the 24 hour reminder lands on Saturday and the late one before the Sunday early games, whether that is mid-morning in Vancouver or early afternoon in St. John's.

What happens when the clocks change?

Nothing you have to do. Canada and the United States fall back on the same Sunday in November, so for most of the country kickoffs stay where they were. Saskatchewan and Yukon do not change their clocks, so every kickoff lands an hour later there. Because locks are tied to kickoff and reminders are timed from the lock, that passes without a settings change. The only thing that breaks is a deadline you printed in a welcome email.

Do bye weeks need special handling?

The schedule handles them. Weeks 5 to 14 carry byes, with one week in the middle where all 32 teams play, so a week is 16 games, 14, or 13 in the heaviest week. A straight pick'em is unaffected. If you run confidence, decide whether the ranking shrinks with the slate or the point values stay fixed, and publish that in Week 1.

Can we pick the playoffs too?

Yes, and it is worth deciding how before Week 1. Thirteen games across four weekends scored as ordinary weeks leaves the Super Bowl worth roughly one sixteenth of a regular week. Weight the later rounds, or run the 14 team bracket as a separate competition in January, which is the version that brings back everyone who drifted off in November.

Free for up to 25 players, no credit card. Paid plans are billed in Australian dollars, and the pricing page lists each plan's price and player cap. Larger organizations run on an enterprise licence with SSO and dedicated support.

NFL pick'em

One NFL week, six time zones, one office pool.

An NFL pick'em pool run from Canada, where picking the winners is the easy part and getting St. John's and Victoria to pick before kickoff is the actual job. Eighteen weeks, 272 games, locks that follow kickoff and reminders set on each player's own clock. Your logo, your colours, your domain.

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The 2027 NFL season, at a glance.

Regular season: 18 weeks, 17 games per team, one bye each. 272 games across 32 teams.
Seventeen games, confirmed: 2027 runs on the 17 game schedule. The 18 game proposal was not agreed for this season, and the NFL has locked Super Bowl LXII in for February 13, 2028, which fixes the whole calendar behind it.
Week 1: Opens on the Thursday after Labour Day, which falls on Monday, September 6, 2027. Week 18 closes on the first full weekend of January 2028.
Super Bowl LXII: Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, February 13, 2028. A Sunday evening kickoff in the east and a late afternoon one on the West Coast.
Byes: Weeks 5 to 14, with one week in the middle where all 32 teams play. A full week is 16 games, a normal bye week is 14, and the heaviest bye week drops to 13.
Playoffs: 14 teams, seven per conference. Six Wild Card games, four Divisional, two Conference Championships and the Super Bowl. Thirteen games, and only the top seed in each conference gets a first round bye.
The Canadian week: Thursday night football kicks off at 5:15pm in Vancouver and 9:45pm in St. John's. The Sunday early slate starts at 10am Pacific, and Monday night closes the week before most of the country goes to bed.
Six time zones: Newfoundland runs half an hour ahead of Atlantic time and four and a half hours ahead of Pacific. The same kickoff is breakfast, lunch or mid-afternoon depending on which office a player sits in.
Saskatchewan and Yukon: Neither changes its clocks. When the rest of the country falls back on Sunday, November 7, 2027, every kickoff moves an hour later on a Regina or Whitehorse clock and stays there until spring.

What a week looks like from Canada.

Thursday, the week opens.

Thursday night football is the first lock of the week. The full slate arrives in your hub with kickoff times already shown in each player's own time zone and a countdown on every game, so nobody in Calgary is working out what 8:15pm Eastern means.
Sunday, most of the week locks in one afternoon.

The bulk of the games kick off in two windows on Sunday, from 1pm and just after 4pm Eastern. That is 10am in Vancouver and 2:30pm in St. John's. The 24 hour reminder lands on Saturday, and the late one goes out on each player's own clock, so the West Coast is not reminded at dawn and the East Coast is not reminded after the early games have locked.
Monday night, the week scores itself.

Monday night football closes the week. Results score as each game ends, the standings move in real time, and the recap is waiting on Tuesday morning while the office is still there to read it and argue about it.

The arguments every Canadian NFL pool organizer has.

Almost nothing that goes wrong in a coast to coast NFL pool is about the picks. It is about the clock. The same game kicks off at three different times of day across one office, two provinces and a territory ignore the fall time change, and American Thanksgiving lands on an ordinary Canadian Thursday.

One printed deadline is wrong for most of the country.

Write "picks close at 1pm" in a welcome email and you have told Vancouver to pick by 10am and left Halifax an hour it does not have. Every deadline has to be the kickoff itself, shown on each player's own clock. Per-game locks from the live feed do that without anyone publishing a time.

American Thanksgiving is a Canadian workday.

Three games on Thursday, November 25, 2027, the first of them around lunchtime Eastern, on a day most of your office is at work. A weekly pool with a single Sunday deadline would score games that were already over. Per-game locks keep the Thursday games open until they start, and a reminder the evening before catches the people who pick on the weekend.

Decide whether the week locks once or game by game.

Thursday night football kicks off about four days before the Monday night game. A single weekly deadline set at the Thursday kickoff locks people out of most of the week's football. Per-game locks are the right default. If you want one deadline because your office is casual, set it at the first Sunday kickoff and leave the Thursday game out of the pool entirely, rather than scoring a game nobody could pick.

Byes change the size of the week, and confidence pools feel it hardest.

Sixteen games in a full week, fourteen when four teams are out, thirteen in the heaviest bye week. A straight pick'em absorbs that without anyone noticing. A confidence ranking does not: the top pick is worth 16 one week and 13 the next unless you renumber. Decide whether the ranking shrinks with the slate or the point values stay fixed, and say which before Week 1.

Thirteen playoff games are not thirteen more weeks.

The playoffs run single elimination across four weekends: six Wild Card games, then four, then two, then one. Scored as ordinary weeks, the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl are worth almost nothing and your pool ends with a whimper. Either weight the later rounds upward, run the 14 team bracket as its own competition, or close the pool at Week 18 and start something new in January.

Formats that suit an 18 week season.

Season-long pick'em

A winner in every game, up to sixteen a week, eighteen weeks. The default, and the only format that survives an office where half the field could not name a starting quarterback.

Confidence

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.

Survivor

One team a week, never twice, one wrong call and you are out. Survivor is not a switch-on mode yet, so talk to our team about the rules you run. The format page explains what to settle first.

Playoff bracket

Fourteen teams, thirteen games, four weekends, ending in Atlanta on February 13, 2028. Fill it out once in January and run it as a separate competition for the people who never picked a regular season week.

Why run your NFL pool on Fanzava.

Times and reminders on each player's clock, not the stadium's.

Every game shows its kickoff in the reader's local time with a live countdown, and reminders are timed from the lock, so they move with it. Newfoundland's half hour, Saskatchewan's fixed clock and the November time change all pass without you editing anything or fielding a single email about them.

Your brand, not ours.

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.

Per-game locks across a five day week.

Thursday night to Monday night is a long week to hold open. Games lock individually at kickoff, 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.

Groups, rivalries and a Banter Board.

Split your office into groups by city, department or team allegiance. Group leaderboards run alongside the overall one, and the Banter Board keeps the Monday morning argument somewhere other than your inbox.

Questions NFL pool organizers ask.

How do you handle an office spread across time zones?: Locks follow kickoff, so nothing depends on where anyone sits. Each player sees kickoff times and countdowns on their own clock, and reminders go out on that clock too: the 24 hour reminder lands on Saturday and the late one before the Sunday early games, whether that is mid-morning in Vancouver or early afternoon in St. John's.
What happens when the clocks change?: Nothing you have to do. Canada and the United States fall back on the same Sunday in November, so for most of the country kickoffs stay where they were. Saskatchewan and Yukon do not change their clocks, so every kickoff lands an hour later there. Because locks are tied to kickoff and reminders are timed from the lock, that passes without a settings change. The only thing that breaks is a deadline you printed in a welcome email.
Do bye weeks need special handling?: The schedule handles them. Weeks 5 to 14 carry byes, with one week in the middle where all 32 teams play, so a week is 16 games, 14, or 13 in the heaviest week. A straight pick'em is unaffected. If you run confidence, decide whether the ranking shrinks with the slate or the point values stay fixed, and publish that in Week 1.
Can we pick the playoffs too?: Yes, and it is worth deciding how before Week 1. Thirteen games across four weekends scored as ordinary weeks leaves the Super Bowl worth roughly one sixteenth of a regular week. Weight the later rounds, or run the 14 team bracket as a separate competition in January, which is the version that brings back everyone who drifted off in November.
What does it cost?: Free for up to 25 players, no credit card. Paid plans are billed in Australian dollars, and the pricing page lists each plan's price and player cap. Larger organizations run on an enterprise licence with SSO and dedicated support.

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