Pick'em pool

Eighteen weeks, one leaderboard, nobody chasing picks.

Run your pick'em league under your own brand. Fixtures, lock times and results come straight off the live feed, confidence points are built into the scoring, and your Monday morning is a recap email instead of a spreadsheet.

Free to start. No credit card.

The season your pool has to survive.

Regular season length
18 weeks, 17 games per team, one bye each
Games to pick
272 across the regular season
A full week
16 games, which is a 16-rung confidence ladder
A bye week
Four teams out is 14 games, so the ladder gets shorter and the math changes
When byes run
Week 5 through Week 14, with one week in the middle where all 32 teams play
The heaviest bye week
Six teams out at once, which strips three games off the slate
Playoff field
14 teams, seven per conference
Playoff games
13, from six wild card games down to one
First-round byes
One per conference, the top seed only

How a pick'em league runs on Fanzava.

  1. Stand the hub up.

    Your logo, your colors, your name on the competition. Participants join by invite link, QR code or bulk upload. Setting it up takes an afternoon and does not need anyone from IT.

  2. The schedule arrives on its own.

    Every week's fixtures and lock times come in from the live data feed. You are not typing in the Thursday night game, you are not adjusting for a flexed Sunday night kickoff, and you are not the person who forgets that four teams are on bye.

  3. Everyone picks, with weight behind it.

    Participants pick a winner in each game and apply confidence to the ones they are sure about, so a pick that carries more weight pays more and costs more. Reminders go out 24 hours and one hour before lock.

  4. Results score themselves.

    The moment a game ends, the result lands and scores update. Your participants know where they stand overall, inside their group and against every other group, before the postgame show is finished.

  5. Monday morning does the work.

    Every participant gets a recap: their score, their rank, their standing in their group. On Pro and Enterprise hubs an AI-generated round recap goes out automatically, so the week starts with an argument nobody had to write.

Straight pick'em, or confidence.

Both formats fit the same 16-game week. They produce completely different leaderboards, and the difference is worth choosing on purpose.

Straight pick'em.

One point per correct winner. Easy to explain, easy to join late, and it keeps casual participants in the game all season because a good week is a good week no matter which games you got. This is the format that survives contact with a workplace.

Confidence points.

Instead of every game being worth the same, participants stake more on the picks they believe in. The lock you are certain about carries your weight; the coin-flip division game carries almost none. Fanzava ships confidence weighting as part of the scoring, so the ranking and the math are handled for you.

Why confidence changes the season.

In straight pick'em, everyone who goes 11 and 5 ties. In a confidence pool, two people can both go 11 and 5 and finish a long way apart, because one of them put their weight on the right games. It rewards conviction rather than hit rate, and it makes a mid-table week feel like it mattered.

Joker picks.

An optional multiplier your participants deploy once per round or strategically across a season. Mark a game as your Joker, get it right and you earn double or more, get it wrong and you lose nothing extra. Set the multiplier anywhere from 1.5 times to 3 times.

Margin as the tiebreaker.

Each round, participants predict the winning margin on one designated game. It does not move weekly points. It settles the season, because when two people finish level the more accurate cumulative margin across every round takes it. Nobody shares a title on a coin toss.

Perfect week bonus.

An optional bonus for anyone who gets every game in a round right. Set the value yourself or leave it off. In a 16-game week it almost never pays out, which is exactly why the one person who does it never stops mentioning it.

Why a season-long pool needs more than a form.

Eighteen weeks is a long time to do admin.

A pick'em pool is not one event, it is eighteen of them. The form-and-spreadsheet version works until Week 3, then the commissioner starts dreading Tuesdays. Automatic fixtures and automatic scoring is the whole difference between a pool that finishes the season and one that quietly stops.

Late joiners do not break it.

People hear about a pool in Week 2. Invite links stay open, participants join mid-season, and the leaderboard handles it without you rebuilding anything.

Groups make a big pool feel small.

Split the field by office, region, client or friend group. Each one runs its own standings and its own head-to-head against every other group. The person in 140th place is still first in their group, and that is why they keep picking.

It carries your brand, not ours.

Paid plans ship full white-label across every screen, every email and every notification. Pro and Enterprise add a custom domain and a custom email sender, so the weekly email arrives from your address and reads as yours.

Questions pick'em commissioners ask.

What is the difference between a pick'em pool and a confidence pool?
In a pick'em pool every game is worth the same, so your score is just how many winners you got. In a confidence pool you also say how sure you are, and your points follow your conviction. Same picks, different leaderboard. Fanzava runs both, and confidence weighting is part of the scoring rather than something you calculate on the side.
Do you handle bye weeks and flexed kickoffs?
Yes. Fixtures, lock times and results come from the live data feed, so a week with four teams on bye is simply a 14-game week and a schedule change updates without you touching it.
Can we run this for something other than the NFL?
Yes. The live feed reaches a long way past the NFL: the NBA, MLB, NHL, a dozen national soccer leagues, the AFL and the NRL, rugby union and rugby league, six golf tours, Formula 1, NASCAR, IndyCar and MotoGP, UFC and boxing, cricket, esports and plenty more. The sports page has the full list. Tennis is on the feed but its scoring is still being built, so it is coming rather than ready. Anything the feed does not cover runs as a custom competition with fixtures you enter yourself.
What happens to people who forget to pick?
That is a setting. Reminders go out 24 hours and one hour before lock, and you decide the late pick policy for anyone who still misses: a zero, a default, or whatever keeps your pool civil.
Is there any betting involved?
None. There are no odds, no spreads and no wagering in Fanzava. It is a fan and workplace engagement platform, so picks are picks and the prize is the leaderboard.
What does it cost to run a league?
Plans start free, with the free plan covering 25 participants and one competition at a time. The pricing page has the full breakdown of what each plan includes. Plans are billed in US dollars.

Ready to run your pick'em league under your own brand?

Free to start. No credit card.

Want a different format? See every competition →