It is hard to believe that this time last year, we were launching our new fantasy football podcast. I was in way over my head, but we have come a long way thanks to all of the support from the loyal listeners. We have now been chilling in the top 12 for all sports podcasts for a while. An early part of the journey included a listener fantasy football league. I wanted to give back to the listeners, so it was my goal to design the perfect fantasy football format that:
- Maximized draft strategy and in-season strategy
- Made the league deep enough that every coach was out of their comfort zone and facing a fresh new challenge
- Implemented DFS matchup concepts into the league
Need more advice? Get access to our Draft Kit and Draft Wizard tools 
It was intimidating to many, and will likely be to you if this is your first time hearing about it, but it was an unbelievable success. I’ll tell you about the league settings in a moment, but first, here are some comments from the league Slack channel:
“This is the single greatest league I’ve ever been a part of and there wasn’t even money involved.”
“Every fantasy league should adopt these settings. I’ve never had more fun!”
“I’m the commish of my league and we will be adopting the full rulebook from now on.”
“The rest of my fantasy leagues will be dull after how incredible this one was.”
“Never in my life have I had to use more strategy than in this league. It was amazing!”
We saw a whopping 52 trades and 750+ pickups during the season!
You get the point. I felt the same way. It was significantly better than I could have ever imagined. We will be using it for the listener league again, but even if you don’t make it into the listener league, try it on your own with your family and friends. I can assure you will love it as much as we all did.
Ok, take a deep breath and bear with me. If you want an intense league, look no further and just embrace the madness.
Free Market League Settings
- 20 Teams
- 4 Divisions
- 8 Teams make the playoffs
- 4 Division Winners
- 2 Wild Cards
- 1 Team with most overall points regardless of record
- 1 team from the rest who posts the best score in Week 13 (keeps things interesting for everyone)
- The division winners get to select their playoff opponent from the 4 non-division-winners
- Auction Draft ($200 budget)
- Every dollar you don’t spend gets transferred to your FAAB in-season budget (1 auction dollar = 5 FAAB dollars)
- FAAB Budget is $350 before leftover draft dollar additions
- You can sell/trade/rent players for more FAAB Budget money
- 1 QB*
- 1 RB
- 2 WR
- 1 TE
- 1 Super Flex (QB/RB/WR/TE — most will use this slot for QB)
- 2 Standard Flex (RB/WR/TE)
- 2 Bench
*You can only have two QBs on your roster at one time or you receive a $25 FAAB fine and your third lowest ranked QB is automatically dropped by the commish
- Every Tuesday you have to drop 3 players
- Which means every Wednesday a bidding war ensues as everyone plays the week’s matchups (hence the huge FAAB budget)
- 0.5 PPR, otherwise standard scoring
15 Free Market League Strategies
#1) Quarterback value is insane in this league, just like in real life. Having two QBs is a luxury, so don’t hesitate to spend big on them in your auction.
#2) Make sure to manage your bye weeks accordingly. With only 2 bench spots on your roster and injuries inevitable, you must stay organized in regards to bye weeks.
#3) All kinds of strategies were invented during the season and likely will be in your league too. One popular idea was the warehouse: If you don’t have two players who are injured or on a bye, you rent out one of your bench spots to someone in desperate need. So for instance, they would give you $20 FAAB (or sometimes the lowest bidder is just $5 FAAB), for you to take Tom Brady during his bye week. You proceed to keep Brady on your bench for a week, then give him back for nothing the following week. FAAB comes in real handy considering everyone will make at least 36 pickups during the season.
#4) Rostering injured and suspended players hurts. If you do it, don’t be afraid to use a warehouse because an empty spot in your starting roster is rarely worth the future return of your player.
#5) Punting a week is an acceptable practice. It may be better to throw Week 8 so that you don’t have to worry about having players on byes five or six other weeks during the year.
#6) Rather than waste a healthy player for a week on the bench, you can rent out players to teams in need of a warm body. It may even make sense to rent to your rival’s opponent for one week at a discounted price.
#7) Instead of dropping someone useful during the mandatory Tuesday drops, put them up for bid over the weekend and see if you can get paid to lose a player you were going to drop anyway.
#8) Since you will be dropping 3 players every week, try to establish a core of 7 players (we called them keepers) that is dominant.
#9) Weekly FAAB pickups can be long term moves, but typically, you are looking for one solid matchup. This goes for players #8 through #10 in your draft as well. Draft for Week 1 and plan on cutting bait afterward.
#10) Don’t worry about spending all of your auction budget. In fact, if you save $50 during the auction, you start with $600 FAAB bucks, or 71% more than the rest of the league, and you can push your way around in weekly waivers.
#11) If you are not doing well, start planning early for Week 13, where even the worst team can sneak their way into the playoffs and make a dream tournament run if they get hot.
#12) The free market dictates everything in these leagues. Learn your league’s economy and take advantage of any values you can find.
#13) Pitch in. There is no platform (yet) that allows the bidding, dropping and playoff format to automate. To have a league this great, there needs to be a few guys or gals who make it happen.
#14) If you wish to make this a keeper’s or dynasty league, incentivize teams to compete throughout the season by giving out an extra $10 in FAAB for next season for every win above .500, and penalize teams for every loss below .500.
#15) Create a slack team to build league community. The best part of this league was that we were all chatting about it non-stop. Here is a sample of the channels we created:
- #DFSchatter
- #TuesdayDrops
- #GameDay
- #NFLchatter
- #Random
- #Rules
- #TradeAnnouncements
- #TradeBidding
- #TradeTalk
- #WaiverWire
How to submit an entry into the listener league
- E-mail contest@fantasypros.com
- Make the title “Listener League”
- Use only 10 words to tell me why you want in
We will select 17 listeners to compete against a co-managed Bobby/Tags team, Dan Harris and last year’s champ, Eli.
Thanks for reading. If you haven’t already, please check out the FantasyPros Football Podcast (below) that I co-host with Mike Tagliere. Good luck this season.
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