How to run a paid FPL mini-league

Pick a number that the least keen person in your group will pay without thinking twice. The point of the fee is to stop people abandoning their team in October, not to build a pot worth winning — a league where half the managers stopped making transfers by Christmas is a worse prize than a smaller one where everyone is still trying.

£10 to £20 a head is the usual range for a group-chat league. Whatever you pick, say it in the same message as the invite code, so nobody joins under the impression it's free.

This is the single highest-value thing you will do all season. Post the split before the first deadline and get people to actually acknowledge it. A split written in August is a rule; the same split proposed in April is a stitch-up.

A structure that works for most leagues:

• 50% to the winner. Enough that winning means something.
• 25% second, 15% third. Keeps the chasing pack interested past March.
• The last 10% on something anyone can win. Highest score in a single gameweek is the usual choice — it stays live for managers who are out of the title race by November.

Some leagues add a wooden spoon: last place pays a small forfeit into next season's pot. It's good for morale as long as it's agreed up front like everything else.

Collect everything before the first deadline. Not most of it — all of it. Chasing a fee from someone whose team is 40 points off the pace in November is a genuinely unpleasant job, and it is the main reason people stop volunteering to run these things.

Three rules that make it work:

• One payment method, stated once, in writing. Options create questions.
• Ask for a reference — their team name or their actual name. Nothing wastes more time than an unattributed transfer.
• Set a hard cut-off: paid by the GW1 deadline or you're not in the prize pool. Enforce it once and you'll never have to again.

Keep the ledger somewhere everyone can see. Most of the awkwardness of chasing payment disappears when there's a visible list, because nobody wants to be the name still showing unpaid.

Every paid league eventually hits these. Answer them in August, in the same message as the prize split, and you will never argue about them:

• Someone joins late. Do they pay full whack, and do their points before joining count? Usual answer: full fee, and the league table counts from when they joined, which is what FPL does anyway.
• Someone stops playing. Their fee stays in the pot. Say so now.
• A dead heat. FPL splits ties on total points, then overall rank. Say you'll use that, or that you'll split the money — either is fine, deciding in May is not.
• Someone copies a well-known manager's team. Divisive. Some leagues ban it, most allow it. Have a view before it happens.
• When do you pay out? Name the date — usually within a week of Gameweek 38.

By February most of your league can't win. That's when teams get abandoned, and an abandoned team distorts everyone else's standings for the rest of the season.

The fixes are cheap:

• A monthly prize, even a small one, resets the competition every four weeks
• A single-gameweek high score prize stays winnable by anyone until GW38
• Post the table somewhere they'll see it. A league nobody looks at is a league nobody plays

For a league of eight, a group chat and an honest memory is fine. Past about fifteen managers the spreadsheet stops being funny — you're reconciling bank transfers against team names and manually working out who won the November high score.

That's the job Hauls and Order was built for. It reads your league straight from FPL, so there are no invites and nothing to set up; if you created the league, the admin tools are simply there. You set the fee and your own payment instructions, members tap "I've paid" and you confirm, and the prize split resolves its own winners from the live table.

No entry-fee money passes through the app and no cut is taken — your league's cash stays between you and your managers. There's more on what to look for, including in other tools, in our guide to mini-league admin tools.