Auction Guide
The auction is the opening and most important event of your season. Getting together with your mates, bidding on players, watching your team take shape. We call it football-meets-poker - with banter and beer thrown in for good measure.
Print these before the day
Each manager should bring a printout of the Player List and Team Sheet. The Auction Tracker is optional but useful for anyone wanting to follow every squad.
Player List
Every available player, listed by club and position. The menu you're bidding from.
Download PDF →Team Sheet
Write down your squad and the price paid for each player as you win them.
Download PDF →Auction Tracker
Track every manager's squad as the auction unfolds. Hard work, but satisfying.
Download PDF →Getting organised
When to hold it
Most leagues hold their auctions before the start of the season, but there's no problem starting a few weeks late if you can't get everyone together.
Budget and squad
On the Standard package, each manager has a £200m budget to build a squad of 15, with a maximum of two players per club. On the Legend package you can customise the budget, squad size and club quota.
Formation
Your first eleven must fit a valid formation: 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 5-4-1, 5-3-2 or 4-3-3. The remaining four are your bench.
How long it takes
Allow two to three hours. It sounds long, but we promise you'll enjoy it immensely.
What to bring
A printout of the Player List and Team Sheet, a pen or pencil, and whatever refreshments suit the occasion.
Running the auction
Get comfortable around a table with your auction sheets, refreshments and pens at the ready.
Nominate
Draw or nominate someone to start. They choose any player and open the bidding, for example: "Bukayo Saka, £1m."
Bid
Open to all managers, going up in jumps of at least £1m. You can agree to allow smaller jumps like £0.5m, but it will make for a longer auction.
Sold
One of you acts as auctioneer and counts down. Once the player is sold, the winning manager writes them on their Team Sheet with the price paid.
Repeat
Move along to the neighbouring manager, who nominates the next player. Same process, all the way round.
Keeping track
Staying within the rules
Each manager is responsible for tracking who they've bought, how much they've spent, and that they stay within the two-per-club maximum and a valid formation.
If someone makes a mistake
If a manager overspends, breaks the club quota or gets their formation wrong, the player that took them over the limit must be returned and made available for bidding again.
Player transfers after the auction
If a player moves club after the auction, he still counts as a player from the club you bought him at, but you receive points based on performances for his new club.
Wrapping up and what comes next
End of the auction
Later in the auction, budgets run thin. Starting bids at £0 is perfectly fine. Towards the end, most managers will have no money left and more players will go for free. Once a manager has all 15 players they're out of the auction and can't bid or replace anyone. The auction ends when all squads are full.
After the auction
Your chair must make sure the league is registered with all the correct managers. Each manager will need a user account and to pay for their team before squads can be entered. Agree whether the chair or each manager enters the squads onto the website.
Short of time? Two options. Bid for eleven players only and then take turns selecting subs for free (a draft). Or agree a cut-off time for bidding and select remaining players via draft after it expires.
The online auction
If your league cannot get together, you can run a sealed-bid auction online via our website.
Sealed bids.
Your chair sets a deadline. Each manager picks their 15-player squad and enters a sealed bid against each player.
System processes.
At the deadline, the system allocates each player to the highest bidder. Each manager ends up with a partially filled squad.
Next round.
The chair sets another deadline. Managers enter bids for their remaining slots. The system processes again.
Squads filled.
Repeat until all squads are complete, usually after three or four rounds of bidding.
