Relegation Leagues
Hey all!
It’s been a little while. With a whole bunch of people jumping into the fantasy fray during the month of August, I thought now would be a good time to send out a newsletter on some fun formats. Detailing and describing ones that are easy to set up, simple to understand, and fun.
Relegation Leagues!
Relegation leagues have been around in fantasy football for a very long time. I know I first noticed people doing them in the mid 2000s. They have always been just on the outskirts of the common formats, but known enough that you probably know somebody who has played in one. Another name for this type of league is a ladder league. So I’ll use the term “rung” to describe each division/league within the overall relegation league going forward as I describe and layout how you play this format.
In a relegation league, you have several rungs of leagues run separately, but connected in a couple ways. Most relegation leagues run with three to four rungs, but you can easily do it with just two leagues and that is fairly common as well. I’ll detail how you set up a three rung relegation league with an entry fee of $10. You can obviously adjust it for more or fewer rungs.
You start by creating three leagues. These are technically the top rung, middle rung, and bottom rung. All three leagues will have the same entry fee ($10) and the same payouts ($120/league) in year one.
After year one, you use the previous year’s finishes, to determine which teams go in each rung. However your metric (win-loss, points scored, all-play, playoff finishes, etc) the top 12 teams go in the top rung. The 13th-24th place teams go in the middle rung, and the worst 12 teams go in the bottom rung. This list is done at the end of year one.
If any teams leave, they automatically go in the bottom rung. All the teams who were previously below that team in the order, move up.
Here is where it starts to gets interesting. Starting in year 2, the entry fee remains the same for all leagues ($10). However the payouts are better in the higher rungs. In our hypothetical league, We’ll make the top rung have $150 in payouts. The middle rung would have $120 in payouts and the bottom rung would have $90 in payouts. You want to climb the ladder to have a shot at more money.
After year two is when you really get into who the league will run every year going forward. Every relegation league is different, but there are two very common ways to handle the relegation aspect. The two most common ways in a 12 team, three rung setup are as follows.
The four best teams in each rung move up, the four middle teams stay in their current division, the four worst teams in each team move down.
The champion in each rung moves up, the last place team moves down.
I want to state, the amount of teams moving up or down isn’t a big deal. 1, 2, 3, or 4 are all very common.
Once again, this relegation movement is done at the end of the season. Those placements in new divisions get set… THEN… If any teams leave, they automatically go in the bottom rung. All the teams who were previously below that team, move up. Example: If you only have one team, the Champion, move up yearly, but someone in the top rung chooses to leave, the 2nd place team from the middle rung jumps up to the top rung. The new team starts at the bottom.
You repeat yearly after that where X amount of teams move up, X amount move down, the entry fees are the same for every team, the higher rungs have better payouts.
It’s a fairly simple and fun setup. Obviously, there are tons of ways to have fun with this. Dynasty becomes very tricky and most don’t attempt that with all the issues that arise (but not impossible), but it’s a very cool redraft format and it can also work well with a small amount of keepers.
Any questions, definitely email us!
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