Why public leagues suck, and how we plan to fix them

Public fantasy leagues suck…

Let’s be frank. If you play season-long fantasy football, you know to avoid public leagues like the plague.

Without any sense of community between leaguemates, or a commissioner to set the tone, the public league experience flat out sucks.

Rarely (if ever) does a public league on any of the big sites run it’s full course smoothly. Players are often left dissatisfied with the experience at the end of the season (if they haven’t already abandoned ship way before then).

The challenge with public leagues

The most-often cited gripe for public leagues vs. private leagues is a lack of trust. This “trust” can be summarized in two ways:

First, people just want to join leagues where other leaguemates share a similar commitment and level of effort. They want consistency in this experience. Nobody wants to join an abandoned draft, or play against idle rosters. Active leagues are more fun.

Second, they want the assurance that there will be a commissioner that can help arbitrate disputes and resolve league-related issues. Nobody wants to have a rogue leaguemate sabotage the league mid-season.

How we plan to solve it

After studying communities we respect like NARFFL, The Scott Fish Bowl, and the FPPC, we have decided to launch Managed Leagues on the Sleeper platform.

All of these communities share a common sense of identity amongst leaguemates, and also have passionate commissioners/league administrators behind the scenes who help maintain quality and consistency.

At Sleeper, we have built the industry’s first Managed Leagues product that focuses on helping passionate commissioners to effectively run “public” league systems at scale.

With managed leagues, you can start a group of leagues for your community — whether it be a college, church, company, or followers — all managed under a company account. Sleeper’s Managed Leagues allow you to quickly create a federated league system, at scale, by providing a central hub for league formation, rules and settings, member onboarding, and dispute resolution.

Leagues within a Managed League system shares a common identity, and commissioners can gate or grant access to participants through a shareable link. This helps to foster community, and ensure that league members are pre-approved to join, and that bad actors can be quickly removed.

Commissioners also have full access to leagues in the system through a central dashboard, so they can resolve disputes (i.e., trade, collusion), simply and effectively applying rules and standards across all leagues in the Managed League system.

In the spirit of community, all members in a Managed League system also have access to a central dedicated chat channel on Sleeper, exclusive to members of that community. This helps to provide a watercooler where all league members can convene to talk sports, share content, or just enjoy each other’s banter.

If you are a passionate commissioner who wants to build your own Managed League system and grow a community, or an established community / influencer who wants to run your own leagues, please visit our managed leagues page to get started.