Hosting a league: rules, fees and wildcards

The buy-in decides the size of your league more than anything else. A lower number with forty players usually produces a bigger, livelier pot than a big number with eight. Buy-ins are collected offline by you as organiser, and payment status is tracked per player in your host area.

Winner-takes-all is the purest version and the easiest to explain. If your group prefers a softer landing, you can pay up to five places — just publish the split before the first deadline so nobody discovers it in April.

EPL Knockout charges a 10% platform fee on new leagues, and hosts can set a host fee of up to 10% for running the competition. Both come out of the pot, and your host area shows what the winner receives, what you keep and what is owed to the platform.

Without rebuys, half your league is a spectator by October. Allowing a paid re-entry for a limited window keeps the group chat alive and grows the pot — but cap it early in the season so late entrants can't buy an easy run.

Three settings change the whole feel of a season: whether a club can be reused after a cooldown, whether draws count as survival, and how long the season runs. Draws-as-losses makes for a brutal, short competition. Reuse windows make it a tactics game rather than an inventory game.

Double Life lets a player survive one defeat. Skip a Week allows sitting out a brutal round. Team Reuse unlocks one already-used club. Insurance Week guarantees a draw survives even in a draws-count-as-losses league. One or two wildcards adds drama; four makes elimination feel meaningless.

Chase buy-ins in the first week, not the fifth. Unpaid players get friendly automated reminders 36 and 60 hours after the league starts, and your host area lists exactly who is still outstanding.