How to Run a Fantasy Football Auction

Why Auctions Beat Snake Drafts

If your league still uses a snake draft — or worse, just picks players from FPL — you're missing out on the best part of fantasy football. An auction draft is chaos, strategy, and entertainment rolled into one evening. Every manager gets a budget, every player goes to the highest bidder, and the bloke who blows half his money on one striker in the first ten minutes becomes a legend (for all the wrong reasons).

Unlike a snake draft where pick order decides everything, an auction gives every manager an equal shot. It's fairer, more strategic, and infinitely more fun.

Before the Auction

Set a Budget

Every manager starts with the same budget. The amount depends on your squad size, but a good rule of thumb is roughly ten times your squad size in millions. Running 15-player squads? Try a budget of 150m. This gives managers enough to compete for premium players without being able to afford everyone.

Prepare the Player List

Decide which players are available. Most leagues include all Premier League players, but you can limit it to a curated pool if you prefer. Randomise the order players come up — this stops managers from gaming the sequence. Share the list with your league before auction night so people can plan their strategy.

Choose Your Format

You've got two options:

In person or on a call — the traditional way. Everyone in the same room (or on Zoom), the commissioner calls out players, people shout bids. It's brilliant fun, but the commissioner has a lot to manage — tracking bids, recording prices, monitoring budgets.

Online via a platform — managers join from their own devices and bid in real time with countdown timers. The platform handles budget tracking, bid validation, and squad assignment automatically. This is ideal when your league can't all be in the same place.

Set the Rules

Before you start, agree on:

• Timer duration — how long managers have to bid on each player (20-30 seconds works well)
• Minimum bid increment — the smallest amount a bid must increase by (0.5m is standard)
• Squad requirements — how many players total, any positional minimums?
• What happens with unsold players — do they go to a free agent pool?

Running the Auction

The Flow

1. A player is revealed to the group
2. The timer starts
3. Managers place bids — each bid must beat the current highest by at least the minimum increment
4. Every new bid resets the timer (so bidding wars keep going)
5. When the timer expires with no new bid, the highest bidder wins the player
6. Move to the next player

Tips for Commissioners

• Keep it moving — don't let debates slow things down between players
• Track budgets visibly — everyone should be able to see what each manager has left to spend
• Plan breaks — auctions for 15-player squads take 2-3 hours. Schedule a break at the halfway point
• Record everything — prices, winners, timestamps. You'll need this for the rest of the season
• Have a backup plan — if you're running it manually, have someone help you track bids

Tips for Managers

• Don't blow your budget early — it's tempting to go all-in on the first big name, but you need 14 more players after that
• Target value in the middle rounds — the best value is usually in the mid-price range where fewer managers are competing
• Know your limits — set a maximum price for each player before the auction and stick to it
• Watch other budgets — if someone's running low, you can push prices up on players they need

After the Auction

Once every player is sold (or marked as unsold), the commissioner assigns squads and records the final prices. A good platform does this automatically. A spreadsheet... doesn't.

The post-auction buzz is usually the best part. Everyone's analysing who overpaid, who got a bargain, and whose defence is a disaster. If your platform supports it, an AI-generated post-auction report adds fuel to the fire.

Ready to Try It?

Running an auction for the first time can feel like a lot, but once you've done one, you'll never go back to a snake draft. The strategy, the drama, and the banter are what make fantasy football worth playing.

If you want to skip the spreadsheet chaos, SuperSmalls handles the entire auction — live online bidding with countdown timers, automatic budget tracking, and squad assignment. Or run it in person and enter the results afterwards. Your league, your rules.