2024 Preview

The FFPC FantasyPros Championship returns for 2024 building off its initial 2023 campaign that was a rebrand of the Footballguys Players Championship. It is one of the most popular national tournaments in fantasy football today and is the flagship “mid-stakes” competition at the FFPC with an entry fee of $350 per team. Prize structure and tournament size are identical to what 2023 offered, with the $1,000,000 top prize for first place.

Both slow and live 20 round drafts begin even earlier this year, with the first drafts starting on Tuesday, February 20th. This is almost a full month earlier than the 2023 drafts. Also note that drafts in this tournament extend up until NFL opening Sunday of week 1, which means that there will be a small window of drafts at the end where you can build teams with knowledge of what happens in the Thursday AND Friday night games of Week 1. Over the course of the drafting season in this competition, there will be players drafted without knowledge of their teams for 2024 (rookies and free agents), and then on the other side of the spectrum, there will be knowledge of game outcomes (week 1 Thursday/Friday games).

As in prior years, prizes are awarded for winning your individual league. League playoffs happen during weeks 13 and 14 of the NFL Season. 1st Place receives $1,500 cash OR free entry into a 2025 FFPC Main Event OR 5 2025 FantasyPros entries. 2nd place wins $500. The true goal is to make it to the Championship Round of the competition and take down the $1,000,0000 grand prize. The maximum number of teams in the 2024 competition is capped at 20,004 teams (1667 leagues) assuming a sell out.

Here is a chart summarizing the prizes within the 2024 Championship Round. As seen, this is a very top heavy competition, and overall , only the top 20% (approximately) of finishers in the Championship Round receive a prize (in addition to whatever league prize they won).

The competition schedule is broken into 3 segments, the same as 2023:

• Regular Season – The 2024 regular season WILL BE 12 WEEKS. You will play every other team in the league once, and Week 6 will be conducted as an “ALL-PLAY” week, where the 12 teams will be ranked according to points. The top 6 teams in Week 6 get a win, and the bottom 6 teams a loss.
• League Championships – Weeks 13 and 14 are a 2 week head to head elimination between the top 4 seeds coming out of the regular season (seeds based on overall record and win loss record). Newer players should keep in mind that there may be players on bye weeks during this championship period. (Schedules are TBD). If you make it to the league championships and lose week 13, there is no league prize money. Making it to the Week 14 championship game has a 1st place prize of $1500 and 2nd place prize of $500. Carrying week 13/14 bye players strengthens your team to win the league (as you won’t have to fill in for them during regular season byes), but you may stumble in the league championships. Advancing to the Championship Round should be the focus however. Regardless of your league championship outcome, the top two (2) seeds (highest points and best record) of each league in the regular season earn an automatic berth into the Championship Round, where the big money prize is. The league champion also earns a berth into the Championship Round, so if you win the league as a 3/4 seed coming into them, you also advance to the Championship Round.
• Championship Round – From each individual league, 2 to 3 teams will earn a berth to the Championship Round, which is a 3 week total points sprint in weeks 15 -17 for the overall title. The regular season overall points leader and win-loss leader from each league automatically win berths into the Championship Round. An additional third team can make it to the Championship Round if they win the league championship, but were not the league point / win-loss leader. In 2023, the Championship Round had 3,430 teams competing against one another in this 3 week sprint. It’s not JUST about week 17, but a cumulative performance across 3 weeks that starts with your average weekly score during the 12 week regular season. This year, that number should be closer to 4,100 IF the tournament sells out all 1667 leagues.

For complete rules and prizes, visit the OFFICIAL overview of the competition HERE.

Early drafters in the tournament often consist of the most hard core players of the FFPC. They will hop in early and often during the early months of the draft season. Some of these players will end up with over 100 teams, in the hope of obtaining as many “bullets” as possible to fire in the Championship Round. The player pool tends to widen as the summer months kick in, and the volume of drafts increase day by day. Additionally, draft results tend to vary more as the draft season progresses in lock step with the widening of the players who participate in the drafts.

 2023 Retrospective

In 2023, the contest was comprised of 1403 individual leagues of 12 teams. It was NOT a sell-out, falling far short of the 1667 league maximum. The drafts for these leagues were conducted over the course of the preseason, beginning mid March, well before the NFL draft in May, and running right up until the Sunday Week 1 kickoff. Similar to our Best Ball Analysis we have examined the drafts of the winning teams in this competition to identify trends on player selection and roster construction.

If you are a new player, the data contained in these reports should help provide you with a framework for drafting in 2024. If you are an experienced player, a lot of what you see may seem like things you already know, but seeing the numbers crunched should confirm a lot of the best practices that you have been implementing when drafting these teams in the past. Also note that unlike best ball, the drafts for these season long contests are only a partial component of overall success. Waiver wire pickups and weekly lineup decisions also play a huge part, so you may find reviewing the 2023 waiver wire pickups helpful for some guidance. It summarizes, for each waiver run, how much FAAB is generally required to win players based on the particular week of the season. You can find that data HERE.

The analyses provided here are in the context of making it to the Championship Round. Success during the Championship Round is going to be based primarily on the production of players within that 3 week (15-17) sprint which can be unpredictable. Consider that there is a lot of player overlap among the teams in the Championship Round. Having the top performers during weeks 15-17 (and actually starting them) is the primary determination of your success there. When you review the “Deep Dive into the Top 5 Overall Winners”, we note a player’s statistical positional ranking specifically within that timeframe.

Enough of the chit chat, let’s look at the data! (FYI, the analyses themselves are premium subscriber material)