Welcome to StatrDraft
We’re delighted to welcome you to our new fantasy football platform, and we know you’re going to love the game we’ve built. But we also know that we’re presenting things a bit differently from what you may be used to, and it may even be your first foray into the world of Fantasy Football – fear not! We’ve put together this handy guide to the basics. Below we’ll cover some of the terms used, as well as all the options for creating custom Leagues and how they affect your gaming experience. If you’ve never even played fantasy football before, don’t worry! Our guide is designed to welcome everyone from the nervous first-timer to the seasoned data diver. First things first – what’s the game?
Fantasy Football
Fantasy football lets each Coach pick (or “draft”) a Squad of real-life players who then score points based on their performance on the real pitch. These points come from actions on the pitch (outlined in detail here) each game week. If you’ve picked the best players, you get the most points.
Coach
That’s you!
League
Every Squad is part of a League. Your League is your workplace, your family, your mates, those guys you used to work with years ago, any group of people that fancy their chances against each other in Fantasy Football. Coming in solo? No hassle, we’ve got public Leagues that everyone is welcome to join. Getting started is simple: in the app, just hit League – Join a League, and either pick a public League from those available, or join a private League via a join code (your League Commissioner has these). When you arrive in the app first, once you’re logged in the first thing you’ll do is join or create a League.
Points
Here at StatrDraft, we take a much broader view of the beautiful game. No more picking only goal scorers like the fantasy football platforms that went before. We us Opta stats to generate more data points than any other fantasy football game. We reward defenders for defending, mids for supporting, forwards for everything they do and all the positions are true-to-life. No more defensive midfielders earning no points because they get stuck in, no more strikers listed as midfielders, no more midfield generals going underappreciate. You can read our full points system for the current season here
Game Modes
When the League is set up, it’s in one of two game modes, decided by your Commissioner.
In Head to Head, each Squad consists of 11 players, with squads fighting it out each week to climb up the table like the real Premier League. The Squads at the top of the table progress to the playoffs at the end of the season. This is the hardcore draft mode – sure, you can drop an injured player, but can you be sure he won’t be picked up by a rival Coach?
In Draft Classic, use a full Squad of 11 on-field Players and 7 subs (earning half points) to gain the most overall points you can. The highest total points score wins the league at the end of the season. The real fun here is in setting your line-up and making sure the eleven with the highest points don’t end up sitting on the bench, only scoring half. Whatever else you do, don’t miss the window!
Because there are a limited number of Players to choose from. We recommend a limit of 12 Coaches for H2H Leagues, but you can go all the way to 17. For Draft Classic, we recommend 10 Coaches, but there’s room for 12 if needed.
Squad
Your team! Depending on your League’s game mode, your squad will either have 11 players OR it’ll have 18 players: 11 on the pitch and a further 7 subs on the bench, with the subs earning half points. More on the game modes further down. Choose well at the start of the season and move wisely as the trading and dropping changes the field. Remember, you’re limited to the following formations for your team to be legal:
Commissioner
The Commissioner sets up and runs the League, setting lots of options like Game mode, trade limits, and draft time. This is your League’s administrator. Anyone can be a Commissioner, you just need to set up a League (League – Options – Create League), but we recommend playing as a Coach starting out to get the feel for the place.
Public vs Private Leagues
Public Leagues can be joined by any Coach, and are all visible. Private Leagues require a League Code (Commissioners can see this under League options) to join. Private Leagues are for your friends/colleagues/family, Public Leagues are for taking on the world.
Draft Time
The big day! Arrange a time and date for your League to get together on the app and build their initial Squad for the season. Remember, Draft happens in real-time so for private Leagues, pick a time that suits everyone as best you can. Don’t worry if not everyone can make it, anyone absent will have their team auto-picked for them by Statr.
Your Commissioner can also set the length of time you have for your pick, from 30 to 120 seconds. If that draft room clock hits zero and you haven’t picked (or if you’re at a loss and you just hit “auto pick”, Statr will pick for you.
If you’ve never played draft before, think… schoolyard picking teams. Everyone takes their turn drafting players for their Squad, and once a player is picked, he’s off the table. No more “everyone captain the same strikers, everyone has to have the same mids”. This is the very heart of Statr’s gameplay philosophy.
Auto Pick
If you’ve set your Squad to auto-draft, Statr can either draft your Players for you in descending order of points scored last year (top-down) or – for the daring or foolish – a completely random selection of Players. Random can be a great way to teach a lesson to that one friend that doesn’t show up for the Draft….
Draft Order
Snake order balances the gap between picking first and picking last. Whoever picks last in each round will pick first in the next, meaning for example that if a Coach is 10th pick in a 10-Coach League, they get to pick 1st in the second round of Draft The order is reversed at the end of each round. In Carriage order, 1st pick is 1st pick in every single round of the Draft and the order remains the same throughout.
Drops:
An External transfer means dropping one of your existing Players and replacing them from the pool of unused Players. All pretty straightforward, but remember: if you throw a player back in the unused pool, he can be picked up by another Coach immediately, so make sure you don’t blunder because most leagues only play with 1 Drop a week. Your commissioner can set the maximum number of External transfers each Coach can execute in a single Gameweek, even if that number is zero (WARNING – Turning off External transfers means that for the entire season only Players drafted at the start of the season will be usable. Statr HIGHLY recommends leaving this option turned on.)
Trades:
An Internal transfer (or “Trade) means making a deal to trade a player with another Coach in your League. This is where the real shenanigans happen. You can screw your mates over by offloading injured players before they realise, help another Coach win a head to head game against a rival, swoop in and pick up an undervalued player that you reckon is about to pop off. Trades are how the League becomes something special. Statr recommends leaving this option turned on, but your Commissioner can turn it off or set a limit when they set up the League.
Bounceback limit:
The minimum number of weeks a player has to stay at his new club after being traded via an Internal transfer before they can be traded back to their previous club or dropped into the unused pool. So if you’re making one of those delicious Trades we talked about above, remember you might not be able to get that player back for a while.
Captains
Your Captain is a player who earns double points for you each week. They must be a starting 11 player, i.e. cannot be on your subs bench. You can change your Captain as many times as you like during the GW window. Captains can be disabled at the League setup stage by the Commissioner.
Entry Fees and Prizes
***NB: all fees, charges and prizes are still in development and have been disabled pending integration. If the game asks, just hit “payment taken” – we’re just playing for bragging rights for now.
The Commissioner can set an entry fee for this league. It can be any value from 0 to 50 euro. All entrants to the league – including the Commissioner – will have to deposit this fee into the league prize pot before they can join the league. A 10% service charge is applied to all users on the top of the entry fee. This way you don’t have to spend half the year chasing your mates in a WhatsApp group that should have paid in at the start of the season. At Statr, we handle the bank. And if you just want to play for fun without prizes, that’s fine too. Just make sure your Commissioner sets the entry fee to 0.
Getting around the App
It’s early in the project for us here at StatrDraft, so here are a couple of tips for navigation. We’re always working to make things better, so if you have any feedback or need a bit of help with anything in-game, hit our discord here (XXXXXX).
Jimi Kavanagh, January 2026