How to run a paid FPL mini league in 2026/27 (and pay the winners without chasing anyone)

Your mini league needs five things decided before the first deadline: who is in, the entry fee, the prize split, where the money sits until May, and who pays the winners. Settle those in the group chat in August and the season ends with winners paid and nobody chasing anyone. Here is how to do each one.

Decide the money before the first deadline

• Entry fee. A round number nobody will think about again, like £10 or £20. The fee is not the point; the table is.
• Prize split. Winner takes all up to about six players, 50 / 30 / 20 from eight, top five from fifteen. The prize split calculator turns your fee and head count into exact amounts per place.
• Tie rule. Tied places share the tied prizes equally, unless you decide otherwise now. Nobody wants this argument in May.
• Payment deadline. The first gameweek deadline. Anyone who has not paid by then is in the free table only.
• Write it in the chat. Pin the message. The league is the message.

Three ways to hold the pool until May

The first two work when the group is small and one person is happy to be the banker for nine months. They fail the same way every year: someone pays late, the banker is away in May, or the payout happens from memory and two people remember different splits. The third way removes the banker.

Running it on Gaffer, step by step

1. Sign in with Google or email at playgaffer.xyz. Web app, nothing to install.
2. Create a league and pick Premier League, classic rules. Same 15-player squad, £100m budget, captain, chips and automatic substitutions as the official game; the full rulebook is public.
3. Set the entry fee and the split. The exact prize for every place is shown before anyone pays. The 5% service fee is taken at the moment of joining and shown first; the prize pool is the rest.
4. Share one link to the group. Everyone who joins through it lands in your league, pays their entry and builds a squad before the deadline.
5. The pool locks when the league locks. Until then, anyone who leaves gets their entry back, minus the service fee. After the lock there are no refunds and nobody can touch the pool, not the commissioner and not Gaffer.
6. Winners are paid automatically when the final table is in, straight from the league's vault, by the split you set in August.

Keep it fair and keep it legal

• Everyone is 18 or over.
• Check the law where you live. Paid leagues on Gaffer are not available in every country; free leagues are. If you are not sure, run it free this season.
• One entry per person. A second squad for the same person is the oldest trick in the book and the fastest way to lose the group.
• Publish the rules: fee, split, tie rule, payment deadline, what happens if someone drops out. On Gaffer the split and the lock date are on the league page for everyone.
• Play for an amount nobody in the group would miss. The table is the prize.

Keep people playing until May

The commonest way a paid league dies is not money; it is the bottom half giving up in February. Three things that keep them checking their team: a monthly prize carved out of the pool, a last-place forfeit that everyone agrees to in August, and a second table from January that starts everyone at zero. The prize ideas guide has splits and prizes for every league size.