Stock photo by Megan Ellis on Unsplash
Registration is now open for the 2023 season of Fantasy Baseball UK, which is our 20th season!
The three league formats return from last season plus we are bringing back the $5m Game from the old days! It will follow the same salary cap format as FBUK Classic but the team salary budget is limited to $5m, putting emphasis on cost-effective production and unearthing those low-cost gems to complement your roster.
Check out the guide to how it all works below and then fill in the online registration form if you would like to enter.
Closing date for registrations has been extended to Friday 10 March.
Choice of four league formats
Managers can enter fantasy teams into each of the following leagues:
FBUK League
- Run through Yahoo Sports
- Uses an initial draft for managers to build their rosters and after that you can add/drop players from/to the free agent pool or trade with another fantasy team
- Manage your roster and daily line-ups through the season
- Uses the simple points format where points are awarded to your rostered players based on their daily performance in different categories and fantasy teams accumulate points through the season
- Teams will be split into several leagues of around 10-12 teams. As well as these divisional competitions, the standings are combined to mark as the overall champion the team with the most points across all divisions at the end of the season.
- FREE to play — one team per manager
FBUK LTD (Limited Trade)
- Run through Yahoo Sports
- Uses an initial draft for managers to build their rosters
- There is no bench in this game, meaning you have no substitutes besides your main line-up
- There is a limit to how many trades or free agent acquisitions you can make during the season
- With limited flexibility, your roster decisions are even more important, but it is also great for those fantasy players who don’t want to make constant changes to their line-up
- Scoring uses the points format
- FREE to play — one team per manager
FBUK Classic / $5m Game (Salary Cap)
- Run through Fantrax, this game is based on the classic FBUK format in which managers build a roster within a set budget limit for player salaries
- Each MLB player is assigned a salary value based on previous and projected performance
- Rather than a draft, managers build their roster within a team salary budget cap
- Within the league, the same MLB player could be held by multiple different fantasy teams/managers
- As the season progresses, player salary values are regularly recalculated up or down based on performance
- As you drop and add players through the season you will need to be mindful of your overall team budget cap
- Scoring uses the points format
- As in the Yahoo leagues, teams will be split into divisions. Besides divisional races, the standings will be combined to mark as the overall champion the team with the most points across all divisions at the end of the season.
- Two flavours available: FBUK Classic gives teams a $12m budget; or build a team on a limited $5m budget in the $5m Game
- A personalised printed FBUK champion baseball will be awarded to the eventual overall champion of each format
- Entry fee to play — each manager can enter up to three teams across both formats:
- Your first team costs £10
- Opt to add a second or third team @ £7.50 each
- The revenue goes towards covering the costs of using the Fantrax platform plus the general running of the FBUK game.
More info
To manage your team you will need to create a free Yahoo account or Fantrax account if you don’t already have one (but you don’t need it to complete the FBUK registration form).
Depending on the total number of teams involved, if a manager buys more than one team in the salary cap league, we will aim to put each one into a different division.
Read the news article from last season introducing the Salary Cap League
The Help section includes more details about the games work, including the draft process.
Key dates
Some of these might be subject to change but here’s how it should work:
- Closing date for registrations: Friday 10 March (midnight)
Registered managers will be arranged into divisions and invitations emailed out to create their team on the Yahoo or Fantrax platform.
- Deadline for managers to accept their invitation: TBC
When invitations go out they will request for invitations to be accepted by a certain date. This is to allow for organisation ahead of the draft. If not all managers accept their invitation, some slight re-jigging of division groupings might be done to try to keep divisions roughly the same number of teams. This is a bit of a faff, though, as it requires new invitations, so it is much better if all managers accept their initial invitations!
- Planned draft dates:
- FBUK LTD (Limited Trade): evening of Friday 24 March
- FBUK League: evening of 25 March
There are separate online draft sessions for the FBUK League and Limited Trade league as managers might have teams in both formats. You can set up auto-draft if you can’t or don’t want to make either of the drafts in real time. No draft is required in the Salary Cap League.
- Scheduled season start: Thursday 30 March
Forums
If you are taking part in the game, why not join in the discussion in the website forums? This is where you can contribute to the conversation on how the game is run.
As we rebuilt the forums and website account system from scratch prior to the 2021 season, it means that the old website’s forum accounts no longer exist (the old forums were used until 2019). If you haven’t already, you will need to create a new account to access the forums. However, there is the option to connect with your Yahoo account, which might be convenient for fantasy managers who have a Yahoo account to play in the fantasy league itself. Not only will you be able to use the same login details for both the FBUK and Yahoo fantasy baseball websites, it should make hopping between your Yahoo fantasy baseball account and your FBUK Forums account fairly seamless.
Done reading? Click the banner below to get registering!
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