How DraftIcon PL works
Fourteen picks from packs of six, forty-five seconds each, and a real eleven in 1-4-3-3 that scores real Premier League fantasy points. Two trades a gameweek, every player locked at his own kick-off, and a reset every Tuesday. Here is the whole ruleset, and at the end the official game for comparison.
Pack opens, you pick, next pack.
Real footage. Everything below is what you are watching here.
Packs open after the last match of the previous round and stay open until the first kick-off. You draft fourteen players, one from each pack, and eleven of them form a real side in 1-4-3-3. The gameweek is played and their actual Premier League fantasy points become your score. You may trade twice, though a player is locked once his own match has started. Then the squad expires and everybody begins again.
No budget, no player prices, no chips to save and nothing at all to pay for.
picks in a draft, one from each pack
real Premier League players per pack
on the clock for each pick
of your fourteen actually score
The draft
There is no list of five hundred players to scroll. A pack of six opens, the clock runs, you take one. Fourteen packs, fourteen picks, roughly fifteen minutes.
Each card tells you what you need on the spot: the player, his position, his projection for the gameweek and the difficulty of the fixture he is about to play. The rating is the same scale the Premier League uses for its own fixture difficulty, so an easy game looks easy and a trip to a title contender does not.
Players wear club colours rather than photographs, which is a licensing matter and, as it turns out, reads faster. Cards come in tiers with Icons at the top, and gold or silver packs change what is inside. A card can be marked as in form, and the current ones are on the FPL players in form page.
Your eleven
Fourteen players, eleven of whom play. The shape is fixed at 1-4-3-3, so there is no formation to agonise over and no lineup to submit afterwards. What you draft is what takes the field.
The other three sit on the bench. They do not score, and they exist so that a trade has somewhere to land. Because the shape is fixed, the draft is as much about filling four defensive slots as about grabbing the best forward on offer, which is the part that catches people out in their first gameweek.
Scoring
The points are not ours. Your eleven score exactly what they score in the official Fantasy Premier League, read from the Premier League's own public fantasy API: goals, assists, clean sheets, bonus points and the rest, with the same values and the same deductions.
So a defender keeping a clean sheet is worth what he is worth everywhere, bonus points land when they land, and the total on your screen is one you could check yourself. The full scoring table lives with the Premier League, and what it contains is summarised on the FPL rules page.
During the gameweek
Two trades
Two trades per gameweek. A trade opens a small pack, you take one card and give one back. Using neither is normal, and there is no points penalty for using both.
Locked at his own kick-off
Not one deadline for everybody. Each player locks when his own match starts, so a Friday-night player is settled on Friday while a Monday player stays tradeable all weekend. This is the sharpest difference from the official game, where a single deadline ninety minutes before the first kick-off covers your whole squad.
Blank gameweeks solve themselves
If a club has no fixture that round, its players are not in the packs. You cannot accidentally draft somebody who is not playing, which removes the single most common way to waste a gameweek.
Double gameweeks count twice
If a club plays twice in the round, its players score in both matches. You are not told to plan for it and you do not need a chip to exploit it; it simply happens.
How a gameweek ends
When the last match finishes, your score is final and you appear in three rankings at once: among the friends you have added, within your country, and worldwide. None of that requires joining a league or finding nine other people.
Then the squad expires. Everyone starts the next gameweek from nothing, which means a blank Saturday costs you a weekend rather than a season, and a brilliant one does not bank you anything either.
The country ranking is the one people underestimate. It is the reason the game plays differently depending on where you are, which is the subject of the Nigeria page and the Kenya page.
The season underneath the gameweeks
The squad expires every Monday, but the gameweek itself is kept. Each one you play feeds a season table, which is what gives a run of gameweeks a shape.
The table is cut by country before anything else: you are put in a division of eight, and it fills with people from your own country first. That is deliberate, because being fourteen thousandth in the world means nothing and being third in your division means something. A new division takes the name of a river and a three-letter code.
Ranking is by the average of your three best gameweeks. A blank Saturday therefore costs you far less than it does in the official game, where every gameweek is added to a running total until May. Level on average, the better single gameweek decides it.
Stop playing for three completed gameweeks and your place goes to somebody who is turning up; come back and you join a different division rather than the old one. A gameweek above the worldwide average counts as a world win and gets its own column, but it does not reorder the table.
What needs an account and what does not
| Mode | What it is | Account? |
|---|---|---|
| Mock draft | A full draft against the coach bot, as often as you like. | None |
| Duel on one phone | One to four people pass a single device around and draft in turn. | None |
| Playing the real gameweek | Your eleven is scored and ranked against everybody else. | Google or an e-mail link |
| Friends and rivals | Adding people and keeping a record against them. | Google or an e-mail link |
If you already play the NFL edition it is the same account: your friends and profile come with you. There is no password to invent and no payment method to add, because there is nothing to buy. The mock draft is the fastest way to see the whole thing.
How the official game works
Nearly every rule above is short because the gameweek is short. Fantasy Premier League runs from August to May, and that single fact explains its budget, its prices, its chips and its banked transfers. All of them are answers to a problem a weekly game does not have. The full ruleset is set out on FPL rules explained.
| Fantasy Premier League | DraftIcon PL | |
|---|---|---|
| Your squad | 15 chosen from a priced pool, £100m budget | 14 dealt from packs, no prices at all |
| Players per club | At most three, all season | No limit, and nothing is exclusive |
| Formation | Your choice, within limits | Fixed 1-4-3-3 |
| Changing the team | One free transfer a week, −4 beyond it | Two trades, no penalty |
| Chips | Eight a season, in two windows | None |
| Deadline | One, 90 minutes before the first kick-off | Per player, at his own kick-off |
| Horizon | Nine months | One gameweek |
The official game also has a draft variant where players really are owned by one manager, and that is a different thing again: how FPL Draft works and Draft against Classic. Playing with people you know is covered on FPL with friends, and the honest comparison of everything else is the alternatives list.
None of this says the official game is bad. It is the best-run fantasy game there is and everybody you want to beat is already in it. This is for the gameweeks when a nine-month commitment is not what you want.
Quick answers
How many players do I draft?
Fourteen, one from each pack. Eleven of them play in 1-4-3-3: a goalkeeper, four defenders, three midfielders and three forwards. The other three are the bench and do not score.
How long does a draft take?
About fifteen minutes. Six cards per pack, forty-five seconds a pick, fourteen picks.
Where do the points come from?
From the official Fantasy Premier League scoring, read from the Premier League's own public fantasy API. Goals, assists, clean sheets and bonus points are worth exactly what they are worth there.
Is there a budget?
No, and no player prices either. You are dealt cards rather than buying them, so there is no market to time and no selling fee to lose money to.
Can two managers own the same player?
Yes. Everybody opens their own packs, so nothing is exclusive. If unique ownership is what makes a draft a draft for you, FPL Draft is the game you want.
What about blank and double gameweeks?
A club with no fixture is simply not in the packs, so you cannot draft a player who is not playing. A club playing twice scores in both matches.
When does a player lock?
At his own kick-off. There is no single squad deadline, so a Monday-night player remains tradeable through the weekend.
Are there chips or a wildcard?
No. Chips exist to buy back flexibility in a nine-month game, and a squad that expires on Tuesday never gives it up in the first place.
Is there a season table?
Yes. You are placed in a division of eight, filled with people from your own country where possible, and ranked by the average of your three best gameweeks rather than by a running total.
Do I need an account?
Not for the mock draft or the duel on one phone. For a real gameweek you sign in with Google or an e-mail link, and it is the same account as the NFL edition.
What does it cost?
Nothing. No shop, no premium tier, no paid packs.
Fifteen minutes. One gameweek.
Free, in the browser, and the mock draft never asks who you are.