There’s a huge movement towards dynasty fantasy football. Very often, I see people starting up their own fantasy leagues with little to no forethought. To me, that’s just setting up the league to fail. I see redraft leagues fall apart due to poor setup. This is much worse in dynasty leagues where there are many more rules that aren’t set by the platform. This article is going to be a guide through what to think through when setting up a dynasty league.

If you want to check out my article on switching from redraft to dynasty, you can check it out here. If you want to check out my article on being a commissioner, you can find it here.

Basic Settings

First of all, choose the number of teams and roster spots. Depth drastically affects the league. An eight-team league with 20 players per team is very shallow. In such a league, it’s more difficult to dominate and it’s easy to recover from a bad team. It’ll likely stay relatively balanced and there are fewer people to trade with. In a 16-team league with 40 players per team, things can get unbalanced pretty quickly. Trades should abound as teams compete to dominate and others compete for picks and prospects as they punt the current year to slowly build for future years.

I’d personally recommend a 12-team Superflex league with around 10 starters and 20 bench spots. To me, this gives a good balance between keeping things shallow enough to have some decent waiver options but deep enough for people to stash prospects and depth pieces. I’d also include about three to five IR spots and two to four taxi spots. Taxi spots are special roster slots for young prospects. Superflex is also my preferred format as it gives more importance to the most important position in football. But I also prefer it to two QB leagues as I find it too restrictive at a position that’s so shallow.

Payment

Some leagues are free leagues, but many choose to play in paid leagues because they like the added element of a prize and they find it helps with commitment. There are two main things I recommend for a paid league.

The first is to either play with people you trust or use a third-party payment system like LeagueSafe. Too often, people get ripped off by commissioners who don’t pay out the winners. If you use LeagueSafe, there’s a setting called “Majority Approval” where the majority of the league votes on payouts. This way, the commissioner can’t run off with the money. Watch out for leagues where it works by “Commissioner has total control”. In those leagues, you may as well give the commissioner the cash.

The second key is to have owners pay for multiple years. This encourages long term commitment so you don’t need to find new owners every year. If an owner leaves, it makes it easier to find a replacement because they get to play for certain years for free. In Sleeper, they let you trade draft picks over the next three years. I make my managers pay for those three years up front so people don’t trade away all their future picks to win that year, cash out, then leave a team with a bleak future.

Also, make sure payouts are set. It’s sketchy to leave that open or change that later on without consulting the league. Also, don’t be that commissioner that takes a cut of the pot for commissioning. If you do, at least make that very clear before people sign up.

Draft

There are a few things to consider with the draft. You also need to know there are two types of drafts. The initial startup draft, then the future rookie drafts.

For the startup draft, consider how the draft order will be determined. Namely, whether rookies will be included in the draft, and how much time you want to give people for the draft. Something you rarely see in a redraft league is a slow draft. These are drafts where managers have hours per pick and often, there may be grace given if an owner misses their draft time. These can often take weeks to complete but are common in dynasty leagues. Doing a fast draft in dynasty can be tricky as it takes a lot of time with so many rounds and requires coordinating the schedules of many people. Slow drafts also help people to make informed decisions rather than panicked ones.

For rookie drafts, similar considerations will need to be made, but the main tricky thing to consider is how to set draft order in a way that doesn’t encourage tanking. Our league uses a tiered lottery system to discourage starting bad players in order to get a high draft pick. Rookie drafts also tend to be linear to further help the weaker teams.

Trades

Trades are a key detail to iron out. This is often the biggest area of contention in fantasy leagues. I see too many “Is this veto worthy?” posts where it’s essentially someone thinking they know better than someone else and is trying to get others in the league to vote against a trade. To me, that’s the sign of an immature manager in an immature league. The main exception to this is when there are public leagues without commissioners where players are all strangers. However, if you’re reading this article, that’s irrelevant anyway.

I am very much against league vetoes. Vetoes are not for whether a trade is deemed fair or not by others. To me, any trade where both managers think it helps their team should be allowed. Vetoes should be reserved for collusion (a team intentionally trying to help another team without helping their own), absolute tanking (making their entire team worse on purpose), or mistakes (I reverse trades and drops if an owner immediately publically posts that they accidentally pressed the wrong button). To clarify the tanking situation, trading away stud veterans to gain future assets, which naturally makes a team worse for that season is fine. Trading away one’s best players for another team’s worst players to rage quit is not fine.

If you trust everyone, you can turn off vetoes so all trades are automatically completed. Otherwise, you can use commissioner veto. The league would need to trust you with this, but essentially you would need to approve all trades and if you are suspicious of any of them, then you’d need to act on it.

What We Do for Trades

I have chosen a method that allows our league to quickly pass through trades, that lets me monitor trades, but that also spreads responsibility across the league. What we do is that our league does commissioner vetoes with a one day review period. If a trade is accepted, it is then pending. If anyone other than the commissioner and the people in the trade says they’re ok with it, I’ll push it through.

We like this because most trades are then processed within a few minutes. Furthermore, I still have the ability to control it if collusion or tanking ever were to happen. I also don’t have sole accountability for trades as it is shared with the league. We have yet to have an issue with this, but if ever collusion or tanking were to be expected, this method allows us to have a 24-hour period to have a conversation about it to decide whether it is truly veto-worthy or not.

A trade deadline is also something to determine. Some dynasty leagues don’t have a trade deadline so there is no set expectation for this. We use one so fantasy playoffs don’t get too drastically affected by trades.

Other Settings

I am going to just quickly touch on other settings to establish beforehand.

Figure out the scoring. I try to keep it pretty standard. Most people are used to valuing players a certain way and don’t want to need to readjust that too much with outlandish scoring settings. The main variant that’s gaining popularity in dynasty leagues is TEP scoring. Tight-end premium scoring commonly involves giving an extra 0.5 PPR for tight ends to give them more value.

Figure out rosters. 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 W/R/T Flex, 1 Q/W/R/T Superflex, 1 K, and 1 DST along with 20 bench spots is around average. The main variants involve adding an extra WR spot, adding an extra Flex spot, and/or taking away K and DST spots.

Waivers are pretty standard. Rolling waivers and FAAB are the most common options, though I much prefer FAAB. It also adds to trading as you can trade your FAAB dollars.

Make sure playoff settings are set. I definitely prefer not to have playoffs on the last week of the regular season due to all the resting that happens that week. Another factor is that I also make sure that there are no bye weeks on playoff weeks. I also prefer to offer a bye week to the top two teams. That would mean six teams make the playoffs in a twelve-team league.

Controversial But Important Rule

Another important rule to set that often isn’t are reasons for removal. It’s tough to remove someone if there hasn’t been a predetermined expectation stating that cause for removal, especially if money is involved and would be forfeited. The reasons for removal in our league include inactivity (not setting lineups or drafting), making vetoed trades, not paying on time, being voted out by two-thirds of the league, or commissioner discretion in extreme circumstances (to keep the league competitive and fun). The first 4 are self-explanatory but the last one is one some may not feel comfortable with. I think it’s key to cover as a catch-all, but I understand if some think that’s too much.

Democracy?

Some commissioners run their leagues as dictators. Others will bring up any suggestions to a league vote. You need to pick what works for you. Our initial league settings were all set by me. However, any changes are voted on. I would recommend against making many drastic changes autocratically. This can frustrate owners and cause bitterness between the league and the commissioner.

Write It Out

It’s very helpful to write out all the league rules somewhere so people don’t need to scroll through chats to find all the different rules. I wrote it out on a Google Doc that I shared before people joined the league. I’ve seen others post it in the group chat and pin it. No matter how you do it, keep it somewhere people can access if they need to.

Wrap-Up

I see many people making fun of people because they set up their leagues differently than them. Don’t be one of those people. The main exception is league vetoes. That’s setting up a league for conflict. Also, don’t be a commissioner who isn’t clear with league rules. Hopefully, this guide helps you with setting up a dynasty league.

If you found this article helpful, check out other Belly Up Fantasy Sports articles at Belly Up Fantasy and you can follow me at @liuac.