Draft Room — Commissioner Setup Guide

Creating your league & licensing

Draft Room is a licensed module — one annual subscription per league, separate from your plan.

Flavor

Draft & Keeper League (general engine, your own scoring), NFL Fantasy League (drafts the live NFL roster and auto-scores real stats), or Death Pool (drafts real people, add-on).

League name & subtitle

The league’s display name, plus an optional subtitle (e.g. "The Reaper Cup").

Roster size

How many names each team drafts per season.

Annual licensePro

Running a league requires an annual subscription for that league (renews yearly, cancel anytime) — billed once you try to create it if your org doesn’t already have an available license or isn’t on the Organization plan. Manage or cancel it anytime from "Manage license" in the console.

Death Pool add-onPro

Drafting real people requires the Death Pool add-on license on top of the base Draft Room license — buy both at creation, or turn Death Pool mode on later once your org has the add-on.

The player pool

Player source (Draft & Keeper)

Use the live NFL or MLB roster (real players with headshots/teams, searched live — nothing to pre-load) or keep adding your own custom names one at a time.

Load the PGA field

One click adds every player from the golf library to a custom pool, for golf-flavored drafts.

Death Pool prospects

Search real people by name via the Wikidata-backed picker (shows description, birth date, and whether they’re already deceased — ineligible), or add a name manually if it isn’t on Wikidata (loses automatic death-tracking).

Ownership

Exclusive = each name can be drafted by only one team (the usual rule). Shared = multiple teams may draft the same name and all score for it.

The live draft

Player pool mode

Closed = teams draft from a list you loaded ahead of time. Open = no fixed list — the team on the clock adds anyone live via Wikidata search (death-pool style).

Seconds per pick / re-pick seconds

How long a team has on the clock before the system auto-picks their top queued prospect, and how long they get to choose again if a pick is rejected.

Pick pacing (auto-advance)

Manual (you advance every pick), Auto (advances a few seconds after each pick so everyone can see it land), or Instant (moves to the next pick immediately).

Pick confirmation

Off = picks stand immediately. Member vote = everyone gets a timed 👍/👎 on whether the pick counts (a no-vote counts as 👍, a 👎 majority auto-rejects, you can override); optionally reveal who voted. Commissioner approval = you approve or reject every pick yourself.

Skip / defer & planned picks

Skip a team’s turn to the end of the draft if they’re away from keyboard. Any team can also pre-build a "My Board" queue and lock in a pick ahead of time so the clock never catches them off guard.

Big Screen

A castable, cinematic broadcast view of the live draft — order reveal, on-the-clock team, and picks landing in real time — with an optional custom background image, alongside the commissioner console.

Scoring

General leagues build their own categories; Death Pool and NFL Fantasy have dedicated built-in engines.

Custom scoring categories (Draft & Keeper)

Define what earns or loses points — e.g. "Win +10", "Eliminated −5" — from a template or from scratch, then award them to any drafted entry by hand; points roll into the standings automatically.

Death Pool preset

Flat (same points for every hit), age-weighted (points = ceiling minus age at death, rewarding younger picks), or age brackets (your own point bands by age range).

Death Pool bonuses

Optional uniqueness bonus (extra points if your team is the only one that drafted that name), draft-position weight (rewards hitting on a late-round pick), and any number of season bonuses — each one awards points for the first death of the season, the last death of the season, or the death closest to a date you set (a birthday, New Year’s Eve, the season finale). Season bonuses recalculate live, so “last death” and “closest to a date” move as new deaths are confirmed and settle when the season ends; if two deaths tie, every tied team gets the full bonus.

Death Pool tiebreakers

A reorderable waterfall (e.g. most hits, earliest hit, most recent hit) that breaks ties on points.

Mid-season redraft (Death Pool)

Shake up the rosters part-way through: set a drop window where every team MUST release X names — or MAY release up to X — then run a short redraft in the same Draft Room where each team drafts back exactly as many as it dropped. Names lost to a death are never replaced, so the field keeps thinning. Only living names can be released (a name that already scored keeps its points and its roster spot), a team can’t take back a name it just dropped though anyone else can, and a team that misses a compulsory deadline has its most recently drafted names released for it. Pick order defaults to worst-season-first.

NFL Fantasy rulesetPro

Pick a reception-scoring preset — PPR (1 pt/catch), Half-PPR (0.5), or Standard (0) — or tick "Customize every stat" to set your own per-unit values for passing/rushing/receiving yards and TDs, interceptions, fumbles, field goals, and extra points.

NFL Fantasy auto-scoringPro

Weekly stats sync and score automatically once the season starts — draft-and-hold, no lineups or waivers. Re-score a week by hand from the console after a stat correction.

Keepers

Keeper cost

No cost (free to keep), costs a draft pick (uses your last-round pick), or escalating (the round it costs gets earlier — more expensive — each year you keep the same name).

Starting the next season

Finalizing a season and starting the next opens keeper selection (up to your keeper count) before the fresh draft begins.

Entry fee, pot & prizes

Entry fee

An optional buy-in per team. Leave it at 0 for a free league. Players pay you through the app’s in-app payment step at join — you never route money through us.

Organizer cutPro

What your program keeps before payouts — a percentage of the pool, a flat total, or a flat amount per entry. Set on the Settings tab; the pot is always shown net of it. Available on Pro Commissioner and Organization; the full pot pays out to winners on Free.

Prize pot basis & floorPro

Let the pot scale with the number of teams, or fix it, and optionally set a guaranteed minimum floor.

Prizes per place

Set a prize for each finishing place: a description (an item, bragging rights, "loser buys the trip") and, optionally, a cash amount as a flat $ or a % of the net pot. Leave the amount blank to keep it a non-monetary prize — both cash and non-cash prizes are preserved side by side and nothing is lost.

Allow "pay later"

Let participants join now and pay later, instead of confirming payment was sent before they’re let in.

Details & finalizing

Draft date, time & location

Schedule info shown to your league, plus commissioner-only notes (hotel, buy-in details) and an optional public countdown on the league page.

Team sign-ups

Accept team sign-ups via a shareable link, with an optional close date, a team limit, and letting existing participants invite others while there’s room.

Finalize & compute payouts

Ranks the season’s standings, computes each cash prize from the amounts you set (places with no cash amount pay nothing automatically), and marks the season settled — winners then appear in Payout Assist with one-tap pay links.

Season payout history

Every finalized season keeps its own winners and payout status, even after a later season is finalized on top of it.

FAQ