The Problem
I've always had an issue with regular sweepstakes; you excitedly enter and you start dreaming of what you could do with the prize money, then the draw comes around and you get... Scotland. Straight away you know you're not winning anything and you're looking at a group stage exit. Here lies the problem in my eyes, only 5ish people have any hope of winning from Day 1. Since the very first World Cup no team outside of the top 5 favourites has ever won. Now this doesn't make it very interesting if you aren't one of those 5 does it?
The Solution?
Because of this fundamental flaw I decided this year to build Full Time, my own take on sweepstakes, a fairer and more fun system for all involved. Now obviously, every sweepstake is going to rely on the luck of the draw and there's still going to be losers, but at least you have more of a chance.
More Than One Team
For this World Cup with 48 teams if you have 24 or less people entered, why not have multiple teams each? This gives everyone a greater chance of getting a good team and means that you have more than one team to root for. For example, if you have 12 people then you can all have 4 teams. Does that not sound more fun?
A Points Scoring System
To go along with the multiple teams concept my main idea was to implement a points scoring system so that there is more to the sweepstakes than just who wins the tournament.
Just like a normal sweepstakes, the further your team goes the better but now every team you have scores points for the furthest stage they reach.
Bonus Points
Now, back to the biggest flaw of a regular sweepstakes; if you have a bad team you know you have no chance. With bonus points, having a low ranked team can actually get you more points than having a high ranked one because of the Giant Killing bonus. For big upsets you are rewarded significantly.
A Quick Worked Example
Say you were dealt Panama (ranked 34th in the world). Nobody's fancying them. Then:
Matchday 1: they stun a top-ten side. That's a group win (+2) and a giant-killing (+3) → +5.
Matchday 2: a hard-fought draw → +1.
Matchday 3: they lose the game.
They sneak through to the Round of 32.
Round of 32: They beat the 12th ranked team (+10 stage points) and a giant-killing bonus (+5) → +15.
Panama's total: 5 + 1 + 15 = 21 points from a team nobody wanted.
How It's Going So Far
As I'm writing this we're halfway through the Round of 16 and the scoreboards are starting to take shape. As expected, there's been some major upsets and the scores probably aren't what you would've predicted. Check out the standings of an 11 person league.
Features
Group Tables
Fixtures & Results
Points Breakdown
Try it yourself
If you fancy running a fairer sweepstake for this World Cup or the next tournament, you can create a league at full-time-phi.vercel.app. It's free, takes a couple of minutes to set up, and the draw is half the fun.