Top 5 Private League Options for Fantasy Premier League

1.     FanXT Fantasy Premier League Commissioner

FanXT’s Fantasy Premier League Commissioner (http://epl.fanxt.com) is a newcomer in the fantasy football (soccer) scene, but it has gone not just one, but many more steps ahead of their competition, offering a myriad of options that all other English Premier League (EPL) fantasy private leagues fall behind. One of the first things that greet the user is the ability to set their own fantasy league rules – selecting what scoring system to be used (25 points for the Suarez hat-trick!), setting the budget, adjusting the valuation of each player (Hart or Rooney at a measly 100grand or at the impossible 50mil?), determining how many teams can compete in their league and transfer limit, among others. To top it all off, users can personalize their leagues’ (yep, users can have more than one league per account) look and feel (on top of their already clean and sleek interface), as well as setting the league its own sub domain name.

Not to worry, it retains traditional fantasy private league must-haves: earning medals and trophies when the fantasy team performs well.  In addition to feeding users’ social needs with a cool message board feature and fantasy notifications, Fantasy Premier League Commissioner also fulfill their analytic needs with slice and dice stats and trending players within their private league. There’s even a demo account if you want to try it out:

URL: http://prosoccer.epl.fanxt.com
Username: demo@fanxt.com
Password: password

2.     Official Barclay’s Fantasy Premier League

Being the official game, Fantasy Premier League http://fantasy.premierleague.com) offers the very basics of fantasy games – with its own set of limitations. It lets users build a squad of 15 with a set 100 million budget. From there, users pick 11 players using the choice of formations. As with most Fantasy EPL providers, this game offers some analytics in the form of website statistics, injury news and live scoring updates. The real bummer is that this game limits users to only one ‘free’ transfer per week, with additional weekly transfers available for the cost of 4 points off users’ total. Another big drawback in this game is it limits entry to one team per registration, greatly disappointing experienced and passionate fantasy managers who want multiple teams.

3.     ESPN Premier Fantasy

ESPN’s fantasy offering (http://games.espn.go.com/premier-fantasy/2014) is similar to the Barclay’s game, featuring a £100 million initial budget for a 15-man squad; but after which user stay under a floating budget based on their team performance. The floating budget system rewards users for increases in the price of the players on their squad. However, transfers are still limited, but in this case segment-based (and not weekly), with a maximum of 30 transfers allowed each segment.

4.     Yahoo Fantasy Premier League

Yahoo Fantasy Premier League (http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com) has recently upped their game to be on par with other providers. Although they have retained core features such as unlimited transfers, with the addition of substitutes and live scoring, as well as injury alerts, player news and team stats among others, they have Put themselves on par with Barclays and ESPN, but not even close to FanXT’s offering. Yahoo Fantasy Premier League offers a £150M budget with unlimited transfers – which may be a double-edged sword in terms of game credibility.

5.     Goal Fantasy Football

Goal.com’s Premier league fantasy offering (http://fantasy.goal.com) claims to have a number of different rules and scoring opportunities; but does not seem to stack up much above the rest. Offering the lowest budget of 1million (in currency relevant to users), this game also allows only one transfer per week (like the Barclay’s Fantasy Premier League), but is kinder by costing only 2 points per extra transfer; as well as to bring forward unused transfer for a week. Unfortunately it still has limitations, without ultimate customization opportunities.
Comparison of the Private League Options

Now that you have an idea of what each game is about, here’s a neat little comparison of each private leagues’ features.

Features	FanXT	BPL official	ESPN	Yahoo	Goal.com
Unique League URL	√	-	-	-	-
Changing the limit of teams	√	-	-	-	-
Edit rules setting (overall budget, transfer limit and no. of players from a club per fantasy team)	√	-	-	-	-
Change the start of the Gameweek	√	√	-	-	-
Set scoring system	√	-	-	-	-
Manage players info (cost and postion)	√	-	-	-	-
Invite (via email, Facebook and link)	√	√	√	√	√
Fantasy League design personalisation (background, theme , banner and menu content)	√	-	-	-	-
Notification of players status	√	-	-	-	-
Message Board	√	√	-	√	-
Private Messages	√	-	-	-	-
Distinction between leagues joined and own leagues	√	√	-	-	-
Create unlimited number of mini league	√	-	-	√	√
Join unlimited number of mini league	√	-	-	√	√
League approval for Private League (privacy)	√	-	-	-	-
Manage League Members	√	√	√	√	-
Show overall and weekly ranking	√	-	-	-	√
Earn medals and rank insignia	√	-	-	-	√
Manage team for each league (both joined or created)	√	-	-	-	-
Live scores	√	-	√	-	√

Have fun in the 2013/14 with the best fantasy private league game!