It’s the heart of fantasy football draft season which means Commissioners are getting everything set for the season. No one enjoys collecting league fees, but it’s necessary for many, many fantasy leagues. Hopefully, you don’t need to read this article, and all your league-mates always pay. But what do we do if they won’t?
Something very important to distinguish here is the difference between “Won’t” pay and “Can’t” pay. If your league uses Fantrax Treasurer then you should be able to avoid the “Won’t” but for those that do not use this great tool, I’ll offer some solutions for what to do when a league member won’t pay.
What To Do When A League Member Won’t Pay
Reach Out Early
One way to try and avoid the issue of a non-payment for your fantasy league is to reach out to everyone as early as possible. The longer you wait to collect league fees, the greater the chance that all payments will not be made prior to the season starting. If you start your preseason Commissioner duties early enough, you give yourself plenty of time to make adjustments.
First and foremost, if someone is telling you they do not intend to pay for the fantasy league, they should not be able to play in the fantasy league. We don’t need any Bad Specimen dragging down the rest of the group. Setting a deadline early on prior to the fantasy draft, allows you ample time to find a New Team For the league that will pay the league fees.
Offer To Split Up Payment
Everyone has different financial situations. Sometimes you run into an occurrence where a league member is willing to pay, but unable to at the moment. What can we do here? If this person has always paid timely for the fantasy league, give them the option to split up their payment. If allowing them to pay in increments makes it easier for them, you should offer that option. This is assuming you have no reason to suspect they will not end up paying in full
Again, we’re talking about someone who has always paid and is willing. For whatever reason, they are not able to pay in full at the moment. It happens. Do what we can to help as Commissioner, and get everyone paid and playing.
Winnings Are Off Limits
We just discussed an option for when someone can’t pay. The next three suggestions are for those messy cases where someone won’t pay.
Hopefully you started your league preparations early enough to give you time to find a replacement for someone who won’t pay. But if you didn’t, what should you do? One option is to allow the person to still run their fantasy team, however, they are not allowed to take home any winnings. If they win the league, win a bonus or anything of that nature, they are ineligible to receive a payout. If you don’t pay, you can’t win.
This of course needs to be established with the person and with the entire league prior to the season starting. I’ll admit, I do not love this option. My preference is to not allow someone to operate their fantasy team if they are choosing to not pay the agreed-upon fee. However, certain circumstances may dictate the need to allow it.
Autopilot
If someone won’t pay, we don’t want them in our league. Let’s say that we were not able to find a replacement prior to the fantasy draft, so this vacant team was auto-picked. What do we do with this roster? Do we just leave it to rot the entire season? It’s possible this could create some unfair advantages for other teams in the league depending on the schedule. And, we’re also trying to make our leagues as competitive as possible right? #NoFreeWins.
One option is to have the Commissioner take control of the team and set the lineup each week. With weekly player projections, this is a relatively easy task to do. All that is required is to start the players with the highest projected fantasy score for the week. It doesn’t matter what the matchup is, or what you as a team owner would do. The only thing that matters is being as objective as possible, and the projections are a way to do that.
I think it’s also important to establish prior to Week 1 that this shell team will not be eligible for trades. Since there is not a true owner behind the decisions, it’s not logical to allow trades with this roster.
Waiver moves should also be minimal. Again, no subjective or “what’s best” type of additions should be made. Only moves to fill empty roster spots during bye weeks or to replace injured players are necessary. I would also suggest that no true “waiver” moves be made. The only free agent additions should occur after waivers run. This allows the teams that are actually competing to have first dibs at the top players available on the waiver wire.
Double Up
The last suggestion for what to do when a league member won’t pay, is to allow another team in the league to have two teams. They, of course, will need to pay for both teams. If this decision is made (and approved by the entire league) prior to the draft, they should also be allowed to draft both of their teams.
This option takes a lot of trust. You, as a Commissioner, need to trust that this league mate will run both of their teams with integrity and try to compete to the best of their ability. You’ll need to trust that they will not favor one team over the other, and make moves that uplift one of their rosters. And you need to trust that they will not throw matchups against teams that would give a favorable result to one of their teams as well.
Just like with the Autopilot team, trades should not be allowed between both of these rosters. Either team separately can make trades with the entire league, but trades involving both teams run by the same person should be discouraged.
Hopefully, you do not run into a situation where you need to use any of these suggestions. However, in the case where a league member won’t pay their league fee, you do have options on how to proceed.
For more great rankings and analysis, make sure to check out our 2023 Fantasy Football Draft Kit!
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