How It Works

Private vs Public:

• You can make a league private or public.
• Private leagues will not appear in the public league list.
• Both public and private leagues can be joined via an invite code.
• Public leagues can be discovered by other players in the join league page.
• You can also share it in our Discord server.

League Size:

• URC leagues can be configured for 6 to 12 teams.
• Premiership leagues can be configured for 6 to 10 teams.
• A draft needs at least 6 active managers and enough eligible players for the selected roster settings. Team capacity and active manager count are separate.

Draft Start Timing:

• Drafts can happen before or after the real-life season begins.
• Points only begin accruing from the next full gameweek after your draft completes.

Joining Rules:

• No joining after draft begins
• Commissioners can keep a departed manager's team vacant, reassign the intact team to a verified active DraftXV account, or remove it when the league lifecycle allows.

New Seasons & Keeper Leagues:

• When a season ends, commissioners can renew the league into the next available season and members can follow the continuation from the old league.
• DraftXV Pro commissioners can create keeper leagues. A first-season keeper league drafts normally. Managers can make declarations at renewal, but a renewed league with declared keepers currently stops before draft creation until retained-pick support is complete.

Admin Options:

• 60, 90, 120, or 180-second pick timer, or unlimited time
• Choose Draft Order manually or let it be random
• Pause, resume, undo the latest pick, force an auto-pick for the visible turn, cancel an unfinished room, or safely retry a stuck finalization

Draft Room Features:

• Auto-pick triggers when the timer expires. It tries the manager's first eligible watchlist player, then the highest-ranked eligible available player.
• Admins can pause and resume drafts. In the standard in-app setup, disconnecting does not pause the room; the server clock keeps running and the normal timeout rule applies.
• The final valid pick automatically finalizes the draft and activates the league. Complete Draft is a recovery control, not a normal submission step.

A standard league starts:

• 3 Outside Backs (Wings or Fullbacks)
• 2 Centres
• 1 Fly Half
• 1 Scrum Half
• 1 Hooker
• 1 Prop
• 1 Lock
• 2 Loose Forwards (Flankers or No. 8s)

Trading:

• Trades are available only when the league and both managers are not transaction-locked and every included player is outside their gameweek lock.
• Trade offers may have a sender-chosen deadline. Leagues can require commissioner approval after the receiver accepts; an unanswered approval auto-completes after 48 hours. Acceptance rechecks membership, ownership, roster capacity, required drops, and every relevant lock.
• League members can suggest offline forfeits or rules if bad trades/collusion are suspected and we highly advise this.

Waivers:

• This is probably the most complicated part of the game so its worth spending a bit of time understanding this.
• The waiver wire is how we process player pickups after free agency has been locked. Each manager has a waiver ranking that determines who gets a player if multiple people claim them.
• The configured waiver cycle processes Monday at 19:00 UTC and Friday at 14:00 UTC.
• The global free-agent window locks Thursday at 11:00 UTC. A dropped player normally has a 24-hour window, but processing runs and the 20-minute pre-kickoff cap can change the displayed deadline.
• You can change your waiver priority from the Team or Players pages and set the order for which your picks will be prioritised.
• Waivers are processed in order of the waiver list. The first player on the list is the first to be picked.
• Only a contested valid win drops that manager to the bottom of the league waiver rankings. An uncontested winner keeps their rank.
• Waiver rankings are the inverse of the draft pick order at the start of the season and carry over each week from then on.

Head-to-Head Format:

• You play against one opponent each gameweek
• Top 4 teams qualify for a 3-round playoff to crown the champion. There is a 2 round semi-final where the top 2 teams play each other and the winners progress to the final. The semi finals add points from 2 rounds together to determine the winner.

Lineups:

• You can only edit players who haven't played yet in the current round
• Once a player's match has kicked off, they are locked. This means you can't trade or drop them.

Live Scoring:

• Live points are provisional and update as provider data arrives.
• Scores become final after the final provider refresh and the scheduled Monday at 12:00 UTC round processing succeeds. The first completed fantasy result is final and is not recomputed.
• There is no fixed customer deadline: delayed fixtures, provider availability, and retries can change when a round completes.

Bench Players:

• Bench scores remain visible. Which scores ultimately count, including any automatic substitutions, follows the scoring and lineup-snapshot rules for that gameweek.

Playoff Rounds 1 & 2 - The Semi-Finals

• Semi-final seeding is based on league position:
  • Semi-final A: 1st place vs 4th place
  • Semi-final B: 2nd place vs 3rd place
• The highest combined score across both Semi-Final legs will determine who advances from each matchup to the Grand Final.
• The fixture schedule shows the exact dates for your competition.

Playoff Round 3 - The Grand Final!

• Winner of Semi-final A vs Winner of Semi-final B
• The fixture schedule shows the exact Grand Final date.

How are winners decided in the semi-finals?

Your team's points across both semi-final legs are added together. The team in your matchup with the higher aggregate score after the second leg wins.

What happens if there is a tie on aggregate?

If a playoff matchup ends in a tied score, then the team which finished higher in the league during the regular season will be awarded the win. Be aware this is different to the regular season tie-breaker for league position, which is based on total points scored.

Are lineups locked for both semi-final legs?

No. You can set your lineup each round as normal, so decisions across both weeks are important.

Do regular season points carry into the playoffs?

No. Once playoffs begin, each matchup starts fresh, and only playoff round scores count.

Can I still make transfers during playoffs?

Yes, in fact these are usually crucial as real-life action continues - with injuries, rest & selection decisions happening as normal, unless your manager is under a playoff transaction lock shown in the app.

Why are the semi-finals across 2 rounds, while the final is only across 1?

In any given matchup, lots of things can go really wrong in fantasy, even for good managers. Lots of things can go right for bad managers too actually. The aim of the 2 legged-semi final is to increase the likelihood that the two best fantasy managers in the league advance to the final, by reducing the impact of luck in any single gameweek. Obviously we can't guarantee that.

By the time the Grand Final rolls around, we assume the two managers participating in it both deserve to be there, and they both get one final shot at glory!

Why doesn't fantasy run during the real-life playoffs?

Simply because not every real-life rugby player will be involved in the playoffs, and that would be too much chaos for your carefully curated fantasy lineups. You will need to pay attention to team situations during the fantasy playoff rounds to see whether your players are involved in a real-life playoff push, are playing for pride, or might be rested.

What happens to teams that do not make the fantasy playoffs?

In leagues with 8 or more managers, the bottom 4 teams by league standings compete in the Wooden Spoon playoff. In smaller leagues, teams outside the top four finish when the regular season ends.

Why is there a Wooden Spoon / Toilet Bowl playoff?

Bit of fun. But also, the Wooden Spoon playoff keeps all managers engaged through the final rounds of the season, even if they are not competing for the title. Managers who finished bottom of the league table by a mile can still fight through the final playoff round to avoid last place. Similarly, managers who finished 5th or 6th out of 8 in the league phase have to keep fighting.

Available alerts (depending on your settings and device):

• Weekly match summaries
• Injury alerts
• Player availability updates
• New messages in leagues you belong to

Helpdesk:

• Bugs or issues? Please send an email to support@draftxv.com.

The game is intuitive and designed to welcome newcomers

• Player recommendations and tips throughout
• Simple UI and draft flow
• Social aspect allows league mates to help each other

Hardcore players will enjoy the strategic layers

• Trades, injuries, form, waivers – it's all there
• However, real-life rugby randomness (injuries, weather, cards) means luck plays a role, and no one is unbeatable