A fantasy football alternative without the admin

Why people give up on fantasy football

Traditional fantasy football is a genuinely great game and it is also a commitment. Fifteen players to buy, a formation to set, a captain to pick, price changes to watch, chips to time, double gameweeks to plan for, and injury news that lands an hour before the deadline while you're doing something else.

Plenty of people love exactly that. Plenty of others start in August full of intent, forget a deadline in September, fall behind in October and quietly never open it again — not because they stopped caring about football, but because a hobby turned into a chore.

The same weekend, a tenth of the effort

Footie Blackjack keeps the part that makes fantasy football fun — having something riding on results you were going to watch anyway, and a league of people to beat — and throws out the management.

You pick four Premier League fixtures from the coming gameweek and try to land on eleven total goals without going over. That's the whole game. Goals from both teams in each match count, eleven exactly is a perfect week, and twelve is a bust.

Side by side

Where it's still a proper game

Low effort doesn't mean the decision is easy. Premier League matches have averaged a little under three goals each in recent seasons, so four fixtures land near eleven all on their own — which means the target is close enough to feel achievable and tight enough that picking four high-scoring sides is the fastest way to bust.

The pick screen shows what each team has scored in their last three games, so there's real information to work with if you want it. There's a whole page on how to use it in picking to eleven, and none of it is compulsory.

Good for a group that won't do homework

This is where the format earns its keep. A work league, a family league, a group of friends spread across four cities — the sort of league that dies in a traditional format because half the group can't keep up. Here, everybody can enter in the time it takes the kettle to boil, and everyone's picks become visible once most of the gameweek's fixtures are under way, so there's still a weekend of watching each other's fourth fixture go wrong.

Create a room, share the six-character code, done. Private by default, or listed publicly if you want strangers in it.

When fantasy football is the better pick

If you enjoy the research — the fixture planning, the differentials, the price rises, knowing which full-back has three assists in four games — a prediction game won't replace that, and it isn't trying to. This is a different pleasure: one call a week, then ninety minutes of hoping a match stays at 1–1.

Nothing stops you doing both. They take up entirely different amounts of your week.

Getting started

It's free, there's nothing to buy, and setup is an email address and a display name. The full rules take two minutes to read, or you can skip them and work it out from the pick screen — four fixtures, eleven goals, don't go over.