Fantasy Leagues made for MMA fans

Fantasy leagues have been around since the 1950s and are popular amongst traditional sports like baseball, football, soccer, and basketball. The structure of the fantasy leagues for these sports is similar. You draft a bunch of players before the season and hope they rack up fantasy points for you.

That works for traditional sports, but it doesn’t work for mixed martial arts. What’s the point of drafting a fighter if they only fight 2-3 per year? Fighters don’t compete 162 times per year like baseball players. It’s one of the main reasons why there has never been fantasy leagues for MMA. No one’s been able to create a system for season-long fantasy in MMA until now.

On January 3rd, 2023, Verdict MMA announced the launch of Seasons and Leagues, the first and only fantasy leagues in combat sports history. The fantasy format is different from traditional sports. It’s tailored for combat sports fans and built by combat sports fans.

Competing in Seasons

In traditional sports, the length of seasons never change. They always start at the same time and end at the same time. The NBA has 82 game seasons, the MLB has 162 game seasons, the NFL has 17 game seasons, etc. Since there are no real seasons in combat sports, the length of fantasy seasons is predetermined by us. Season 1 started on January 14th, 2023, and will end at the UFC’s International Fight Week event in July.

One set of picks across all leagues

Unlike fantasy leagues for traditional sports, you don’t draft fighters for an entire season on Verdict. On Verdict, you make picks for each event that’s included in a season. It’s the same set of picks you use for the Global Leaderboards, with the difference being each league has its own leaderboard. Make sure you’re confident in your picks because they’ll determine where you rank on the Global Leaderboard and in all of your leagues. You can learn about the scoring system here.

Creating private fantasy leagues

You have the option of joining big official leagues, but you can also create private leagues with just you and your friends. Private leagues have private leaderboards.

League President

Each league has a league president who names the league, sets the profile picture of the league, and determines whether the league will be public or private.

Official leagues

These are public leagues created by notable figures in the combat sports world. For example, you can join the official leagues of Ben Askren, Dan Hardy, and the MMA Hour.