Set Up Your Own Pick’Em Contest Today

If you love sports and love taking place in office pools, then it’s time to take that to the next level. Instead of simply participating in an office pool, it’s time for you to set one up and be the leader among your friends and other coworkers.

There are a handful of different office sports pools that you can set up and run, and one of those includes a pick’em contest. This might not be as popular as a bracket pool or a survivor contest, but it still provides terrific entertainment.

Not only will running a pick’em contest make enjoying sports more fun, but this can also be an additional income or revenue source for you. You aren’t going to get rich when running a pick’em contest, but you can make enough to make it worth your while.

You might feel like setting up and running a pick’em contest pool seems like too much work, but you won’t have to go about this on your own. OfficeSportsPools will be here to help you out, and it will provide you with all of the necessary tools.

work that you will have to do in order to set up your own Pick ’em contest, but that’s really the hardest part. The tools provided from OfficeSportsPools will take care of running the contest from there, and you can just sit back and watch the action unfold.

NFL Pick’Em Brings a Crowd

When it comes to pick’em contests, the National Football League is usually the sport that draws the biggest crowd. The NFL is easily the biggest sport in the United States, and the schedule sets up perfectly for this type of contest.

The NFL regular season is 18 weeks long, and the pick’em contest will cover all of the games during that time period. You will be able to decide how you want to set up your contest, but it won’t be hard getting people to sign up with this league being featured.

Even though the NFL is the best sport to use when running a pick’em contest, you aren’t limited to the NFL. Of course OfficeSportsPools has plenty of experience with NFL pick’em contests, but we have some other sports that we can include as well.

Your best buddies or other acquaintances are going to be looking for any and all NFL contests every year, and you can have the contest that they are looking for by setting up a pick’em pool.

How NFL Pick’Em Works

An NFL pick’em contest is extremely easy to run, and it’s also extremely easy to play. You might find some people getting confused with other sports pools, but that won’t be the case with this type of game.

There are really two options when it comes to running a pick’em contest, and you will have to decide which one you are looking to implement. You can set it up to only pick the winning team, or you can set up a contest where picking against the spread is used.

Most NFL pick’em contests will simply focus on picking winners, and that type of game will likely allow you to get more participants. Serious NFL fans won’t mind picking against the spread, but that might keep some of the casual fans out of it.

Points are calculated after every single game is played, and the object is to have the highest score at the end of the season. Depending on how you want to set up your contest, you could also award a prize to the weekly winner as well.

The best part about this though is that you don’t have to be the one that does the scoring. Once the games begin, OfficeSportsPools will take care of keeping track of the winners, and the leaderboards will be updated as the final scores roll in.

Planning Your NFL Pick’Em Contest

You are going to have to do very little work once the NFL season begins, but there is some planning involved before it all starts. OfficeSportsPools won’t know how you want your Pick ’em contest to be run, and you will have to get everything lined up.

When it comes to planning, you can take a look at some of our options and tips to help you make this an easier process. Pick’em contests have been around for decades, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when trying to set up your own contest.

Recruiting Participants

The hardest part of running an NFL Pick’em contest is recruiting participants that might want to sign up. Obviously looking at your friends is a great option, but you should also ask your coworkers or people that you communicate with regularly.

When you start to recruit participants, you are going to want to make sure that this is done well in advance of the contest starting. Trying to spread the word in the final week of the NFL Preseason won’t give people enough time to get signed up and get everything in order.

Don’t limit the number of participants either as that will limit the amount of money that you make, and that can be paid out.

Financial Details

When you begin sending out invitations to your Pick ’em contest, you are going to have to include the financial details right from the beginning. Anyone interested in participating will want to know how much the contest costs to enter, and what the payouts are going to look like.

Collecting the money is something that you will have to do on your own, and you will also need a plan for that. It’s important to collect all of the money before the contest starts, because you will have some people that attempt to get out of paying if things don’t go well.

Keeping the entry fee low will entice more players to sign up for your Pick ’em contest, but it will also limit the amount of money that you make. Starting off small is a good idea, and then you can grow as time goes on.

Figuring Out Scoring

Getting people to join your Pick ’em contest is no easy task, but figuring out the scoring system is one of the most important parts of your pool. This contest has to have a way to determine a winner, and the way that you set up the scoring will explain how that champion is determined.

The easiest way to set up the scoring is to award one point for every Pick that is correct. This would allow you to have a season-long winner, and you can also determine that person that has the most points each week.

You could also focus on the Monday Night Football Game and award two points if a correct pick is made for that game. Another option would be to have the points increase each week as the games tend to become more important throughout the season.

This is all left up to you, and you can set the scoring rules up before the contest officially gets underway.

Paying Out Winners

The contest is going to end at some point, and that is when you will be in charge of paying out the winners. Before that point though, you are going to have to determine the percentage of the prize pool that will go to each player.

Some pick’em contests will award the entire pool to the person with the best score, while others will pay out a number of different places. You likely won’t be able to announce this information until after the season starts and you figure out how many people are going to participate.

Of course, you will want to keep some of the pot for yourself as this is the only way that you can make some money.

Running it Back

One of the best parts about running an NFL Pick’em contest with OfficeSportsPools is that you won’t have to go through the planning part of it every single year. Once you have your contest set up then you can simply run it all back the following year.

Emails can be sent out to participants that were in the previous contest, and the general rules and details can be the same as well. Of course, you can go in andand make some changes if you want to, but your contest will be ready to go.

College Football Another Option

Football in general is the biggest sport in the United States, and it is perfect for Pick ’em contests. The NFL is usually the league that most use for this type of contest, but the college football season is perfect as well.

College football games are played on a weekly basis, and most are played every Saturday. The only difference is that there are more games played each week, and you can’t require participants to make a pick on all of them.

Stick to the biggest conferences when running a college football pick’em or you can select specific games you want to use each week. You will still get a long list of participants when offering a college football pick’em contest.

How to Adapt to Different Sports

Not everyone is a fan of the NFL, and you will find that a pick’em contest is popular with a wide range of sports. You might also realize how much fun this type of contest is and want to expand to different professional or collegiate sports.

Football is just so easy because games are played weekly, but that doesn’t mean you can’t adapt for other sports. It’s really up to you how you will want to change up the rules and format of your Pick ’em contest, but OfficeSportsPools can help you out.

For the NBA and NHL, you might want to hand-select certain games each week, or only look at the weekend slate of games. For baseball, you can adapt this contest to be picking the winner of each series, or again only focus on certain games.

There are different custom templates available to choose from, and you have the power to set this up however you would like. As long as the rules are clearly stated before the contest starts then all of your participants will know what to expect and look for.