The 52 League

Nothing. The app is free during the beta, leagues included. If your league wants a buy-in and payouts, that's between you and your owners — the app tracks the six win conditions either way.

4 to 8. Playoffs and drafts adapt to the size — 8 owners get two mirrored 4-team brackets, smaller leagues get scaled formats. Any empty seat can be an AI manager, so you can start at any size and grow.

An iPhone and an Apple ID. The league runs as a native iOS app — lineups, trades, standings, and push notifications all live there.

No — scoring tables, the sport list, and the season calendar are product-level, identical for every league. That's deliberate: it's what lets scoring stay fully automated and league results stay comparable. Your league's personality lives in its lineup rules, its rivalries, and its bylaws.

Automated feeds cover all 18 sports — box scores, race results, tournament leaderboards, fight cards — running nightly with extra passes on game days. Live games glow red in the app as they happen. If a feed ever misses a result, the commissioner has a manual stat-entry screen as a fallback for every sport.

Lineups carry over automatically, so a quiet owner still fields a team. If someone leaves for good, hand their team to an AI manager — it keeps competing with the same roster — and hand it back to a human replacement whenever one shows up.

This page is your rulebook — send your owners here. The Bylaws below are the flagship league's constitution; treat them as a ready-made template and adapt the human parts (buy-in, conduct, amendments) to your crew.

The 52 League is a year-round, multi-sport fantasy competition among friends and family. Recreational, not commercial. 8 owners total, by invitation, confirmed by the Commissioner.

Mike Burch serves as Commissioner — maintains the app and data, approves or vetoes trades, resolves disputes, enforces the bylaws, proposes amendments, and enters results for any sport off automated feeds.

Limits: no unilateral power to change scoring mid-season, reverse completed games or transactions, add/remove owners without league discussion, or alter their own roster outside normal competition.

Term: serves until stepping down or replaced by a 6-of-8 vote.

Tier 1 (keeper): NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NASCAR, IndyCar, PGA Tour, MLS, EPL, F1, WNBA. Tier 2 (keeper-eligible, in-season): College Football, College Basketball, BIG3. Tier 3 (event-week): UFC, ATP & WTA Tennis (Grand Slam fortnights, locks/scores from week 2), Major Horse Racing.

Adding or removing a sport requires a 6-of-8 vote before a season starts.

15 players per owner — 10 starters, 5 bench. No position-locked slots; all are flex-eligible subject to the sport-diversity rules in Article V.

10 starters per week. Minimum 6 different sports, maximum 2 per sport. You can start any rostered player, but an out-of-season starter scores zero; Tier 3 players count toward diversity when they have an event that week.

Lineups carry over until changed. Each starter locks individually at their event start — no single weekly deadline. A carried-over starter who is in offseason, dropped, or ineligible scores zero.

Each sport is calibrated so a great week tops out near 50 points. Scoring week is Tue–Mon (so a rain-delayed Sunday finish and Monday Night Football count for that week). For multi-game sports and multi-match soccer, only the player's best game/match of the week counts.

"If he plays, he scores" — trades, national-team call-ups, and international competitions all count; MLS↔EPL transfers move the roster spot on the official transfer date. Exhibitions and All-Star games never count. No negative weekly totals — a player floors at zero.

Full sport-by-sport rules live in the app and are summarized in the Scoring section above.

The season runs November through late October — 52 weeks, no offseason. Four quarters named for the seasons (Winter Nov–Jan, Spring Feb–Apr, Summer May–Jul, Fall mid-Jul–Sep), each nominally 12 weeks: a 10-week regular season plus a 2-week playoff. The final four weeks (October) are the Grand Championship. The season is anchored to that year's championship Finale weekend — the Grand Championship final is scheduled to end on the NASCAR season Finale, alongside the World Series and Breeders' Cup — so the Commissioner sets the start date each season and the calendar flexes ±1 week, absorbed in one quarter's regular season. For 2026, week 1 begins Tuesday Nov 11, 2025 (weeks run Tuesday→Monday), putting the final on Oct 27 – Nov 9. Each week the highest total lineup score wins (tiebreaker: most individual high scores); weekly wins reset each quarter. Six win conditions: the four Quarter Champions, the Regular Season Champion (most total weekly wins), and the Annual Champion. Weeks are named by quarter (e.g. Summer Week 5), with playoff rounds named Semifinals / Final.

Each quarter ends with a 2-week playoff, seeded by that quarter's weekly wins. The field splits in half: the top half (up to 4) forms the Title bracket (Semifinals, then a Final and a 3rd-place game) → Quarter Champion; the rest play a consolation round for placement. The format scales to league size: 8 owners = two mirrored 4-team brackets; 7 = a 4-team Title bracket plus a 3-team consolation decided over the two weeks on combined points; 4 = the top two play for the title and the bottom two for the #1 pick. The full finish sets the supplemental-draft order — consolation winner first, Quarter Champion near the back, runner-up last. The October Grand Championship is a 4-week finale with two-week rounds: the Quarter Champions (topped up by the next-best teams) play for Annual Champion; the others play for the November #1 pick — each side also plays a 3rd-place game, so the full finish sets the November order. Trades freeze during all playoff weeks; free agency stays open. 2026 bridge: only Summer & Fall crown champions, and the October Title bracket fills with the next-best by weekly wins — normal seeding from 2027.

Main draft: snake, in-app, held in November after the Grand Championship and keeper deadline (90-second clock). Order follows the Grand Championship's full finish: the draft-side winner gets the #1 pick, the Annual Champion picks near the back, the runner-up last; then it snakes. Year 1's draft ran on a Google Sheet over Zoom with a random order; in-app thereafter. No sport-restricted rounds.

Quarterly supplemental drafts run async at each quarter boundary: protect 11, expose 4; the pool is all free agents plus everyone's exposed players; order follows the quarter's playoff finish (consolation winner first, Quarter Champion near the back, runner-up last), then snakes. Claim up to 4 (drop-to-15 on each), with make-up picks for any exposed player you lose. Tier 3 players are draftable but never keepers.

Autodraft: if your clock expires the app picks for you — the top available player from your pre-ranked queue, or if that's empty, the best available by previous-quarter scoring, in-season fit for the upcoming quarter, and preseason value (public rankings / ADP / standings), never adding a 3rd at one sport. A Draft Board in-app ranks players by that preseason value so you can scout players who haven't started their season yet.

No waiver wire — every unrostered player is a free agent, claimed first-come, first-served at any time, right up until that player's game locks. Drops allowed anytime — except a starter whose event has already locked (benched players always droppable) — with a 48-hour re-add lockout to deter dump-and-grab. Tier 3 players reach free agency one week before their event and auto-drop after it resolves unless kept. During a quarterly supplemental draft, free-agent pickups pause and resume once it completes.

Proposable year-round except playoff weeks — frozen during the 2-week quarter playoffs and the 4-week October Grand Championship. Proposer may rescind before a response; accepted trades go to commissioner review. Vetoes are reserved for collusion or clear competitive-balance violations and must be explained to both parties. Keeper round-cost follows the player through trades and supplemental-draft poaches. Offers auto-decline at 72 hours; commissioner review auto-approves at 24 hours.

Keep 5 players; the other 10 return to the draft. Year 1 cost = original draft round (free-agent pickups = Round 12), rising +2 rounds per consecutive year, capped at Round 1. A player's keeper cost travels with them through a trade or supplemental-draft poach; only a true free-agent claim resets to Round 12. No sport limit. Tier 3 players cannot be kept. Selections due 48 hours after the October Grand Championship, before the November draft — miss it and you enter a full redraft with no keepers. Retired/inactive players release automatically.

The league iOS app is the system of record for rosters, lineups, scoring, standings, and trades. All owners need an Apple ID and a capable iPhone. Lineup locks, trades, and standings come via push notification. A group chat is encouraged for trash talk but is not the official record.

Owners check the app at least weekly and answer trade offers within 72 hours. Three straight weeks of inactivity gets flagged; repeated inactivity is grounds for end-of-season removal. No tanking, collusion, or bad-faith trades. Removal requires a 6-of-8 vote (excluding the owner in question); replacement is by commissioner invitation.

Buy-in is TBD by league vote at the inaugural meeting — could be $0 (bragging rights) or a pooled cash structure, with payouts allocated across the six win conditions. Digital banners in the app mark every win condition regardless of cash.

Any owner may propose an amendment; proposals are voted during the Grand Championship and, if passed by a 6-of-8 vote, take effect for the next season — before the November draft, which follows immediately. The Commissioner may amend the bylaws at any time in the best interests of the league.

These bylaws take effect upon adoption at the inaugural meeting prior to the first draft, in November.

• Build 154 · June 28 — BIG3 locks per game in multi-day weeks. When a BIG3 week has games on different days (Thursday and Saturday, say), each player now locks at their own game time instead of the whole BIG3 field locking the moment the first game tips off.
• Build 153 · June 28 — Tennis, fixed and improved. Two things. First, tennis players now actually score during a Grand Slam — the scoring had quietly never been working. Second, a major now pays across both of its weeks: you bank the round your player reached each week, so a deep run rewards you in week one and week two (a player knocked out earns nothing the next week). Tennis also now reads in-season for the whole tournament, and you can find and pick up tennis players — stars included — through the Players tab all the way through it.
• Build 152 · June 27 — A "This Week's UFC Card" shortcut at the top of the Players tab makes the eligible fighters easy to find (not just buried in the Dashboard). Injury badges now read purple in every state, so an injured player never looks like the red "live" tag.
• Build 151 · June 27 — Fixed a crash some testers hit when switching tabs.
• Build 148 · June 25 — Fixed in-season sports (like IndyCar) wrongly showing active on phones set to a non-Eastern time zone — the weekly window is now anchored to Eastern for everyone.
• Build 147 · June 25 — Injury badges now also appear when you tap an owner in the standings to view their roster, matching the rest of the app.
• Build 146 · June 25 — Custom team names, AI team hand-off, and injury polish. Give your team a custom name (Settings → Edit Profile) — it shows on the standings, and a long-press reveals who manages it. Commissioners can now assign an AI team to a real owner taking over an open seat — the bot's roster and lineup move across. Injury badges are now purple (so they don't look like the red "live" tag) and show right on the Dashboard roster grid, not just a player's page. And an AI owner added mid-season now drafts itself a full roster automatically within a few minutes.
• Build 144 · June 23 — Two lineup-lock fixes. Your lineup for the new week now opens early Monday morning instead of staying stuck on last week's finished games. And adding a free agent from a sport you didn't already have now correctly locks them if their game has already started — so you can't slot in someone whose game is already underway. Also quieted a background error from a sport feed that's no longer used.
• Builds 142–143 · June 22 — AI owners. Don't have a full league? Fill the empty seats with computer-run owners, or play a solo league against up to seven of them. Each AI gets its own drafting personality and sets its own lineup every week. See AI Owners under Add · Drop · Trade · Keep.
• Build 141 · June 22 — Injury reports. Hurt players now show an availability badge across the app — pulled automatically from the official injury report a few times a day (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, WNBA, and college football; college basketball in season). The headline is a Dashboard "swap before lock" card: if one of your starters is Out, Doubtful, Questionable, or Day-to-Day and their game hasn't started yet, you're warned in time to bench them so you don't post a zero. Once their game starts they're locked, so the card leaves them out. You'll also see a small badge on free agents and the Draft Board so you don't pick up someone who's out.
• Build 140 · June 21 — BIG3 players now lock when their game starts, like every other sport — so you can't swap a BIG3 starter after seeing how they did.
• Build 139 · June 20 — A Dashboard nudge when your starters can't score this week (their season is off) so a stale lineup doesn't quietly post zeros. Commissioner tools now work — regenerate the invite code and edit league settings actually save. Invite codes are now letters-only, easier to share without mix-ups.
• Build 138 · June 20 — Dropping a player you got in a trade now works. Before, trying to drop a player you'd acquired in a trade silently did nothing; now it drops correctly, and you'll see a clear message if a drop ever can't go through.
• Build 137 · June 20 — The Draft Board now shows a short note ("Preseason rankings aren't available yet for that sport…") when a sport has no preseason source yet — like college football before the fall — instead of a list of unranked players. Every sport stays selectable.
• Build 136 · June 18 — The Dashboard's Events This Week card now lists only events that haven't started yet — a tournament already underway drops off, since those players are locked and no longer a pickup.
• Build 135 · June 18 — New Draft Board screen ranks players by preseason value for scouting players who have no stats yet (kept separate from current-scoring Top Players), an Events This Week dashboard card nudges pickups for event sports, and the ⓘ color key now appears on the Your Roster card too. The waiver wire is gone — with zero claims all season, pickups are now simple first-come free agency. Added an Autodraft help page.
• Build 134 · June 18 — All Players search on the Players tab, and an ⓘ color key on the Dashboard explaining the chip colors. Playoffs and the draft now work at any league size, not just 8 owners. Behind the scenes: a missed draft pick now autodrafts the best available (your queue first, otherwise by recent form + upcoming-season fit), and players who haven't started their season get a preseason value for scouting.
• Build 133 · June 17 — Out-of-season players (like tennis players between majors) no longer get stuck locked — bench or drop them freely; they lock again once their sport's scoring window is on.
• Builds 130–132 · June 16 — Player chips now show season status at a glance: out-of-season players (who can't score) are flagged, event sports like F1, NASCAR and UFC show active for the whole week they have an event, and a yellow chip marks an in-season sport that's idle this week. NBA and NHL drop off "in season" after mid-June.
• Build 129 · June 16 — Tap the "who's leading" line on the Dashboard to jump straight to Standings.
• Build 127 · June 16 — Pending trades now appear on the Dashboard with Accept / Decline (and Approve / Veto for the commissioner) right there — no more digging under Players.
• Builds 124–128 · June 15–16 — Trades now go through reliably — accepting an offer completes the swap (it could previously do nothing), finalized on the league server. Waivers, the weekly rollover, and the supplemental draft now apply correctly for every owner.
• Builds 122–123 · June 14–15 — Pull to refresh the player list, and Top Players lists sports before their season starts so you can scout and add players early (e.g. BIG3 ahead of its opener).
• Build 121 · June 13 — Reworked the navigation bar across all tabs to fix a crash some testers hit when switching tabs right after opening the app.
• Build 120 · June 12 — Scoring Rules screen (Settings) now matches current scoring across every sport, with the new baseball weights listed for their June 15 start. Plus a deeper fix for the crash when re-tapping a tab right after opening the app.
• Build 119 · June 11 — Baseball scoring rebalanced starting Monday June 15 (Week 8): hitters and pitchers now score comparably, and the best games land in the mid-30s to low-40s like other sports. Scores through June 14 are unchanged.
• Build 118 · June 9 — First pass at the tab-tap crash fix.
• Builds 112–117 · June 8 — Weekly-rollover consistency: your lineup total now matches across the Dashboard, Daily Scores, and Standings; live players lock everywhere (including racing and golf); Top Players opens in Week view and shows each player's owner; Daily Scores opens straight to the right day.
• Builds 102–111 · June 7–8 — Live games glow red across the app — players and sports in action right now. The week now advances automatically Monday at 3am ET, standings load faster, weekend afternoon score updates added, plus a round of code-review hardening.
• Builds 99–101 · June 7 — Scoring rebalance for NHL skaters, WNBA, and EPL (full match scoring, matching MLS); live "playing now" highlight first shipped.
• Builds 87–98 · June 4–6 — First-time onboarding tour and a Help section, crash reporting, and a wave of beta-feedback polish.
• Builds 82–86 · June 3 — League Activity feed (every add, drop, trade, and waiver in one place), add free agents straight from Top Players, and smarter recently-dropped lists.
• Builds 64–81 · May 31 – June 3 — Multi-league support with share-link invites, per-game lineup locks with "best game while in your lineup" scoring (mid-week pickups now work), and major startup and standings speed-ups.
• Build 63 · May 30 — The Dashboard now fully loads on launch — including player locks and "playing today" badges — without needing a pull-to-refresh.
• Build 56 · May 30 — Polish from beta feedback: fixed the onboarding lineup rule (max 2 per sport), added the jersey logo to onboarding, tidied the Top Players stat line, and the Dashboard now loads on launch more reliably.
• Build 55 · May 30 — New Daily Scores screen: every owner's previous-day lineup score, plus who scored (rostered and free agents, with quick-add). Dropped players now honor the 48-hour re-add lockout, you can't drop a starter mid-event, and the launch screen shows the jersey logo.
• Build 54 · May 29 — New UNC jersey "52" logo and app icon. Retired players (like Kyle Busch) are hidden from the add/draft/waiver lists, and the 2026 NASCAR field is corrected.
• Build 53 · May 29 — Players is now its own bottom tab, and the app loads automatically on launch — no more pull-to-refresh when you open it.
• Build 52 · May 29 — New Players hub groups Weekly Scores, Top Players, and Trades in one place.
• Build 51 · May 29 — Bigger, bolder splash screen; the dashboard leader line now uses season names ("Summer Week 5").
• Build 50 · May 29 — Streamlined to three tabs — Dashboard, Team, Standings. Roster and Lineup merged into one Team screen; Settings moved to a gear on the Dashboard.
• Build 49 · May 29 — Clearer "roster full" message when you try to add a 16th player.
• Build 48 · May 29 — New Top Players scouting list — rank players by this-week, quarter, or season average, with a free-agents-only filter.
• Build 47 · May 29 — Folded Season Recap into Standings, adding per-week averages to the Quarter and Season rows.
• Build 46 · May 29 — Standings fill in backfilled weeks correctly; re-tapping a tab returns it to the top.
• Build 45 · May 29 — Keeper-aware draft board plus a new autopick queue you can pre-rank.
• Build 44 · May 29 — Supplemental draft protect/expose — expose 4, claim from free agents plus exposed players, with make-up picks.
• Build 43 · May 29 — New Draft room — live board, on-the-clock countdown, and tap-to-pick.
• Build 42 · May 29 — Redesigned Standings as one scrolling page with Week, Quarter, and Season sections.
• Build 41 · May 29 — Playoffs now play a 3rd-place game for a full 1–8 finish that sets the draft order; corrected the sport count to 18.
• Build 40 · May 29 — Current-quarter standings pinned to the top of the Standings screen.
• Build 39 · May 29 — Playoff brackets — real Title and Consolation brackets plus the October Grand Championship.
• Build 38 · May 29 — New app icon matching the website's navy-and-Carolina-blue "52" mark.
• Build 37 · May 29 — Dashboard shows the season and week ("Summer · Week 5"), cleaner header; your lineup now carries forward automatically each week.
• Build 36 · May 29 — Re-anchored the season to November–October with Winter/Spring/Summer/Fall quarters and the October Grand Championship.
• Build 35 · May 29 — Fixed "playing today" indicators and in-season highlights across every sport.
• Build 34 · May 29 — Per-event lineup locking — each starter locks when their game starts.
• Build 33 · May 28 — Added IndyCar as the 18th sport; renamed the top tier "Keeper."
• Build 32 · May 28 — BIG3 became a keeper-eligible seasonal sport.
• Build 31 · May 28 — Standings now opens on the weekly view.
• Build 30 · May 28 — Added tennis and horse-racing game-day feeds; NASCAR scoreboard fixes.
• Build 29 · May 28 — In-season sports light up green on days they play.
• Build 28 · May 28 — Fixed a cross-sport highlight mix-up and the week-leader line.
• Build 27 · May 28 — Clearer trade-save errors and smoother auto-approve timing.
• Build 26 · May 28 — Added the option to rescind a trade offer.
• Build 25 · May 28 — Game-day detection reliability fix.
• Build 24 · May 28 — Added a commissioner game-day diagnostic.
• Build 23 · May 28 — Fixed game-day data sticking on an empty result.
• Build 22 · May 28 — Fixed game-day date parsing.
• Build 21 · May 28 — Brighter game-day indicators.
• Build 20 · May 27 — Trade proposals now show on the Trades screen.
• Build 19 · May 27 — Maintenance release.
• Build 17 · May 27 — Game-day refinements and navigation polish.
• Build 16 · May 27 — Fixed duplicate player adds; sturdier sign-in.
• Build 15 · May 27 — Dashboard polish, onboarding, and trade access.
• Build 14 · May 26 — Quieted score notifications.
• Build 13 · May 26 — Automatic weekly advance.
• Build 12 · May 26 — Weekly recap filter and "next update" display.
• Build 10 · May 26 — Score persistence, owner details, and polish.
• Build 9 · May 26 — All sports live with automated scoring.
• Build 8 · May 25 — Smart feeds, pull-to-refresh, on-demand stats.
• Build 7 · May 25 — Stats-entry and lineup-refresh improvements.
• Build 6 · May 24 — "The 52 League" rebrand and scoring updates.
• Build 5 · May 23 — First TestFlight build: trades, waivers, weekly wins, welcome screen.