How to run a Bundesliga prediction league

The season in numbers

Eighteen clubs play each other home and away: 34 rounds of 9 matches, 306 in all. The season starts in August and normally finishes in mid-May, a little earlier than the other big leagues, so plan your end-of-season message for then.

With nine matches a round, the Golden Pick doubles one match in nine.

The Saturday afternoon block

A Bundesliga weekend has a regular shape: a match on Friday night, a block of matches that all kick off together on Saturday afternoon, one on Saturday evening, and the rest on Sunday.

The Saturday block is where predictions get missed. Several matches lock at the same moment, so a player who leaves it until just before kick-off has to do them all at once, or misses the lot. Tell your group to do Saturday's games before they head out. Players with phone alerts on get a reminder a couple of hours before kick-off.

The winter break

The Bundesliga stops for a few weeks over Christmas and New Year, longer than the other big leagues. Use it. Just before the break, post the title-race picture from Admin, then Stats, so the standings are fresh in everyone's head. A few days before the restart, send an announcement with the first deadline. Players who drifted off in the autumn often come back for the second half if somebody tells them when it starts.

The league also stops for the international breaks in September, October, November and March. The same trick works there.

Which points to choose

Under bullseye scoring an exact score is worth more the more goals there are, so a 3-2 bullseye earns 55 points against 31 for a 1-0. That rewards a player brave enough to call a high-scoring game and get it right. If your group would rather keep it simple, 3-1-0 is easy to explain. Both are worked through in how the points work.

The real table and the AI

Your league's Table page has a second view with the real Bundesliga table, so players can check the standings without leaving. The AI's call on every Bundesliga match, and how it did, is on the Bundesliga predictions page.

PrediSportsHQ has no connection with the Bundesliga or any of its clubs. It's a free tool for running your own prediction league.