Welcome to the Football Masters Series – the free football predicting game. Use your superior knowledge to turn whims into wins and guesses into successes.
It’s a football game but runs more like the tennis or golf circuit, with a calendar of mini-tournaments each season. Most competitions involve predicting what will happen that coming weekend – guessing match scores, picking winning teams, or the best-performing players.
Masters Series tournaments tend to run over two or three weekends. There are also four ‘majors’, which run across four weekends. These give automatic entry to our season ending grand final – and, of course, the elite status of being a major champion.
Some others run over a much longer timeframe – picking how the end-of-season Premier League table will look, for example. You can see all the different formats on our current roster here. I’ve called it the free football predicting game – in truth it’s more like 20 or so games all brought together under the FMS banner.
Each competition brings its own challenges and, for the winner, no end of glory. You can get ranking points for every tournament, but there are various ways to play.
And that gives you fun choices… will you become a specialist in one format, taking on all comers at the Predictor, or the Euro Super League? Or will you focus on working through the rankings to be our world number 1? Maybe you only care about the Wembley grand final, and that status of Masters Series Champion? Or perhaps you’ll go hunting a Grand Slam of major trophies and getting your name into the FMS Hall of Fame?
There are honour and distinction to be had whichever way. And it’ll bring a whole new edge, adventure and set of bragging rights to you and your friends’ football watching throughout the season.
By signing up right here, right now. There are open predicting tournaments literally all year round. Even when the season is over, we’re running our fifth major, Freeze: Premier League, where you guess the final league positions for the year ahead. So you’re always able to sign up and start playing your first Masters Series tournaments within minutes.
I’ve run predicting games like this for years by email, then on sketchy websites. Every time, they grew and grew and then became unsustainable above a certain size. That’s why the Football Masters Series is specifically designed to be much more manageable. All being well, it’ll take roughly the same amount of time running a tournament with 20 people in it as it would with 200 people.
Not only that, I also think there is a bit of a goldilocks-style sweet spot between fantasy football and office sweepstakes, email football games, whatsapp betting rings and the like. There’s no reason it can’t get bigger and bigger – and that’ll just create even more opportunities for people playing it, too.
Don’t get me wrong, I love fantasy football.. But I’ve also heard the following way more than once:
I’ve got no chance, there’s a guy in my league who treats it like a full-time job
I was going fine, then I forgot to update my team for a couple of weeks and that’s my season over
Ok so, finally.. I can roll my transfer, hope KDB doesn’t go up in value before the double game week, free hit the week before, wildcard the week after and – oh God, Reece James is flagged?! This changes everything, let’s start again
I didn’t even realise you guys had a fantasy league. It’s three weeks into the season now, so what’s the point
I think the Football Masters Series helps get around these:
So I think it’s fun for people who are really into fantasy football – once you’re finished tinkering with your team, you can come over to us for your guesses at the weekend.
It’s also hopefully fun for people who find fantasy just a bit much. Simpler and more reliable, while still requiring your football knowledge and nous to do well. You won’t predict all these things by accident – the scores, the winning teams, the league placings, goalfests and snoozefests. Certainly not over a whole season. It’s a great blend of skill and luck,
…you can miss a few weeks (or start halfway through the season) and still have fun. Again, it’s like the golf or tennis season; every few weeks there’s another tournament to play. So it’s another chance to rack up trophies, rise up the rankings, predict your way to our series final or the Hall of Fame. A football team can’t just rock up to the Premier League half way through and start playing. Similarly, you can’t (really) start fantasy football halfway through and have a shot at doing well. But it’s not true with our game – I’ve designed it so you can pick up any time of the year and still have dozens of shots at glory.
Because in the same way, the number one tennis, golf and poker players aren’t necessarily the ones who slog it out every single time, right from week zero. Miss a few weeks of FPL and you’re toast. Miss a few weeks of the Football Masters Series (or start the season a bit late) and you still have every chance of being crowned the champion at the end of the season.
Well that’s good, because as flattering as it is, it’s time to stop reading and start competing. Get started on your Football Masters Series career by setting up your team right here. You’ll be playing your first free football predicting game in no time.