Creating and running a pool
One form makes the pool live; everything after that happens in the pool's settings.
Creating the pool
Creating a pool is one page at /pool/create with four stacked cards to fill in, and the pool is active and joinable the moment you press Create Pool.
Start from the + New Pool button in the header of your pools list, or the dashed New pool link in the sidebar. There is nothing to step through: the whole form is one page, with a Summary panel on the right that echoes your choices back and always reads Access: Private · invite only.
- 1 Name the pool. The field is required and takes 3 to 50 characters; the placeholder suggests something like Office Football Pool 2026.
- 2 Choose the sport. NFL is already selected. NBA and More sports are greyed out with a Coming Soon chip and cannot be picked.
- 3 Choose the duration: Full Season, or Partial Season with a start week, an end week and a running count of the weeks you have selected.
- 4 Choose the format. Beat the Spread is preselected, and any format an admin has not switched on shows as a disabled Coming Soon card.
- 5 Press Create Pool. The button stays disabled until both a sport and a format are selected.
There is no launch step and no draft state. The pool is live as soon as the form is submitted, and the Pool Created Successfully modal has exactly one button, Continue to Pool Settings. If you want members held out while you finish setting up, pause the pool — there is no launch button to go looking for.
You never choose a season. The pool attaches to whichever regular season the league currently has marked as current, and if there is no current season, creation is blocked with a message and you land back on your pools list.
Once the season is under way, Full Season is disabled with a Not available label and a notice tells you which week the season is in. Partial Season is then badged Recommended, the earliest start week you can choose is the current one, and weeks already played are shown as completed. The server applies the same two rules, so a pool cannot be backdated into a played week.
If you already have a finished pool, the right rail offers Import pool. Importing copies that pool's settings, rules and scoring, and brings the old roster across as Imported members, who still have to be invited before they can play.
What you can't change later
The format is fixed once the pool exists, the season was never yours to choose, and no pool you own can be switched to public — the name, the scoring detail and the member cap can all still be edited.
The create page says it on the Format card: this cannot be changed after creation. Rules & Scoring then shows the format read-only for the life of the pool. If you picked the wrong one, the only remedy is to delete the pool from the danger zone at the foot of the General section and create it again — deleting stays available until the season completes. There is no conversion between formats.
Visibility is the one that catches people out. The Access & Privacy control offers Private - Invite only and a disabled Public - Coming soon, and a public value submitted anyway is turned back to private when it saves. Public pools are created and run centrally, so there is no path from your own settings to a pool that strangers can browse.
The member cap has a deadline. You set the maximum yourself, anywhere from 2 to 30 and never below the number of members already active, but once the pool's games have begun the field locks at whatever you settled on and reads locked - games started. Decide the size of the pool before kickoff.
Setting the rules
Everything you configure after creation lives in the pool's settings at /pools/:id/settings — work down the side nav and press Done on the last section.
Creating the pool takes one short form. Setting it up does not, and that is the part to leave time for: rules, scoring, winners, capacity and invitations are each their own section. The success modal drops you straight into them, a slim previous-and-next footer moves you between sections in order, and the last one shows a Done button that returns you to the pool.
- General — name, description, schedule, and the delete button.
- Rules & Scoring — pick deadline and auto-pick, with the format shown read-only.
- Survivor Rules — survivor pools only.
- SportBucks — the award sheet: amounts, places and tie policies. Survivor pools see a places-only version called Winners.
- Access & Privacy — who can join, and the member cap.
- Members & Groups — invitations, the roster, and member groups.
- Playoff Pool — start a playoff competition from this pool.
The side nav is not the same on every pool. Sections appear and disappear with the format, so read the list above as the longest version rather than a checklist you have to finish.
When the rules are settled you can freeze them. Finalize Rules, confirmed through the Finalize Pool Rules dialog, stamps a Locked badge on Rules & Scoring and makes those cards read-only. Leave it until you are sure, because it is a deliberate lock rather than an ordinary save.
Managers and co-managers
The manager is the account that created the pool and the only member whose changes are accepted; a co-manager can open every settings page, but each save is refused.
A pool has one manager: the account that created it. The manager can promote players to co-manager, and everyone else in the pool is a player. The roster marks the manager's row Manager and each co-manager's row Co-manager.
Promoting someone to co-manager gives them the settings and management pages, not the ability to save on them. Editing pool details, rules, access and capacity, inviting or removing members, approving join requests and pausing the pool are all accepted only from the manager or Sportpoolz, so a co-manager's save comes back refused. Treat a co-manager as a reader of the settings screens, not a second manager.
Promote to co-manager from the row actions in Members & Groups, at /pools/:id/settings/members. A co-manager can be changed back to a player from the same place. Neither the manager nor a co-manager can be removed from a pool, so promote sparingly.
Reminding members who still owe picks
Pick Status has Nudge, for everyone who can still make this week's picks or for one member: a reminder with fixed wording that shows on their My Picks page and reaches them by email.
Open Pick Status. When the week's first game is less than 7 days away, the strip at the top offers Nudge with a count, and each member who still has picks to make has Nudge on their row. The dashboard's Week card and a member's card in the standings lead to the same place. Nothing sends until you press Send nudge, and the confirm shows exactly what they will see.
The wording is fixed: who is reminding them, which week, how many picks they have left and when the first game locks. There is no personal note. Members see it on My Picks and their pool's page, and by email ten minutes later unless their picks are in by then.
Anyone who has turned off Pick reminders from managers, or who can't be reached, is skipped without you being told. They still count as nudged. Sportpoolz's own Sunday pick reminder is separate.
Pool chat
Pool chat is a room where your members post messages and run polls. You turn it on for each pool in Settings, under Access, and only the pool's active members can see it.
Open Settings, then Access, and tick Turn on pool chat. The pool gets a Chat tab, right after the pick tab, where members can post and run polls.
Turning it off stops new posts and leaves the chat read-only. Nothing is deleted, and turning it back on restores posting. It is a quick way to calm an argument without removing anyone.
Public pools don't have pool chat.
Member groups
Groups split your members into up to five teams within the pool, such as offices or families, so the Leaderboard can rank each group on its own.
Open Settings, then Members, and use Create Group in Member Groups. A group has a name and an optional description, and a pool can have five.
Put a member in a group from the tag on their row in the roster, or select several members and assign them at once. Each member is in one group at most.
On the Leaderboard, Grouped shows the standings group by group, and the printed leaderboard can follow the same view.
Pausing a pool
Pausing is the status chip in the settings header, only the manager can move it, and while a pool is paused members are sent to a Pool Paused page and cannot make picks.
The chip sits at the top of the pool's settings page. It reads Pool active — Members can make picks and view standings, or Pool paused — Picks and standings are hidden from members, with a toggle beside it. Switching it off asks you to confirm first.
A new manager often goes looking for a launch button and finds this chip instead. Because the pool is live from the moment it is created, pausing is how you hold members out while the rules are still moving.
- A member who opens a paused pool lands on a Pool Paused page instead of the dashboard.
- The manager keeps full access, and sees an amber Pool is paused banner with a link back to settings.
- Only the manager or Sportpoolz can move the chip. A co-manager can reach the page and read it.
Pausing is an update to the pool, so it stops being possible once the season is complete. A finished pool cannot be paused or resumed.
How many pools you can own
You can own a limited number of active pools at once, and the create page tells you when you have reached the limit and stops you creating another until a slot frees up.
The limit counts active pools you own. Pools you were invited to do not count against it, and neither do pools that have finished, so completing a season or deleting a pool frees a slot.
At the limit, the create page shows an amber banner naming your current count and the maximum, and the submit button changes from Create Pool to Pool Limit Reached and stops working. The same check runs on the server, so resubmitting the form does not get round it.
The maximum is a site-wide setting rather than a fixed platform rule, so read the number off that banner rather than from anywhere else. Site administrators are exempt from the limit.
Importing a previous pool creates a new pool too, so the same limit applies to imports. At the limit, complete or delete an existing pool before you import.
Finishing a season
A pool finishes when its season completes, and from that point it is frozen: settings changes, pausing, member removals and deleting the pool are all refused.
Finishing is not something you do, and it does not track your own week range. It follows the league season the pool is attached to: every game in that season has to be played. A pool that ran weeks 6 to 12 therefore counts as live for weeks after its last pick, and then stops accepting changes the moment the season itself is complete.
- Settings can no longer be saved, and the pause chip stops working.
- Members can no longer be removed, and players can no longer change the name they use in that pool.
- Join requests can no longer be approved, and the card that lists them is gone.
- The pool cannot be deleted either, so a finished pool stays in your history.
Two things get easier. The finished pool stops counting against the number of active pools you can own, and it becomes available on the create page's Import pool list, so next season can start from the settings and roster you already tuned.
A finished pool does not disappear. It sits on the Completed tab of your pools list, and the freeze stops changes to it rather than access to it.
Other help topics
Still stuck?
Short questions are usually answered on the FAQ. If yours isn't, send us a message and we'll take a look.