How to play

The basics

Pitchpilot is a football game you play against other people for a prize pot. You build a team of real Premier League players, put it into a pool, and the team that scores the most points over the gameweek wins the pot.

1. Build a team. Pick 15 players within £100m. Save it as a draft — you can keep 3.
2. Join a pool. Choose a pool, pick which of your drafts to play with, and pay the stake.
3. Watch the points roll in. Your players score points from their real matches, live.
4. Get paid. When the gameweek is final, the best teams share the prize pot. It lands in your wallet automatically.

Stakes and winnings are real money in naira (₦). Only play with what you can afford to lose, and never chase losses.

Your team

The rules of a team

• 15 players from the Premier League: 2 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders and 3 forwards.
• A £100m budget. Every player has a price, and your team is always valued at today's prices. Prices move with the real game, so a team that fit last week may be over budget this week.
• No more than 3 players from the same club.
• Choose 11 starters in a legal formation, and 4 substitutes in the order you'd like them to come on. Your first substitute must be the spare goalkeeper.
• Pick a captain (their points count double) and a vice-captain (takes over if the captain doesn't play).

Drafts and pool teams

• A draft is a team you've saved so you can use it again. You can keep up to 3.
• When you join a pool you choose a draft, and the pool gets its own copy. Changing or deleting the draft afterwards never touches pools you've already entered.
• So you can play a different team in every pool — a safe one for a big pool, a risky one for a head-to-head.

Deadlines and changes

• Every gameweek has a deadline, shown at the top of the Team page. Until then you can change your pool team as often as you like, and it's free — swap one player or all 15.
• At the deadline your team is locked in for that gameweek. Changes you make after that count from the next gameweek.
• For pools that run several gameweeks, your team carries forward each week unless you change it.
• Teams are private until the deadline. Once it passes, everyone can see how each team lined up and scored — open any name in a pool's standings.

There are no chips or boosters (wildcard, free hit, bench boost, triple captain). Everyone plays on the same terms; your skill is picking the team.

How points work

Points come straight from the official Fantasy Premier League data. Each player earns or loses points for what they do in a match:

From players to your team's score

• Your team's score is the total of your 11 starters. Substitutes only count if they come on.
• The captain scores double (and the C badge shows who it is). If your captain doesn't play at all, the vice-captain gets the double instead.
• Automatic substitutions: once the gameweek is final, a starter who didn't play is replaced by your first substitute who did, as long as the team stays a legal formation. Only the spare goalkeeper can replace a goalkeeper. A green ↑ shows who came on.
• Double gameweeks: if a club plays twice, both matches count. Blank gameweeks: no match means no points.
• While matches are still being played, scores are live and can change — substitutions are applied once everything's final.
• A pool over several gameweeks adds up your team's score from each one.

See exactly why a player got their points. Tap any player's points — on your team or on someone else's — to see each stat that earned or cost them points, match by match. A dash (–) just means they haven't played yet.

Pools & prizes

How a pool works

• Every player pays the same stake into the pool. All the stakes together are the pot.
• The pool has a joining countdown. When it ends, joining closes (you can still change your team until the deadline).
• The host decides the stake, how many people can play, the minimum needed for the pool to run, and how many winners are paid.
• Public pools are listed for everyone. Private pools are joined with an invite code from the host — enter it from the menu, or open the link they send you.

What the winners get

A 10% platform fee comes off the pot; the rest is the prize pool. For example, 10 players each staking ₦1,000 make a pot of ₦10,000. After the ₦1,000 fee, the prize pool is ₦9,000. The prize pool grows with every extra player.

• Ties: if teams finish level, they share the prize money of the places they occupy between them.
• When you're paid: once every gameweek in the pool is finished and the official points are confirmed. It goes into your wallet automatically — there's nothing to claim.

If a pool doesn't fill

If a pool hasn't reached its minimum number of players when the joining countdown ends, it's cancelled and everyone is refunded automatically, in full — no fee is taken. The refund appears in your wallet with the reason.

Matchday pools

A different, quicker way to play. You don't build a team — you predict the final score of each match in the pool, and points go to whoever reads the games best.

• Everyone pays the same stake. Predict the score of each match before it kicks off; each prediction locks at its own kickoff.
• A pool can cover several gameweeks. You join before the first match, then keep refining the later matches as team news comes in, until each one kicks off.
• Other people's predictions stay hidden until that match kicks off, then you can see what everyone chose.

Points for each match

The tiers matter: if only the exact score counted it would be a guessing game. Reading who wins and by roughly how much is rewarded even when the numbers aren't spot on. (A draw you called with the wrong score still has the right result and goal difference, so it earns 3.)

Bonus questions: +1 each

Every match also asks a few yes/no questions. Each one you get right adds a point, so someone who misses the exact score can still catch up by reading how the game will go. The host chooses which are asked:

• Both teams score? Yes or no.
• Over or under 2.5 goals?
• Over or under 3.5 cards? Yellow and red cards together.
• A red card? Will anyone be sent off.
• A brace? Will one player score twice.
• A defender scores?

Every answer is checked against the official match data, so a point is only ever given for something we can verify. If the data for a question isn't available, that question is void for that match: nobody gains or loses on it.

Who wins

• The highest total points wins the prize pool. The host can also pay the top 2, 3 or more places.
• Tiebreaker: when you join you also guess the total number of cards (yellow + red) across all the pool's matches. If you tie on points, the closest guess wins.
• If you're still level after that, you share the prize for the places you tie on.
• A match that is postponed holds the pool open until it's played; if one is called off it simply isn't scored. If every match is called off, everyone is refunded.
• The same 10% fee and automatic refunds (when too few people join) apply as in fantasy pools.

Example, Chelsea 1–2 Arsenal: Tunde said 1–2 (5 pts, exact). Ada said 0–1 (3 pts: Arsenal by one, same margin). Chidi said 0–3 (2 pts: right winner, wrong margin). Kemi said 2–2 and Emeka said 2–1 (0 pts: wrong result). Chidi beats Kemi even though Kemi had one team's goals closer, because reading the outcome is what counts.

Wallet

• Your wallet holds your money in naira (₦). Stakes leave it when you join a pool; winnings and refunds come back to it.
• Deposit by bank transfer (you're shown exactly what to send and where, and your wallet is topped up once we've seen the money arrive, usually within a few minutes), or, when it's switched on, by card, bank transfer or USSD on our payment partner's secure page. A deposit is from ₦500 to ₦500,000, up to ₦1,000,000 in 24 hours. Your wallet is topped up as soon as the payment is confirmed.
• Withdraw to your own bank account. Save the account first (under “Withdrawal accounts” on the Wallet page); we show the name your bank holds for it. A withdrawal starts from ₦2,000. The money is set aside the moment you ask and is then sent by hand, so it isn't instant. You can follow each request on the Wallet page, and if one is declined the money goes straight back to your wallet.
• You need to confirm your email before you can deposit, withdraw or join a pool. Look for the banner at the top of the page.
• The wallet page lists every movement — deposits, entries, winnings and refunds — with your running balance.

Questions

Ready? Build a team or browse pools.