Free football prediction games: what to check before you invite people

Free is easy to find. A prediction game your mates are still playing in February is harder, and the difference is usually visible in the first five minutes if you know what to look at.

Six checks, roughly in order of how much they matter.

1. Does the scoring reward being close?

If the only points are for the exact score, most weeks most players score nothing, and a game where nothing happens is a game people leave. Look for separate credit for the outcome, the margin and each team's goals, so a near miss is still worth something.

2. Do hard matches pay more than easy ones?

Without some difficulty weighting, the optimal strategy is to predict the obvious result in every match, and the league becomes a contest of who is most cautious. A visible multiplier per match fixes that, and it is the single biggest signal that whoever built the game has actually run a league.

3. Is there a way to catch up?

Ask what happens to somebody who joins in October or has a bad month. If the honest answer is nothing, the game will be dead for most of its players by spring. Some form of rationed risk, a double or nothing pick or a jackpot, is what keeps the back half of the table playing.

4. How are deadlines enforced?

Picks must lock automatically, on the server, against real kickoff times. If a game lets predictions be edited late, or leaves the deadline to an organiser, the first controversy will be about that and not about football.

5. Are private leagues genuinely free?

This is where a lot of free games stop being free. Check that creating a private league, inviting people and seeing your own table are all included, with no cap on members and no upgrade prompt in the middle of the season.

6. What is the catch?

Something pays for every free product. Usually it is advertising, data, or a funnel toward betting. It is worth knowing which before you send the link to twenty colleagues, because whatever it is, they get it too.

Our answer, for the record: there is no stake, no betting anywhere in the product, and no ads. It is in open beta, which is the honest version of what you are joining, and the roadmap is public.

The two minute test

1. Open this week's fixtures without signing up. If you cannot see what you would be playing, that is a bad sign.
2. Put in one prediction and see whether the game tells you what it could be worth.
3. Find the rules page. If the scoring is not written down in plain language, it will be argued about later.
4. Create a league and check the invite link works from a phone, because that is where your friends will open it.

Any game that passes those four is worth a season. Most fall over at the second one.