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What draft types are supported?
What draft types are supported?

Learn the different draft options you have on Sleeper

Sleeper HQ avatar
Written by Sleeper HQ
Updated over a week ago

When starting a league on Sleeper, you'll notice that you will be able to customize a ton of different options. But the most important of all of those may be getting your draft(s) set up correctly.

The first option you'll need to decide on is your league type and whether it's a redraft, keeper, or dynasty. You can learn more about the different league types here.

Draft Types

Startup Draft - Every league will begin with a clean draftboard at some point. If you're switching over from another platform, this is what you'll use to enter the rosters. 

In your draft settings, you have the option to choose what type of players you want to be available in that specific draft:

All players will include any players who are not already on a fantasy team in your league.

Supplemental Draft - This option allows you to create additional drafts for your league for whatever reason. There is no limit to how many you can have, but each one has a 10-round maximum. 

These are only available when your league type is set to dynasty. You can learn more about supplemental drafts here.

Auction Draft - Instead of having a snake order of picks, owners start with a set amount of money to bid on players. Any owner can bid at any time, as long as they have money left. You have to choose wisely, though. If you blow all your money on Christian McCaffrey and Patrick Mahomes, your remaining funds won't help you fill out your roster well.

Other Draft Options

Traditional Snake vs. Non Snake
(Serpentine vs. Non-serpentine)

Snake drafts are the default draft type on Sleeper, and are commonly used because they allow for a fair and balanced draft. In a snake draft, each fantasy coach has one pick in each round. Each team makes its first-round pick based on a predetermined order. When the first round is over, the team that picked last in the first round picks first in the second round — in other words, the draft snakes back on itself. The team that had the first pick in the first round now has the last pick in the second round and the first pick in the third round.

3rd Round Reversal - It's the exact same thing as a regular snake draft, except the direction of the draft reverses at the start of the 3rd round.

So instead of having the team with the 1st overall pick get two in a row to end the 2nd round and start the 3rd, that last team to pick will get the first pick in the 3rd round, and the draft will continue as a regular snake draft from thereon. 

Learn more about what 3rd Round Reversal is and why leagues are using it.

Compensatory picks - There isn't a specific option to allow this, but there is a workaround you can do in order to make it happen. 

Other - If you prefer to do a non-standard/non-snake draft you may be able to do that as well, but it will require a small manual workaround by the commissioner.

For example, if you want to manually edit the draftboard to bend to your league's particular rules, you can do so by asking your commissioner to manually enter each pick into the desired square. The draftboard is fully editable by the commissioner.

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