Fantasy Football Prizes – Ideas For New League Awards in 2024

To earn a fantasy football award in 2024, you need to field an excellent team or an exceptionally poor team.  That's because fantasy football prize leagues usually present to both the best teams and the worst teams.  

Although it has always been standard practice to award the league champ with a prize, more and more leagues are recognizing their worst teams as well (and not in a good way).  Let's compare prize ideas for both fantasy football winners and fantasy football losers.

Fantasy football awards are a crucial component of every successful league because they provide a tangible prize the drives competition.   Every fantasy sports league that cares about longevity should award a prize to the most successful team or teams.  

Prizes take many forms and can include league perks (like high draft position), money, or a keepsake tangible like a championship trophy, ring, or belt.

Award recipients also vary wildly from league to league.  Some leagues choose to only award to the league champion, others give a fantasy prize to both the league champion and playoff teams, and a few leagues award prizes to teams that score the most points.

There's no hard and fast rule, and you should implement a prize structure that works for your league owners and more importantly, your budget.

Fantasy football rings used to be a unique fantasy football prize idea. But over the last few years, more and more leagues have opted for a fantasy football championship belt.  

For those leagues in which your owners want to put their championship bravado on display, nothing will get attention like a fantasy football championship belt.  

Championship rings for fantasy sports have been around for several years. But until recently, most rings on the market were costly and only offered by companies that specialized in the ring market, like Jostens.  

Expensive championship rings are no longer the norm as there are now a plethora of affordable rings available (if you know where to look).

In some leagues, a championship ring will be a hard sell to your owners.   

Why?  

Because peoples' ring sizes vary, sometimes wildly.  

As such, it only makes sense to award a ring if you plan on buying a new ring every year.  And you'll have to wait until the champ is determined so you'll know their ring size.

If your league is budget conscious but also likes the idea of rewarding the league champion every year, then a perpetual fantasy trophy is your best option. A perpetual trophy front-loads the price of the championship prize.

But it's also a one-time purchase as it can be passed to the new champion each year.

If you've never seen a perpetual fantasy league trophy, they are usually larger than standard trophies.   The extra space allows them to have one large or many small engravable plates for recording the team and owner names (and sometimes the fantasy team logo) of many league champions.

The trophies featured below support the engraving of 10 to 18 champions.

When it comes to considering awards of any type, it's hard to go wrong with cash. Money makes the world go round, and no one has ever been disappointed when someone places a stack of bills in their hand.

Yes, it's true.  A beautiful, shiny perpetual trophy can add character and a touch of class to your otherwise embarrassing and dysfunctional fantasy league.

But a trophy can't help make it rain, can it?

If money is what all of your league owners are after, you should check out fantasy football cash leagues. These types of leagues specialized in organizing, filling, and managing seasonal leagues with only cash payouts.  They do take a portion of the entry fees, but they also handle all of the commissioner duties.

In addition to awarding the league champion, some leagues award the other teams that make the playoffs. Prizes for playoff teams that didn't win the championship are almost always a cash prize of some sort.

While cash prizes for playoff teams are generally quite small compared to the champion's payout, it's customary to award playoff teams with enough money to (at least) cover the cost of their league entry fee.

Naturally, paying all playoff teams becomes more expensive as the size of your playoff bracket grows.  As such, monetary prizes are much more applicable to a 4-team playoff than a 6-team playoff configuration.

I think the best fantasy football payout structures become possible when the entry fee is roughly $100 per owner.  A $100 entry fee is enough to ensure you can pay your champ handsomely and each of your playoff teams wins their entry fee back.

Here are three fantasy football payout ideas that you can use as a starting point based on your league configuration.  I based each payout structure on 12 teams with varying entry fees and playoff pool sizes.

If your league entry fee is substantial ($100 or more), then you should strongly consider presenting fantasy football weekly awards to owners with the highest point total each week.

The idea behind weekly prizes is to encourage league participation late in the season.  A weekly prize provides poor teams with an incentive to improve their team and start their best players.

In leagues without weekly prizes, teams without playoffs hopes frequently stop actively participating. This can lead to a situation where other teams get an easy win toward the end of the NFL season when teams are vying for a playoff birth.

No fantasy owners (especially those fighting for a playoff spot) want to see other teams get an easy win because of the lack of participation from bottom-tier teams. By incorporating a weekly prize, you're encouraging everyone to stay active and give their best effort throughout the entire fantasy season.