Every Pick'em group is different, and most Pick'em products don't act like it. A 12-person family contest wants something simple. A 40-person office contest wants point values and tiebreakers that reward the people who actually watch football. Splash's Pick'em settings are built to allow the commissioner to run their contest their way.
The Short Version
- NFL, college, or both. One picksheet, with entrants picking from either league each week if you blend them.
- Standard or Confidence scoring. With an option to add best pick to standard.
- Straight Up or Against the Spread. Decide whether a correct pick just needs to win, or needs to cover the spread, set by Splash or you.
- Segments and Groups Create leaderboards for custom week ranges using segments and/or compete in teams using groups.
- Real forgiveness built in. Drop Worst Week, Auto Picks, and Auto Pick Forgiveness soften one bad week.
- Almost everything is editable mid-season. Except League/Sport Mode and Format, locked in at setup.
- Contest Vault. Built through a direct integration with LeagueSafe, commissioners can now collect, hold, and pay out entry fees in one place.
Here's the full range, and when each setting is worth using.
One League, or Both, on the Same Picksheet
Running an NFL contest and a college football contest used to mean two separate contests. Now a single Pick'em contest can pull from NFL only, college only, or both, with members picking from either league each week on one combined picksheet. If your group has both NFL diehards and college loyalists, this is the setting that keeps them together instead of splitting into two contests.
Standard or Confidence with Best Pick as the Wildcard
Pick'em scoring comes down to two formats, also locked in at setup.
Standard is straight win/loss. Earn points for each correct pick. This is the right call for a casual group who wants low friction.
Confidence has entrants rank every pick from most to least confident. Each correct pick scores its assigned rank value, so a correctly-picked #16 pick earns 16 points while a correctly-picked #1 pick earns 1. This setting is for a contest that wants Pick'em to reward actual analysis, not just picking winners.
Best Pick is an option in standard format. Entrants designate one or more picks each week as their Best Pick, and a correct one earns bonus points on top of its normal value.
Straight Up or Against the Spread
Separate from the base format, commissioners have the option to choose whether their pick’em contests are straight up or against the spread.
Straight Up only cares who wins the game. Pick winners to earn points.
Against the Spread requires covering a point spread. Spreads will use either Splash's own live odds, updated through the week and frozen at a lock time, or a spread the commissioner sets by hand, game by game.
Shape the Picksheet Week by Week
Beyond format and spread mode, commissioners can set point values per game (1 to 20), apply a scoring multiplier on specific weeks, require a custom number of picks instead of the full slate, and set minimum NFL and college pick requirements for combined contests.
Must Picks force every entrant to include a specific game; the rivalry game, the marquee matchup, without dictating the rest of the picks. None of this is locked in at setup: a commissioner can make Week 10 worth double, or add a Must Pick the week of a big game, without touching anything else in the contest.
Weighted Scoring lets a commissioner add point multipliers to any week of the season. For example, you can make the playoffs more interesting by making correct picks worth 2x for Wild Card, 4x for Divisional, etc.
Change Almost Any Setting Mid-Season
The setting a commissioner is most likely to want to change is the one they picked wrong in Week 1. Against the spread or straight up, weighted scoring, pushes, and most picksheet rules can all be edited after the season starts.
League/Sport Mode and the Standard/Confidence format are the two exceptions, locked in at creation. Everything else re-grades automatically and notifies affected entrants, so a mid-season adjustment doesn't turn into a group argument about what the old rule was.
Run More Than One Race in a Single Season
Segments split a season into a standalone leaderboard, a first-half standings, a playoffs-only standings, or any custom stretch of weeks a commissioner wants to set up, even retroactively for weeks already played. This is the setting for a group that loses interest once the season leader pulls away: a fresh Segment gives everyone a new leaderboard to actually compete for, even if the overall race is decided.
Groups do something similar for team-based bragging rights. Turning Groups on lets a commissioner split entrants into department-vs-department or family-vs-family standings on top of the individual leaderboard. This is useful for office contests and family leagues where the group dynamic matters as much as who's in first.
Give the Season Some Forgiveness
Three settings exist for the group that doesn't want one bad week to end their season. Drop Worst Week excludes an entrant's lowest-scoring week or, if a commissioner wants to be generous, up to their worst ten from the season total. Auto Picks fills a missed deadline automatically instead of scoring it zero. Auto Pick Forgiveness goes further, letting an entrant miss a small number of picks in a week before it counts against their season-long auto-pick cap. None are required, and they can be combined. It's a commissioner call on how forgiving the format should be.
Tiebreakers That Go Beyond a Coin Flip
Every week can include a score-prediction tiebreaker on a designated game. Beyond that, the season, segment, and weekly leaderboards each support a reorderable tiebreaker cascade by points, wins, or tiebreaker accuracy, Best Pick hits, fewer auto-picks used, win percentage, margin of victory, so a commissioner decides exactly how a tie gets broken, not just that one exists.
A Clean Finish for Bowl Season
Bowl Mode rolls every bowl game into a single, purpose-built postseason slate, instead of a commissioner rebuilding the picksheet manually for a schedule that looks nothing like the regular season. It's permanent once turned on for a contest, so it's worth planning for rather than flipping on mid-decision once the bowl slate is set.
What Your Contestants See
None of this requires anything from entrants beyond making picks. Format, scoring and structural settings are configurable on the commissioner-side. Contestants can see the picksheet the commissioner has built, with a Rules link that explains, in plain language, exactly which settings are live for that contest and that week. Fast Picks let entrants fill an entire slate in one click, all home teams, all favorites, all overs, or a random slate, for the week they don't have time to think it through. Contestants can also view the contest details page which gives a full overview of the settings and rules that apply to that contest.
Pick'em settings will be live soon in the commissioner dashboard. Start with League and Format, the two you can't change later, then layer in Point Spread Mode, Segments, Groups, or the forgiving-format settings once you know how your group plays.