Fantasy CEO is like fantasy football, but instead of athletes, you're drafting chief executives. Your team's score is based on how their companies perform in the market and how they're covered in the press.
Start by either creating your own private league or joining an existing one with a league code. Each league can have 4-8 teams.
Once every seat in your league is filled, the commissioner can start the draft at the scheduled time. You'll draft 10 CEOs in a snake draft format.
Before that happens, the commissioner makes two choices that shape the whole season: the league's draft format (standard or sector-mandated) and its scoring balance (how much of your score comes from news versus stock). Both are fixed once the draft begins, so check them before you build your board.
Your league runs for one quarter — 90 days, split into 13 weeks. Scores are calculated every trading day and your standings update automatically.
You'll draft from the top 100 CEOs by company market capitalization, spanning ten sectors: Technology, Media, Telecom, Automotive, Energy, Industrials, Retail, Consumer, Finance, and Healthcare.
Those sectors matter beyond flavour in a sector-mandated league, where they're grouped into the slots your roster has to fill.
Consider diversifying across sectors to reduce risk. Some players prefer stacking CEOs from industries they understand well. There's no single winning strategy!
Check two things before you build a board: your league's draft format and its scoring balance. If scoring leans toward news, a widely covered CEO at a mid-sized company can outscore a quiet one at a giant — and if it leans toward stock, the reverse. If the format is sector-mandated, sector scarcity matters more than raw ranking in the early rounds. The scoring balance is shown at the top of every page in your league.
Every league is one of two kinds, chosen by the commissioner before the draft.
Draft anyone. Ten rounds, no restrictions — if a CEO is available when your pick comes up, you can take them. Ten tech CEOs is a legal roster, if that's the bet you want to make.
Your first six picks must each fill a sector slot, and picks seven through ten are flex — anyone still available. The six mandated slots are:
| Slot | How many | Sectors that qualify |
|---|---|---|
| Tech & Comms | 2 | Technology, Media, Telecom |
| Industrial | 1 | Automotive, Energy, Industrials |
| Consumer | 1 | Retail, Consumer |
| Finance | 1 | Finance |
| Healthcare | 1 | Healthcare |
During those first six rounds you can only pick from a sector group that still has an empty slot. Because there are exactly six mandated picks for six slots, your roster is guaranteed to be complete by the end of round six — there's no way to paint yourself into a corner and no scramble at the end.
Your team's score is calculated every trading day from two things:
The daily percentage change in each CEO's company stock price, multiplied by 10. Up 2.3% earns 23 points; down 2.3% costs 23. There's no cap — a big day is worth every point of it.
Each CEO is also scored on the tone of their press coverage over the previous seven days. Positive articles add, negative articles subtract, neutral ones do nothing, and coverage from major financial outlets counts double what smaller sources do. Because it's a rolling week, a good run of press pays off across several days rather than in one spike — and it's capped, so no single story decides your season.
Executive pay is planned but isn't currently worth points. The signal that matters is how a CEO's pay changes, and that needs a second year of filings to measure. Rather than score something we don't believe in, it sits at zero until the data supports it.
Full detail, including the exact formulas and how source tiers are weighted, is on the Scoring Rules page.
The season is a regular season of weekly head-to-head matchups followed by a playoff bracket. Each week your team's points are compared against one opponent's, and you take a win or a loss. Ties stay ties — there's no coin flip.
| League Size | Regular Season | Playoffs |
|---|---|---|
| 4–7 teams | 11 weeks | 2 weeks — top 4 seeds play semifinals, then the championship |
| 8 teams | 10 weeks | 3 weeks — all 8 seeds play quarterfinals, then semifinals and the championship |
With an odd number of teams, one team has a bye each week. A bye is neither a win nor a loss and doesn't count toward your record, so nobody is penalised for the weeks the schedule can't pair them — your CEOs still score, there's just no opponent that week.
A high season total isn't automatically a title. In a smaller league most of the field reaches the bracket anyway, so the regular season is largely about seeding — and then you need points in the weeks that count.
