How to Run a Free Pick'em Contest for Your Fan Community

A pick'em contest is one of the simplest ways to give fans a reason to show up on game day and come back the next one. Fans predict outcomes, the results settle the contest, and the people who called it best get recognized. No skill with a controller required, no fantasy draft to manage, and it works for a national audience or a local station's listeners.

This guide walks through how to run one well: the format, the timing, the scoring, the rewards, and the small details that decide whether people still play in week eight.

Step 1: Choose a format your fans will understand in ten seconds

The most common mistake is making the first contest too clever. Start with one of these:

• Pick the winner. Fans choose who wins. The easiest format to enter, and the best for a first contest.
• Winner plus total. Fans pick the winner and predict the combined score. The total doubles as a tiebreaker, which you will need.
• Exact score. Fans predict both teams' scores. Harder, more debate, and great for big games.
• Bracket. For tournaments and playoffs, fans fill out the whole bracket up front and earn points as rounds resolve.

Pick one format for your first season. You can add variety later, but switching formats every week makes people stop reading the rules.

Step 2: Decide which games count

Choose games your audience already cares about. A broadcaster should match the contest to what it airs. A team should feature its own games, plus maybe a rival's. A creator might pick the one marquee matchup everyone is talking about that week.

Then decide on cadence. One featured game per week is easy to promote and easy to play. A daily game during a season works if your audience is already tuning in daily.

Step 3: Lock entries at the start of the game

Every pick'em needs a hard deadline, and the only fair one is kickoff, first pitch, or tipoff. After that, picks are frozen.

Two details matter here:

• Show the deadline everywhere the contest appears, in the fan's local time.
• Handle schedule changes. Games get moved. If the start time shifts later, the entry window should move with it, so fans are not locked out of a game that has not started.

Step 4: Score it the same way, every time

Fans forgive a lot, but not a scoring dispute. Publish the rule before the first game and never improvise:

• In a pick-the-winner contest, decide in advance how you break ties. First correct entry in is simple and transparent.
• In winner-plus-total or exact-score formats, rank entries by how close the prediction was to the final score.

Settle results quickly after the final whistle. A contest that waits two days for someone to enter the score loses the energy of the moment. If your games are covered by a live scores feed, automatic settlement from the final score is the cleanest option. For games that are not on any scoreboard, such as many minor league, college, or local games, have one named person enter the final and settle it the same night.

Step 5: Pick rewards that feel like recognition

Free-to-play contests work when the reward feels earned, not when it is expensive. Good options:

• Shout-outs on air, on stream, or in your newsletter
• Merchandise, signed items, or a meet-and-greet
• A season-long leaderboard with a bigger prize at the end
• Access: a pregame visit, a call-in slot, a seat at a watch party

If you offer prizes, write down your official rules and have whoever handles promotions for your organization review them before you launch. Keep the contest free to enter.

Step 6: Promote the contest every single week

Most pick'em contests do not fail on design. They fail because people forget. Build the weekly loop into your existing calendar:

• Before the game: announce the matchup, post the entry link, remind people of the deadline.
• During the game: mention the contest on air or on stream, especially at key moments.
• After the game: announce winners by name (with permission) and preview next week.

An email to everyone who played last week is the single most useful reminder you can send.

Step 7: Keep a season-long story

A one-off contest gets one spike. A season gets a habit. Run a cumulative leaderboard so a fan who misses one week still has a reason to come back, and make the standings visible. Rivalries form on their own once people can see their name next to someone else's.

A pre-launch checklist

• One format, explained in two sentences
• A featured game schedule for the first month
• Entry deadline at the start of each game, shown in local time
• A written tiebreaker and scoring rule
• A named person responsible for settling games that are not auto-scored
• Rewards decided and rules reviewed
• A weekly promotion plan: before, during, after
• A leaderboard that carries across the season

Running a pick'em contest on AvenueD

AvenueD is the fan community platform we build, and prediction games are one of its core features. A community admin picks a real fixture from a live list covering eleven leagues, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college football, the Premier League, and the UEFA Champions League. Each game uses one of three formats: pick the winner, winner plus total, or exact score. Entries close when the game starts, and if the start time moves later, the entry window moves with it. Games on the live list settle automatically from the final score, and admins can enter results by hand for anything that is not on a scoreboard. Winners are notified by email.

Prediction games sit next to the rest of the community: brackets for tournaments, missions, raffles, leaderboards, livestreams, and email to members. A game's reward pool is funded by the community before it goes live, so fans never enter a contest with nothing behind it. You can start a community for free from the AvenueD for Brands page.

If you also sell merch to the same fans, the dPlaza blog covers running a creator storefront, which pairs naturally with prize fulfillment.

The short version

Pick one simple format, feature games your audience already watches, lock entries at the start of play, score by a rule you published in advance, settle fast, and promote the contest before, during, and after every game. Do that consistently for a season and the contest stops being a promotion and becomes part of how your fans watch.