A side bet — or mini-game — is a small weekly competition you run alongside the main fantasy season. The purpose is engagement: in a normal league, half the managers are out of playoff contention by November and stop paying attention, and a good side pot gives every one of them something to win each week regardless of their record. Here are twelve you can run, with rules, a payout idea, and a commissioner tip for each.

One honesty note up front: LeagueSide runs Survivor and Pick’em natively over your own Sleeper league, so those two score themselves. The rest of the games below are house games — a commissioner sets them up and tracks them, usually reading the weekly scores straight off the standings. None of these involve LeagueSide moving money; as always, dues and prizes stay between managers.

1. The High-Scoring Pot

Everyone pays a fixed amount into a weekly pot, and the manager with the highest total score that week takes it — win or lose in their actual matchup. It rewards the manager who put up 140 points and still lost to someone’s 145, turning the most frustrating result in fantasy into a consolation prize. A common variant runs it season-long instead of weekly: track total points scored across the year and pay out a “points champion” separate from the actual title, which keeps a team that’s out of the playoff race but scoring well fully invested. Payout: $5 each, winner takes the week (or a bigger end-of-season pot for the points title). Tip: it’s a house game, but the weekly scores you need are right there in the standings, so it’s a two-minute Tuesday check.

2. The Margin of Victory Pool

Before the week locks, each member predicts the margin of the closest matchup in the league (or picks which matchup will be the tightest). Closest guess wins. It gets people reading everyone’s projections, not just their own. Payout: small weekly buy-in, winner-take-all. Tip: lock entries at the first kickoff so no one edits after early games tip the math.

3. The Bench Riches Pool

The anti-lineup award: the winner is whoever left the most points on their bench that week. It’s a booby prize with teeth — the manager who benched a 40-point breakout while starting a dud gets publicly crowned for it. A sharper version scores it as the gap between the lineup you started and your optimal lineup, so the “winner” is whoever most spectacularly out-thought themselves. Payout: works best as a small buy-in so the pain has a price tag. Tip: bench points are in every box score, so this is easy to verify and impossible to argue.

4. The Faceplant Pool

Each week’s lowest-scoring team earns the right — or the obligation — to set a small, silly challenge or punishment for the following week’s low scorer. It keeps the bottom of the standings lively instead of demoralizing. Payout: none needed; the currency is pride. Tip: keep punishments PG and opt-in — the goal is group-chat laughs, not a manager quitting in week 9.

5. The Last-Place Avoidance Side

A running side pot where every week’s lowest scorer chips in, and the season’s overall last-place finisher either takes the accumulated punishment or funds the payout. It turns the race to avoid the basement into its own season-long competition, which matters most to exactly the managers who’ve fallen out of the playoff race. Payout: the pot funds the league’s traditional last-place penalty. Tip: define last place by record, then total points as the tiebreaker, in advance.

6. Touchdown Bingo

Each manager gets a bingo card of touchdown types for the Sunday slate — squares like “a QB rushing TD,” “a defensive score,” “a rookie’s first career TD,” “a two-point conversion.” First to complete a line wins. It’s pure NFL fun that even non-contenders play. Payout: small buy-in, first bingo takes it. Tip: generate and lock the cards before the 1pm kickoff, and keep them public so the chat can track them live.

7. The First TD Pool

Everyone picks the player they think scores the first touchdown of the Sunday-afternoon slate. It’s longshot-friendly, instantly resolved, and makes the opening kickoff appointment viewing. A softer variant scores anytime-TD-scorers instead of strictly the first, which gives more people a live rooting interest deeper into the day. Payout: a $2 buy-in with a big payout rewards the person brave enough to take a backup goal-line back over a star. Tip: require a pick from every entrant before kickoff, and don’t allow duplicates — first to claim a player owns him.

8. The Underdog Pick’em

A pick’em with a twist: you only score when you correctly pick the side the rest of the league faded. Picking chalk earns nothing; correctly backing the underrated team is the whole game. It rewards conviction over consensus. LeagueSide note: LeagueSide runs a Pick’em matrix over your league’s own matchups with a live consensus line under each one — which is exactly the surface you need to see who’s contrarian and score it.

9. Wax-On, Wax-Off

Every manager must “wax” — publicly spotlight — one player they’re benching that week, and whoever’s waxed player scores the most wins. It turns bench decisions into predictions and generates instant regret content. Payout: small weekly buy-in. Tip: force the pick before kickoff so it’s a real call and not a hindsight brag, and hold everyone to exactly one.

10. The Sleeper Index

A season-long award for rostering the lowest-owned player who then goes off — the deep-waiver dart that hits. It rewards the scouting most managers don’t do and gives the wire-grinders their trophy. Score it by the roster percentage a player carried the week he broke out: the manager starting a sub-5%-rostered player who drops 25 points beats the one who started a chalk star. Payout: end-of-season prize for the best single hit, or a running tally of qualifying weeks. Tip: define “goes off” with an objective point threshold up front so the winner isn’t a debate.

11. Last Manager Standing

A survivor pool: each week you pick one of your league’s teams to win its matchup, you can’t reuse a team, and a wrong pick eliminates you until one manager is left standing. It’s the most-run side game in fantasy for a reason. LeagueSide note: this is the one you don’t have to track by hand — LeagueSide runs Survivor natively over your league’s teams and handles the eliminations automatically.

12. The Roastable Loser Trophy

A rotating, deliberately hideous trophy that the previous season’s — or previous week’s — last-place manager must keep, display, and engrave with a self-deprecating title. It’s the cheapest and stickiest engagement mechanic in fantasy, because the shame is physical and it travels. The engravings are the real prize: a plaque that reads “2024 — Started His Kicker on a Bye” is funnier every year it stays visible, and it becomes a running history of the league’s worst decisions. Payout: none; the trophy is the stakes. Tip: mandate a photo of the trophy in its new home posted to the group chat, engraving and all.

How to actually use this list

Don’t run all twelve — that’s a part-time job and it dilutes every game. Pick two or three that fit your league’s personality: one skill game (Underdog Pick’em, Sleeper Index), one chaos game (Touchdown Bingo, First TD), and one shame engine (Roastable Loser Trophy, Faceplant Pool) is a well-balanced slate. Write the rules and payouts for whatever you choose into the league constitution before the season so there’s no mid-year argument, and remember the split: LeagueSide runs Survivor and Pick’em for you, while the rest are house games you set up and score. For everything else a commissioner handles, see the Complete Sleeper Commissioner Playbook.