Pickology

Dominating Office Pools

Euro 2024 Soccer Pools: Pick’em and Bracket Options

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HostedPools is back with this summer’s European Championship: Euro2024.  Both of our pool options from previous UEFA and FIFA events have returned for this tournament.

Pick’em Euro 2024 Pool

Each round of the tournament schedule, you pick the winners (or a draw in the Group Stage) for each game.  You can choose to have each game be worth 1 point, or have escalating points through the knock out rounds, so correct picks are worth more, as you go deeper in the tournament.  The entry with the most points after the championship game is the winner. You can also set up your Pick’em pool for only the knock out rounds.

More Information on Pick’em Soccer Pools

Bracket Euro 2024 Pool

Pick the entire knockout round bracket prior to the first game of the Round of 16.  For each correct pick, you earn points, with correct picks in later rounds being more valuable.  The entry with the most points at the end of the tournament is the winner.  If multiple teams are tied, you may split the pot. You may also use a tiebreaker to determine the ultimate winner.

More Information on Bracket Soccer Pools

Pricing

You can use our pricing tool to see how much a running a Euro 2024 pool with us will be.  Keep in mind all of our prices are in CAD.

Some of our pool managers have reached out about having the Copa America available as well, now that more CONCACAF teams are being included. Unfortunately, we are unable to make it happen for 2024, but we will work on having multiple seasons of a sport open at one time so that we can run it next cycle.

2022 FIFA World Cup Pools

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HostedPools debuted a pair of soccer pool options for last summer’s European Championship and things went reasonably well, and it was far more popular than we had imagined. We look forward to bigger and better things as teams from every continent (not you, Antarctica) compete for world soccer glory this November and December in Qatar.

We have the same World Cup office pool formats as we did for Euro’s. Set up your pool and invite your friends!

Pick’em World Cup Pool

Each round of the tournament schedule, you pick the winners (or a draw in the Group Stage) for each game.  You can choose to have each game be worth 1 point, or have escalating points through the knock out rounds, so correct picks are worth more, as you go deeper in the tournament.  The entry with the most points after the championship game is the winner. You can also set up your Pick’em pool for only the knock out rounds.

More Information on Pick’em Soccer Pools

Bracket World Cup Pool

Pick the entire knockout round bracket prior to the first game of the Round of 16.  For each correct pick, you earn points, with correct picks in later rounds being more valuable.  The entry with the most points at the end of the tournament is the winner.  If multiple teams are tied, you may split the pot. You may also use a tiebreaker to determine the ultimate winner.

More Information on Bracket Soccer Pools

Pricing

You can use our pricing tool to see how much a running a Euro or World Cup pool with us will be.  Keep in mind all of our prices are in CAD.

2022 World Cup Pools are now available! You can set yours up today. We’re also still hoping to be able to add pick’ems for the Premiership and/or Champions League at some point in the future.

Euro 2020 Soccer Pools

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HostedPools is adding a pair of soccer pool options to use for the major tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup and the European Championship beginning with this summer’s Euro 2020 (which was postponed from last year).  A number of people have reached out to us over the time we’ve been running the site asking for pools for these types of events, and we’re finally making it happen. I guess there are some positives to being cooped up with not much to do.

Pick’em Euro 2020 Pool

Each round of the tournament schedule, you pick the winners (or a draw in the Group Stage) for each game.  You can choose to have each game be worth 1 point, or have escalating points through the knock out rounds, so correct picks are worth more, as you go deeper in the tournament.  The entry with the most points after the championship game is the winner. You can also set up your Pick’em pool for only the knock out rounds.

More Information on Pick’em Soccer Pools

Bracket Euro 2020 Pool

Pick the entire knockout round bracket prior to the first game of the Round of 16.  For each correct pick, you earn points, with correct picks in later rounds being more valuable.  The entry with the most points at the end of the tournament is the winner.  If multiple teams are tied, you may split the pot. You may also use a tiebreaker to determine the ultimate winner.

More Information on Bracket Soccer Pools

Pricing

You can use our pricing tool to see how much a running a Euro or World Cup pool with us will be.  Keep in mind all of our prices are in CAD.

Euro 2020 pools will be available by early April of 2021 and we will also be available for the 2022 FIFA World up next fall. We’re also hoping to be able to add league pick’ems for the Premiership and possibly Bundesliga in the near future as well.

Ultimate Loser Pool Fundraiser

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Over the last couple seasons we’ve been hosting a number of pools set up by people that have used the now defunct Ultimate Loser Pool (or Ultimate Sports Fundraiser) website, so we wanted to highlight some differences to hopefully make things a little clearer and/or easier for people that want to set up Loser Pool fundraisers with us.  Our site wasn’t set up specifically for fundraisers, but we’ve made some changes the past couple seasons in order to accommodate those looking for a new home. Here are a few similarities and differences we’ve noticed when talking to past ULP users:

Similarities

  • Same Saturday Loser Hockey Pool format
  • Entrants make their selections online
  • Entrants can choose whether or not to receive pick reminders (we also have SMS/Text reminders!)
  • Selections can be made weeks in advance
  • We do have rules sheets and sellers sheets available on a Google Drive that you can copy and update with your own pool information
  • We don’t handle entry fee payments or paying out winners

Differences

  • Entrants create their own accounts on the website – instead of the pool manager entering everything initially themselves
  • Entrants make their week own 1st week selections online
  • Sellers can be tracked on the website – so seller sheets aren’t required
  • Deadlines – picks can be made up until 7pm Eastern on Saturday instead of Friday at midnight
  • Managers can choose not to count a shootout loss as an elimination
  • Managers can choose to allow more than 1 incorrect pick before elimination
  • Managers can choose to allow you to select a team more than one time
  • When all remaining entrants are eliminated in a week – the pool will continue – you won’t have to track on your own
  • On top of the Loser Pool, we have a number of other pool formats in Hockey and Football
  • Our fee is on a per entry basis, so there’s less risk in not having as large a pool as expected  (Minimum is $25 vs. $199)
  • If you run multiple pools in a season – we offer discounts for any pools after the first (message us for details)

If you’re coming to us from the Ultimate Loser Pool website, use the ULP10 coupon code for a 10 percent discount on your first pool with us!

10 Steps for Setting up Your Fundraiser Pool

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We have been getting lots of messages this season regarding running Hockey Pool Fundraisers on HostedPools.  A  number of these people coming to us from a site that does things quite differently.  HostedPools wasn’t initially set up as a fundraiser option and only a small percentage of the pools managed on our site fit into that category.  That said, we’re working to help those teams and organizations that want to use our service for their fundraising needs.  Here’s how you would set up and manage your pool on HostedPools:

Steps to Managing Your Fundraiser Office Pool

  1. Register or Sign In to your own personal HostedPools account.
  2. Create your pool with an easy to remember pool Id and password which people can use to find your pool on the site.
  3. Set up your list of players (or teams) with the ‘Import Fundraisers’ option in Manager tools if you want to track entrants by player/team.
  4. Send out the Join Link from the Rules/Settings page in the pool menu.  Alternatively, you can send out invites from the site, but they will sometimes get blocked by spam filters, so initially you’re better off contacting people directly with the information you’ve set up.  You can send yourself an invite to see what would be included in the message.
  5. Your entrants use the join link to access your pool.  It will prompt them to register or login to their own account in order to do so.
  6. Your entrants set up their entries, choosing the player/team they are supporting.
  7. Your fundraisers/players collect for the entries they’ve brought in.  You can track payments via the Entries page.
  8. Close the pool to new entrants once the deadline has passed and no new teams will be entered.  This will calculate the fee for your pool according to the type and size of the pool.  Payments are due 10 days after the pool has started.
  9. Entrants log in to their own account to make their selections each week prior to the deadline (7 pm Eastern for Hockey Pools).  We handle updating all results/standings.
  10. Once the pool is complete, you handle the payout based upon your pre-determined rules.

If you want to run multiple pools in the same season, let us know, and we can automate the setup, as well as offer a discount, on the 2nd pool.

We have been asked a number of times about seller sheets as well, so we have set some of those up to assist you.

 

 

About Pickology

Pickology is the official blog of HostedPools.
Our mission is to make your office pool the best it can be. We provide the management tools and information for organizing office football and hockey pools. Our goal is to be the ultimate one stop destination for anyone with an interest in or questions about office pools.
We also aim to share strategies and analysis to help you win your office pool.

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