Create and run a league in DraftCenter
Use this manual as your operating checklist. You can change most choices later, so begin with the league basics, invite a small test group, and confirm the draft room before opening the league to everyone.
1. Create the league
Sign in, open Start a new league, and enter a name, season label, optional draft time, description, image, and access level.
- Choose Private for invite-only setup, Public to watch for a visible league that is closed to new managers, or Open to join for recruiting.
- Use Practice league while testing. Practice results stay out of career statistics.
- Choose what should happen to visibility when the draft starts. You can still change access later in Commissioner Tools.
- Select Create league. DraftCenter opens the new league and gives you commissioner access.
2. Set rules and teams
Open Setup and work through the commissioner workspace before anyone drafts.
- Choose the supported format or custom legal pool, draft type, league size, roster limits, budget or point rules, timers, and special mechanics.
- For bulk pricing, download the Pricing Template under Legality & Values. Fill New Price or Rank, upload it, review every proposed change, and confirm the import.
- To move a current league setup or complete roster from a spreadsheet, download the League Import XLSX or CSV template. Keep only supported Team, Manager, Pokémon, and Price data, upload one file, repair every preview error, and confirm only after the parsed revision matches the source. Manager labels never claim accounts, and a complete-roster confirmation requires the exact league name.
- Use the Commissioner Launch Checklist at the top of Setup to see what is configured, claimed, posted, backed up, and ready for draft day.
- Name teams and divisions if needed. Confirm that the legal pool is large and balanced enough for every roster.
- Set transaction limits, regular-season format, standings tiebreakers, playoff size, and the league clock for match and claim deadlines. Swiss supports one shared 4–16 team table; round robin remains available for divisions and larger leagues.
- Save a recovery backup after major setup milestones. Use the spreadsheet export when you need a readable offline record.
- Commissioner Tools also shows Automatic Recovery History. Review the team, roster, result, season, and draft summary before restoring; type the exact league name to confirm.
3. Invite people and share responsibility
Use Commissioner Tools or Setup to distribute secure links.
- Copy a Manager invite for someone who will claim and run a team. Invite links expire, so create a new one if an old link no longer works.
- Use a Spectator link for view-only access. Spectators cannot draft, report results, or manage a roster.
- Use the League Managers card in Setup to invite someone by email or promote an existing league member. League Manager is the clear user-facing name for co-commissioner access and applies only to the selected league. In a connected season, sibling pods remain view-only unless that person is assigned there separately.
- The primary commissioner can transfer league ownership to an existing manager or League Manager from Commissioner Tools. Review carefully: the former owner becomes a League Manager for that league.
- If you need help, select the yellow Help button beside Commissioner Tools. For a direct request, open Commissioner Tools and choose Get help with this league. Review the optional safe diagnostics before submitting.
- Temporary support access is separate from league membership. Choose Review only for configuration advice. The primary commissioner may instead approve Review and edit tiers/pricing so DraftCentral support can apply a completed pricing file; that scope cannot change members, drafts, rosters, messages, results, or other settings and creates a recovery point and audit entry before saving.
- Ask every manager to sign in, accept the invite, and claim the correct team before draft day.
4. Prepare and run the draft
Treat the Draft Setup readiness messages as the final preflight check.
- Set the official draft date and time. For an unattended snake draft, wait until DraftCenter shows Automatic Start Ready before closing the site.
- Resolve every readiness warning: team count, legal pool, roster minimums and maximums, budgets, draft order, and claimed-team assignments.
- Use Start Draft Now when everyone is ready, or let a prepared scheduled draft start from the server clock. Auction drafts may still require commissioner action shown in the room.
- Pause only when necessary. If the draft happened elsewhere, use the manual roster entry and finalization tools instead of replaying every pick.
5. Operate the regular season
DraftCenter connects the schedule, reported results, standings, transactions, and league communication.
- For round robin, generate or edit the schedule. For Swiss, pair Round 1 after the draft, report every current result, then pair the next unlocked round. Either participating manager may report their matchup.
- Each scheduled matchup includes a compact Match organizer. Trainers share private availability, see only mutual overlaps, propose and accept a time, and can add a confirmed match to their calendars. Commissioners can see scheduling progress and help set or cancel a time with a recorded reason, but cannot see either trainer's raw availability.
- For an eligible scheduled regular-season matchup, a participating manager may analyze one to five exact public Pokémon Showdown replay URLs, map each Showdown player to the scheduled teams, review the normal result editor, and choose Save. Analysis never writes a result automatically, and manual score changes clear the replay confirmation.
- Swiss ranks by wins, OMWP, GWP, OGWP, then initial team order. A bye counts as a match win. Correct an earlier score before later play starts; a competitive correction may remove still-empty future pairings so they can be rebuilt safely.
- Use Transactions for trades and free-agent activity. Claims process on the configured league clock, or a commissioner can process them early when appropriate.
- Use the League Board for durable league-wide messages. Managers can share their own Twitch or YouTube battle from League Home without commissioner approval.
- Optionally connect a league Discord channel in Setup and choose which announcements it receives. Personal Discord notifications are configured separately by each member.
6. Run playoffs and close the season
Finish the competitive record before starting a new season.
- Confirm regular-season results and standings, generate the playoff bracket, and report each playoff result and award selection.
- After the final, choose End season. This freezes the champion, standings, rosters, bracket, awards, transactions, and history in the archive.
- Review the archived season before choosing Start next season. Starting the next season resets active competitive state but keeps the completed archive.
- Download a final spreadsheet and recovery backup for your records.