Alpha Leagues / Pricing Structure / 2026
Hybrid 3-tier model. Free tier acquires leagues. League-Wide Premium is the primary revenue. Single-Owner Premium is the future bonus stream that waits on real cost data. Multi-league discount keeps power-commishes from leaving over the second league.
All prices per season. League-Wide Premium is the conversion target. Free is the funnel into the conversion target. Single-Owner is parked until we have real LLM cost-per-active-user data.
Free
Acquisition Funnel
$0
forever
Pure acquisition. No revenue target. Goal: get leagues onto the platform so the commish can see the must-have features.
League-Wide Premium
Primary Monetization
$129
per season, per league
Locked for life. First 100 founding leagues. Never moves on those leagues, even as standard pricing rises. Charter pricing for the day-one cohort.
League-Wide Premium
Standard Pricing
$149
per season, per league
Post-cohort, new leagues only. Existing Founding Cohort leagues stay at $129. This is the steady-state league-wide tier.
Single-Owner Premium Add-On
Parked, Year 2+
TBD
per owner, per season (when shipped)
For individual owners in FREE leagues who want Alpha-grade tools without the commish upgrading. NOT in MVP. Pricing waits on real LLM cost-per-active-user data from Jason. (In Premium leagues every owner already gets these tools as part of Founding / Standard.)
What's in League-Wide Premium, in detail.
★ Headliner
The league's automated commish layer. Drafts the league announcement when a stat correction hits Tuesday morning. Suggests veto reasoning when collusion patterns appear in Trade Hub. Auto-generates the weekly recap with real numbers from your league. Answers rule questions in Comms with citations from your league's actual rule sheet, not a generic FAQ. Runs on Claude. Trained on 24 seasons of real F The Raiders precedent.
Ledger Feature
Native tracking for every contest, prop, and payout your league runs outside the standings. Weekly High Score, Survivor Series, Eliminator pools, Wild Card variants, League Props (bets between owners). Status states (PAID, NOT PAID, NO WINNER, OPEN) carried straight from the canonical 2002+ FTR sportsbook log format. Alpha tracks the ledger. Owners settle directly. Alpha never holds money.
Customization
The deep customization MFL has, with 2026-grade UX. Multi-year keepers with per-team caps. Contracts with auto-roll and auto-cut triggers. Dynasty with rookie drafts and taxi squads. Salary cap with per-position floors. Every rule your league has ever argued about, configurable at the toggle level. Alpha mirrors MFL's rule depth and renders it in a UI that doesn't feel like 2008.
Automation
Compiled every Tuesday morning from your league's actual data. Top performers, trade activity, waiver moves, side-action ledger summary, narrative copy in your league's voice. Auto-sent to every owner. The recap every commish promises to write and never gets to. Alpha writes it for you.
Owner Tools (Every Owner)
Premium leagues unlock the full Alpha owner stack for every owner in the league, not just the commish. Personal AI advisor that knows their roster, league rules, and trade history. Advanced analytics + projections per player. The Owner's Box premium with extended views and custom alerts. Personal weekly digest for each owner's team. The same tools that the parked Single-Owner Add-On will eventually offer to owners in free leagues, included natively for everyone in a Premium league.
Year 2+ (Single-Owner Add-On)
For individual owners in any league, premium or free. Personal AI advisor that knows your roster, your league's scoring, your keeper rules, and your trade history. Surfaces the lineup move you would have missed. Flags the waiver pickup before the league bid window opens. Drafts the trade pitch text. The Owner's Box premium with extended views and custom alerts. Parked until real LLM cost-per-active-user data from MVP locks the price honestly.
The model maps to the lived F The Raiders mechanic and to where the revenue actually comes from. Every decision below is anchored in either the founder origin or the competitive context.
Why hybrid 3-tier
Jeremy's exact words 2026-04-29: "Free leagues get people to the platform. But the really good features might take some convincing. If we hook the commish on wanting premium league-wide that gets us most leagues. The add-on Alpha advice style features are just a bonus revenue stream."
Free is not a cheap product. Free is a funnel. The commish lands a free league, sees the must-have features in action, and converts the entire league to premium. That conversion is where 80%+ of the revenue lives.
Why $129, locked for life
The first 100 leagues that go premium lock $129 for life. No reset. No review. No fine print.
Why we can afford it: per-league cost goes down as we grow. Engineering, infrastructure, and support are fixed costs that spread across more leagues. LLM compute drops to cheaper tiers at scale. $129 today already has the headroom for whatever cost growth comes.
The lock kills the "should I wait?" question. Reads like a real commitment, not a teaser rate.
Why $149 standard
$149 is the rate for any new league that joins after the first 100 founding leagues land. Founding leagues stay at $129 for life. They never get moved to standard.
New leagues at $149 face annual review going forward. Founding leagues never face one. We get pricing flexibility on growth without breaking trust with day-one customers.
Why -$15 multi-league
Real fantasy commissioners often run multiple leagues, dynasty plus redraft, work league plus friend league, family plus money league. MFL discounts $10 off each additional league after the first. Alpha discounts $15 off.
The honest comparison: a 3-league commish pays MFL ~$310 ($109.95 + $99.95 × 2) or Alpha Founding $357 ($129 + $114 × 2). The $47 premium isn't the headline. The headline is the bundle: with Alpha you don't bolt on LeagueSafe for escrow, LeagueLegacy for history, DraftWizard for drafts, or Discord bots for comms. Alpha ships native what MFL forces you to assemble. $15 off each additional league is meaningful enough to feel like a thank-you, light enough to keep margins on multi-league subscribers.
Why Single-Owner is parked
Single-Owner premium ships AI advisor features per individual owner, including LLM-driven analytics, projections, weekly digests, voice. The cost-per-active-user is unknown until we have real usage data from MVP.
Locking a price now means either over-charging early adopters or giving away margin we'll regret in Year 2. Better move: ship MVP with league-wide premium, observe LLM compute costs across 100+ active leagues, then price single-owner with real data behind it.
Why no escrow / payment processing
We never hold league dues, side-action stakes, or payouts. Owners settle directly with each other. Alpha tracks the agreement, marks the result, displays the ledger. Money stays out of our system.
Native escrow + majority-vote payouts (which competitors like LeagueSafe handle) would trigger money-transmitter licensing in 50 states, AML/KYC compliance, escrow regulations, and 1099-K reporting. If escrow ever becomes a feature, it's via a LeagueSafe partnership / OAuth handoff, not in-house custody.
Snapshot of where the major fantasy platforms sit on price and feature scope. Sleeper, ESPN, Yahoo are free. MFL is the deep-customization paid tier we're aiming to take. FantasyPros is paid tools, not a host. LeagueSafe handles money escrow only.
| Platform | Per-league cost | Side action ledger | Deep customization | AI co-commish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sleeper | Free | Workaround (notes field) | Limited | None |
| ESPN | Free | None | Limited | None |
| Yahoo | Free | None | Standard | None |
| My Fantasy League | $130 plus | None native | Industry-leading | None |
| Fleaflicker | Free | None | Strong | None |
| FantasyPros (DraftWizard) | $60 to $150 per owner | N/A (not a host) | N/A (not a host) | Limited |
| LeagueSafe | ~5% fee on dues | None (escrow only) | N/A | None |
| Alpha (Founding) | $129 per league | Native, full ledger | MFL-parity claimed | Yes (in tier) |
| Alpha (Standard) | $149 per league | Native, full ledger | MFL-parity claimed | Yes (in tier) |
Source: Perplexity research 2026-04-29, FSGA 2025 industry data, platform help-center pages for feature scope. 0 of 6 major fantasy platforms ship a native side-action ledger. Alpha owns this category by being the only host that builds it natively.