A play-for-fun sports betting league for your company or club

An office pool sports game usually means one bracket, a spreadsheet and an entry fee in an envelope. A play-for-fun sportsbook is a whole-season alternative: every colleague or club member gets the same free tokens, bets on real odds for the matches they care about, and climbs a leaderboard, with no money in and nothing of value out. You embed it on your intranet or community site, and on the Free plan it covers one sport, 3 leagues and up to 250 players.

Beyond the office pool: a sports game for a whole season

The classic office pool has a short life. People fill in a bracket before the tournament, half of them are out after the first round, and the conversation dies by the quarter-finals. A score predictor lasts longer but asks the same question every week.

A sportsbook changes the rhythm. There's something to bet on every matchday for the whole season, and different people play differently: one colleague backs the favorite every week, another builds five-leg accumulators on Friday afternoon, a third only plays when their team is on. Over a season the leaderboard reflects all of that, and people who joined late can still catch up.

It also works for the tournament people search for in the first place. A company World Cup sweepstake, where names are drawn from a hat and money goes in a pot, is exactly the kind of thing we don't run. A play-for-fun sportsbook gives the same tournament buzz with free tokens and no pot.

Setting it up on your intranet or community site

The Sportsbook is offered to businesses and professionals: whoever signs up confirms they're 18+ and acting for a business (Terms 3.1). For an office league, that's the company, usually someone in HR, internal comms or an engineering team. For a club, it's the club as an organization.

The sportsbook sits on a page where people already sign in:

1. Create the sportsbook. Sign up in the console, name it, pick your sport and get an API key. It starts on the Free plan and nobody has to approve it.
2. Choose leagues. Pick up to 3 leagues one by one on Free, for example your domestic league and one or two international competitions.
3. Open a session on your server. When a signed-in colleague opens the page, your server calls the sessions API with a pseudonymous id for them (an internal id, never their email or real name) and gets a launch URL.
4. Add two lines of HTML to the page.

<div data-thesportsbook data-launch-url="LAUNCH_URL_FROM_YOUR_SERVER"></div><script src="https://play.thesportsbook.app/sdk.js"></script>

The launch URL is single use and expires after 60 seconds, so it has to come from your server each time the page loads. If your intranet runs on WordPress or a similar CMS, that's a small server-side snippet; the guide to embedding a sportsbook on your website walks through it.

For the display name, use a nickname people choose. It shows on the leaderboard, and some colleagues will prefer not to appear under their full name.

Everyone starts equal: starting balance and refills

The fairness of the league comes from the token rules, so write them down before launch:

• Same starting balance for everyone, credited the first time each person opens the page. 1,000 tokens is a common round number.
• Same free refill for everyone, weekly for a league. When someone runs out, the "Get more tokens" button in the sportsbook tells your page, and your page explains when the next refill arrives.
• No extra tokens for seniority, sales targets or anything bought. Tokens only ever come from free, equal sources (AUP 3.1).
• A season reset at the end, so the next season starts level.

The leaderboard itself is yours: the sportsbook doesn't draw one, so you build a simple page from your players' balances (the balance API) or their settled bets (the rounds API, or a CSV export on paid plans). Using your own players' records this way is expressly allowed. Decide how refills affect it. Many leagues rank by balance, which means a refill helps someone who went broke; others rank by net token result over the season. Either is fine if everyone knows the rule on day one. The free token economy guide covers balance sizes and refill schedules in more depth.

Recognition, not prizes

This is where company leagues most often go wrong, because the instinct is to put up a prize. Don't. Prizes of monetary value tied to the sportsbook are not allowed (AUP 5.2(a)): no gift cards, vouchers, cash, merchandise, extra leave, or a better parking space. Neither is using the results to pick entries for a prize draw (AUP 5.2(b)). And nobody pays to take part: no entry fee of any kind for any contest or leaderboard linked to the sportsbook (AUP 5.2(c)).

What works instead:

• a title for the season winner ("Head of Predictions") on the leaderboard page;
• a trophy image next to their nickname until next season;
• a shout-out by nickname in the company newsletter or chat channel;
• a role or badge in your community space.

This keeps the league about bragging rights, which is what office leagues were about in the first place, and it avoids turning a social game into something that needs rules on payments and prizes.

Keeping it inclusive

A company league reaches people who don't normally bet on anything, and some for whom any betting format is uncomfortable. A few settings help:

• Stake limits. Set a maximum stake and a maximum return in the console so one lucky long-shot accumulator doesn't end the season in week two.
• Opt-in, never expected. Make joining optional and don't track participation for anything work-related.
• Opt-out that works. Anyone who asks to stop is blocked in the console; their sessions end within about a second. Honoring that request is a rule, not a courtesy (AUP 7.3(a)).
• Plain language. Explain that tokens are free and worthless. The player notice template is a good base for the page text.
• Only adults. If your club has junior members, keep the sportsbook on an adults-only page.

Free plan fit

For most offices and clubs, the Free plan is enough, at the time of writing (September 2026):

A company with more than 250 people who play in a month, several sports or a wish to bet live during matches would look at Custom, from $49 a month ($39 billed yearly). See pricing.

Before you open it to everyone, run through the launch checklist for a play-for-fun sportsbook, and if colleagues ask what this actually is, what a play-for-fun sportsbook is is a short read to share. The back office guide covers the weekly admin, which for a league of this size takes minutes. When you're ready, start on the Free plan (opens in a new tab).

Frequently asked questions