Key takeaways
- The FAAB endgame is decided in September. Weeks 1 through 4 account for $20,301 of the $43,555 ever spent on ITFFL waivers: 47 percent of the money on 32 percent of the claims.
- Weeks 8 and 9 are the cheapest real estate on the calendar. Average winning bid $37.10 and $38.70, against $142.40 in week 1. The biggest bid ever won in weeks 8 through 12 is $340.
- The league buys the same amount in weeks 8-12 as in weeks 1-4. 176 winning claims versus 175, and it pays 2.6 times less for the second batch.
- Then it spikes again. Weeks 13 and 14 average $97.00 and $117.00, the highest outside the opening fortnight, because the trade deadline has passed in week 10 and the wire is the only door left.
- Leftover FAAB is not a trophy. No keepers, no rollover, in any of the six seasons. This league only spends about 60 cents of every budgeted dollar, and the other 40 cents expires worthless.
The ITFFL FAAB endgame starts earlier than anyone plays it. Right now, somewhere in this league, there is a manager sitting on $600 and a bench full of guys they drafted in August, waiting for the perfect claim that is not coming. There is also a manager sitting on $12 with three roster holes, refreshing the wire like it might change.
Both of them made their real decision back in September. Six seasons of transaction data, 548 winning waiver claims and $43,555 in league money, say the same thing every year: the season has a price curve, it is steep, and almost nobody in this league bids as if they know that.
So here is the curve, and here is what to do about it with two months of football left.
Where the money actually goes out, week by week
Every completed claim across all six seasons, pooled by week.
- Week 1: 45 claims, $6,407, avg $142.40, high $777
- Week 2: 47 claims, $5,694, avg $121.10, high $901
- Week 3: 39 claims, $3,530, avg $90.50, high $629
- Week 4: 44 claims, $4,670, avg $106.10, high $1,000
- Week 5: 39 claims, $2,464, avg $63.20, high $685
- Week 6: 40 claims, $2,236, avg $55.90, high $235
- Week 7: 45 claims, $3,120, avg $69.30, high $720
- Week 8: 39 claims, $1,446, avg $37.10, high $300
- Week 9: 36 claims, $1,394, avg $38.70, high $203
- Week 10: 38 claims, $2,001, avg $52.70, high $329
- Week 11: 29 claims, $1,306, avg $45.00, high $340
- Week 12: 34 claims, $1,792, avg $52.70, high $228
- Week 13: 30 claims, $2,909, avg $97.00, high $900
- Week 14: 24 claims, $2,807, avg $117.00, high $411
- Week 15: 15 claims, $1,075, avg $71.70, high $500
- Week 16: 4 claims, $704, avg $176.00, high $553
That is a U with a long flat bottom. Prices crash off the week 1 cliff, bottom out in weeks 8 and 9 at barely a quarter of opening-week rates, drift sideways through week 12, then rocket back up for the last two weeks of the regular season.
The single most useful pair of numbers in that whole table: weeks 1 through 4 produced 175 winning claims for $20,301. Weeks 8 through 12 produced 176 winning claims for $7,939. Same volume of players changing hands. $116.01 per player in the opening month, $45.11 per player in the middle, which is 61 percent off. The league is not buying less in the middle of the season. It is paying dramatically less for the same amount of buying.
Weeks 8 through 12 are the cheapest window of the year
The average winning claim in weeks 8 through 12 costs $45.10. In weeks 1 and 2 it costs $131.50. And the ceiling compresses too, which is the part people miss: the largest bid ever won in weeks 8 through 12 is $340. There are eight separate bids in weeks 1 through 4 larger than that, and the biggest is nearly three times bigger.
Nobody in the history of this league has ever gotten aggressive in week 9. Not once in six seasons has anyone put up even half the budget in that window. Which means a $150 bid in week 9 is not a bold move, it is an unopposed one, and every year the wire in that stretch has gone for the price of a mid-round handcuff.
A dollar in week 9 has bought nearly four times what a dollar bought in week 1. If you had a plan to save money and spend it later, the ledger says later has always been cheap. The problem is that almost nobody actually does it.
The obvious objection is real. A player added in week 2 gives you twelve or thirteen weeks plus a playoff run; one added in week 9 gives you five or six. Some of the early premium is paying for time. What the data cannot settle is whether it is priced right, and a fourfold markup on a two-and-a-half-fold difference in remaining games looks like a market with feelings in it.
The week 13 spike, and the two bids that explain it
Then the price curve turns around. Weeks 13 and 14 average $97.00 and $117.00 per claim on only 54 claims combined, and they contain two of the twelve biggest bids in league history.
The first is purplepigs at $900 in week 13 of 2024, the third largest bid ever placed here. purplepigs finished 7th in the regular season that year at 6-8, which in a league where eight of twelve teams make the playoffs means comfortably inside the bracket. That bid is entirely defensible. Money you carry into the offseason is worth zero, a bracket is worth something, and the exchange rate is obvious.
The second is aal3 at $601 in week 13 of 2022. aal3 finished 12th that season at 5-9. Last place, in an eight-of-twelve playoff format, spending $601 in week 13. There is no read of the standings that makes that a value play, and there is no version of this league where somebody does not do it every couple of years, because the alternative is admitting the season is over on a Tuesday morning in December.
Eight of twelve make the playoffs, so almost nobody is truly out
This is the setting that governs everything about the ITFFL endgame. Two thirds of the league qualifies, and in five of the six seasons the regular season ran 14 weeks, so by week 10 only a handful of teams are mathematically finished. The rest are still shopping. That has two consequences for your budget, and they point in opposite directions.
- More competition stays live late than in a normal league. You cannot count on a quiet wire in weeks 11 through 14 the way you could in a four-team-playoff format. The week 13 and 14 averages prove it: those are not clearance prices.
- But the discount window is real and it is earlier. Weeks 8 through 12 stay cheap in this league despite eight teams being live, which makes it a genuine market inefficiency rather than a scheduling artifact.
There is also a scale you should keep in your head. Twelve teams times $1,000 is $12,000 of budget in the room every season, and completed winning bids only account for about $7,259 of it. This league spends roughly 60 cents on the dollar and lets the rest expire. There are no keepers and there is no rollover in any of the six seasons on record. Every unspent dollar in your account on the last day is a dollar you set on fire in slow motion.
The FAAB endgame: when to hold, when to dump, how to read the room
Concrete guidance, priced off the actual curve.
- Weeks 8 to 12 is your buying window, not your saving window. The average winning claim there is $45. If you want a player in that stretch, $90 to $120 is an overwhelming bid by historical standards and still cheap against the $142 you would have paid for a comparable name in week 1. Do not sit out the discount because it feels early to spend.
- Hold only against a named need. Saving budget is only rational if you can say what you are saving it for: a bye-week hole, a shaky RB2, a defense streaming plan for weeks 13 to 16. "In case something happens" is not a plan, it is how you finish the year with $600 and a participation trophy.
- Set a dump week and honor it. If you are out of the bracket race, the correct remaining balance is close to zero, and the correct time to get there is before the players worth having are gone. Waiting until week 16 to spend is what produced that four-claim, $176-average week at the end of the table.
- If you are in the bracket, your last real Tuesday is the one before your last game. After that, unspent money has no salvage value whatsoever. None. It does not carry, it does not count, it does not exist in the record book.
- Read who is broke by reading weeks 1 through 4. The megabids are concentrated in five managers and in the first month. When somebody in this league drops $600 in September, they are not a threat in November, and the wire prices in weeks 8 through 12 reflect exactly that.
- Remember most churn is free. Across six seasons there were 1,577 straight free-agent adds against 548 winning waiver claims. Nearly three quarters of the players who joined rosters in this league cost nobody anything. If your plan requires winning an auction, check first whether the guy clears waivers anyway.
The pick'em angle: the late-season market is always the softer one
Waiver bidding and weekly picks share a failure mode. Both punish the person who spends their conviction early, on the loudest and least-informed part of the calendar, then has nothing left when the information finally shows up. Week 1 in a pick'em pool and week 1 on the wire are the same trap: maximum noise, maximum certainty, maximum price.
By November you actually know things. Which offenses are real, which defenses are streamable, which teams have quit. That is when a confident pick is worth the most and a $50 waiver bid buys the most, and it is exactly when most of this league has emptied both its pockets and its opinions.
Check your own late-season record on the statistics page before you decide you are a strong closer, and read how this league bids in the opening weeks for where the money goes before it disappears. The all-time record book has the rest of the numbers people misremember.
Waivers process Tuesday, as always. Whatever is sitting in your budget right now has a shelf life measured in weeks, and the league has spent six years proving it will not pay full price for anything between now and December. Go be the person who does.