FPL gaining popularity in Nepal

As Football is one of the most-watched sports in Nepal, Fantasy Premier League (FPL) is slowly gaining popularity. Now that the new season of European leagues such as La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga has kicked off, and football fans are excited.

Talking about FPL, it is one of the most popular prediction games in the football world. While playing FPL, the participants get a chance to be a manager and create their own team. FPL managers are given a budget of £100.0 to spend on an initial squad of 15 players comprising two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders, and three forwards. A maximum of three players can be chosen from one ‘Premier League club’. Points are awarded to players for goals, assists, saves, and clean sheets.

“English Premier League” is one of the most-watched sports in Nepal compared to La Liga and Bundesliga,” said Anuj Pandey, one of the founding members of FPL Nepal.

FPL Nepal is the first FPL league that was organised in the country.

He reminisces,” I along with my friends Anuj Joshi and Dipesh Amatya are the founding members of FPL Nepal since 2011. We had just learned about FPL and used to play among friends only. Later on, when we realised there were more football fans who would be interested to participate in FPL, we came up with an idea of organising our own league, where we could also include more people outside the circle.”

“In our first season, there were only 20 participants where we had head-to-head leagues. Over the years, most of the people started showing their interest and started joining our leagues. Now, we have around 10,000 active members in our Facebook group,” he adds.

After the addition of considerable participants, the founders came up with different ideas of creating different modes in the game — prediction games, knockout games — to make it more entertaining and interesting. Pandey says, “Right now, we only have limited seats for 320 members.”

In the period of building a team in FPL, participants cannot choose all 15 players from a big team only because of the tight budget provided. So they have to add players from midtable and the bottom half teams which is affordable and might also bring more points.

Pandey explains, “Previously, people were only fond of watching the popular team matches, but once they started playing FPL, people found every single match entertaining, even a game of bottom teams because the players they chose will be playing too. Watching such games also helps people to scout players for the upcoming games.”

"Since most of the English Premier Leagues are broadcast on Saturday and Sunday, EPL and FPL add bonus entertainment to the football fans."

Rabin Raj Bhujel, a 27-year-old participant of FPL Nepal, has been a passionate football fan since his childhood.

Bhujel says, “I have started playing FPL from season 2013-2014. There were not many leagues during that period. The only league I remembered back then was FPL Nepal which I joined the next season. Mostly, I and my friends used to have a mini-league of our own where we used to collect the money from each other and give rewards to the winner. Playing FPL makes EPL more entertaining to watch for me as a football fan.”

When it’s a game week, the participants do not only get excited about their favorite team game but are also excited for the FPL wondering about how many points they will secure. 

“Talking about my way of selecting the team, I was bad in the beginning but as the seasons passed by I got a chance to learn more from the mistakes I made which also helped me to improve in the coming seasons,” 

As social media has been a medium of sharing information, there are lots of YouTube channels, Facebook groups, and pages where they analyse the players and their stats on how good they are for the FPL team. This also helps the participants to stay updated about the players which even makes them more excited for the game. 

However, since the numbers of FPL leagues are increasing, there are times when some of the leagues are a scam where they just take the registration fee and disappears in the middle of the league.

Pandey advises, “Participants should be aware of such leagues. Before joining them, they should make sure whether the leagues are legit or not.”