Free Agent Budget in Fantrax - Trade It!

Draft Genie
Jun 30
12 min read

The Free Agent Budget (FAB) is a very tricky concept to master in Fantrax Draft PL fantasy football leagues. Deciding which percentage of your budget to spend on certain players every week, or how much to offer and accept in trades requires a lot of strategy and can change a league as a whole. I've seen it all. I have seen FAB wars, I have seen managers give up all their FAB before the draft (me), and those who have amassed a FAB monopoly within the first few weeks. This article will look to sway you in the direction of spending/trading away your FAB as soon as possible. For more incredible analysis and Fantrax preseason advice, check out our 25/26 Draft Kit and our Pricing Plans.

Check out our 25/26 Draft Kit for all the pre-season information you could ever need. We've got a Live Draft Aide, Draft Rankings, Team Previews, Cheat Sheets, Strategy Articles, Draft 101. Dominate your draft!

Why You Should Spend FAB as Early as Possible

Genie is here to explain his thoughts on spending your Fantrax FAB early for those of you playing with this version of waiver claims. The Free Agent Budget is a setting in Fantrax that will allow managers to "bid" for players that are on the waiver wire. Usually, every manager starts with 100 FAB, and bids in increments of 1. All FAB is tradeable, and this adds an extra level of strategy to Fantrax, as opposed to simply awarding the player to whoever has the highest waiver priority. Deciding how much to spend on an asset is tough, but can you still pick up decent assets when you have 0 FAB left? This article will dive into just that.

Keeping your Free Agent Budget is a burden

How is having extra resources to pick up hidden gems week in week out a burden? How is having some sweetener FAB to add to trades a negative? Well, I'll tell you how. The longer you keep your FAB, the harder it is to value it, in my opinion, especially after the January transfer window. Going into the season with the intention to make your FAB last as long as possible will probably lead to you missing out on many solid pickups and potentially good trades where FAB is involved. As you slowly start to spend your FAB, you may start to be more cautious week in and week out, which will cause you to continuously miss out on pickups. The best example I can think of from last season is Justin Kluivert being available in quite a few leagues. He went for next to no FAB once he started getting starts, and finished as a top 10 midfielder. Mikkel Damsgaard and Yoane Wissa had similar fates and results as well.