Office pools
How to run an office football pool
The office pool that actually survives the season is a survivor pool with no money in it: one pick a week, each team once, and an app that opens, locks, grades, and reminds on its own. No spreadsheet, no envelope in a desk drawer, no chasing the four people who never paid. This page covers choosing the format, when to start, and how to get the whole office in — including the coworkers who do not watch football. For what a survivor pool is and how one works, start at the survivor pools hub.
Which kind of office pool should you run?
Whichever one takes the least explaining and puts the least work on you, because those are the two things that decide whether a pool is still alive in November. Four formats show up in offices every autumn:
Squares
Everyone claims squares on a 10x10 grid and winners come from the last digit of the score.
Pick'em
Pick a winner in every game on the slate; most right wins the week.
Confidence
Pick every game and rank them 1 to 16 by how sure you are.
Survivor
One pick a week, each team once, last one standing.
Squares and confidence pools are the two that quietly die: one has no story, the other has too much homework. Pick'em is fine if something grades it for you, but sixteen decisions a week is a lot to ask of someone who joined to be included. Survivor asks for one.
How do you run an office pool without collecting money?
Run it on something that has no pot at all. A Runtiva survivor pool has no entry fee, no prize, and no money moving through it, so there is nothing to collect, count, hold, or hand out. That deletes the two jobs nobody wants. The first is collection: the reminder messages, the person who pays in week three, the colleague who insists they already sent it. The second is the payout, which arrives in January when half the office has forgotten the pool existed and you are the one holding the envelope.
What is left is the part people joined for: the standings, the groan when the safest pick of the week loses, and the two survivors still arguing in December. Your workplace sets its own policies about what runs there, and that part is between you and your employer; all we can tell you is what is and is not inside a Runtiva pool.
When should you start an office pool?
Any week of the season. The setup wizard pre-selects the earliest round that is still at least 24 hours away, and you can choose a later round instead, so a pool created this afternoon can start next week. You cannot start earlier than the wizard offers, and entry closes the moment the starting round locks — so leave the office a few days between your invite and the first kickoff.
Week 1 is the traditional start and gives everyone the full set of teams to spend. But a pool that starts mid-season is often the better first one: it is shorter, it asks for less commitment, and it is an easier thing to say yes to in a team chat. Two more natural moments sit later in the calendar. A pool that starts a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving runs right through the stretch run, and one that starts with the playoffs is three or four weeks long and pulls in people who would never sign up in September.
How do you get coworkers who do not watch football to play?
Choose a format with one decision and no vocabulary, then say exactly that in the invite. A survivor pick is: name the team you think wins. There is no lineup, no draft, no waiver wire, and no scoring system to learn, which is why the person picking by city or by helmet color has a real chance of outlasting the office expert. That is the whole appeal.
Then protect them from Week 1. Set the pool to Strikes rather than Classic — one to three wrong picks allowed — so a single September upset does not eliminate a third of the office before anyone has settled in. A pool where the casual players are out by Week 2 is a pool nobody opens in November. And you do not have to be the reminder person: the app messages anyone who has not picked at 48, 24, and 3 hours before the round closes.
How do you set it up and invite the office?
Create a group, start a survivor pool inside it, and share one link. The wizard is four steps — sport, starting round, rules, review — and the rules freeze when the first round locks, so decide strikes, revives, and entries per person before you send anything. The Commissioner Guide walks through every setting with a recommended default.
For the invite itself, give people three ways in and let them pick: the link in your team chat, a QR code on a slide or in the calendar invite, and the 8-character group code for anyone who would rather type it. Groups hold 100 members by default, which is why one pool per team or per floor usually beats one company-wide pool. Send the Player Guide to anyone who wants to know what they are joining before they tap.
Office football pool FAQ
Does anyone have to collect or hold money?
No. A Runtiva survivor pool has no entry fee and no prize, so there is no pot. Nobody is the treasurer, nobody fronts anything for the people who pay late, and there is nothing to reconcile in January.
What if half the office is eliminated by October?
Choose Strikes instead of Classic when you set the pool up. One to three wrong picks are allowed, so one September upset does not end a dozen seasons in Week 1. You can also set a revive window that lets you bring eliminated entries back. Both are chosen in the wizard and freeze when the first round locks, so decide before you invite anyone.
Do coworkers need to install anything?
Yes. The pool lives in the Runtiva app, so each person installs it once and then joins with your link, code, or QR. After that, a pick takes about ten seconds a week.
Can remote and hybrid teammates play?
Yes, wherever Runtiva is available. Everyone picks from their own phone and the standings are the same for all of them, so a distributed team runs exactly the same pool as one office does.
What happens if I am on PTO during the season?
Nothing breaks. Rounds open and lock on the real schedule, picks are graded from official results, and reminders go out 48, 24, and 3 hours before the round closes without you. The commissioner's weekly job is a nudge, not an operation.
Should I run one pool for the whole company or one per team?
One per team or floor usually beats one company-wide pool. A group is capped at 100 members by default, and a pool inside a group where people already talk gets far more picks than a big one nobody feels part of. Several groups can each run their own pool at the same time.
What do I put in the invite?
Three things: what the game is in one sentence, when picks close, and the link. Something like: one NFL pick a week, each team once, last one standing, free and no lineups, first picks close Sunday. Anything longer loses the people you most want in.
Is a survivor pool better than a March Madness bracket for the office?
They do different jobs. A bracket is one form, one weekend of chaos, and it is finished in three weeks. A survivor pool runs from September into January on one decision a week, so the conversation keeps going all season. Plenty of offices run both.
A survivor pool is one way to run the office season. The same group can also play weekly salary-cap contests for fantasy football and fantasy cricket, in a chat that follows the community guidelines. For the mechanics behind all of it, see survivor pools.
Start your office pool
Free in the Runtiva app. Set it up in about five minutes.