Why I built Fanfuse
Spreadsheets were queen... Football should be king.
Why Fanfuse was created: Bringing the Fun Back to Football
Football has never just been about football. It's about family WhatsApp groups that suddenly come alive. It's about impossible predictions. It's about winding up your mates after they confidently backed the wrong player. It's about your nan asking who she's got in the sweepstake and somehow ending up beating everyone else. Somewhere along the way, though, football games became... complicated. If you wanted something deeper than a sweepstake, you often ended up in a world of price rises, expected goals, transfer budgets, captain chips and enough statistics to make your head spin. Great if you live and breathe football every day. Less great if you just want to enjoy the tournament with your family. There was a gap for fun and simplicity.
It all started with a few scraps of paper and an original concept by Brendan.
Fanfuse didn't begin with a business plan. It didn't begin with investors. It certainly didn't begin with a line of code. It started with friends and family before an international football tournament, asking a simple question.
"How can we make this even more fun?"
A sweepstake was always entertaining, but once the teams were drawn there wasn't much to do except hope your nation kept winning.
Fantasy football was brilliant, but for many people it felt like a second job. Brendan wanted something that sat perfectly in the middle.
Simple enough for children. Easy enough for grandparents. Competitive enough for football obsessives. And fun enough that everyone wanted to join in.
And I was keen to help...
From paper to spreadsheets... and slightly out of control
The first versions were gloriously homemade. Names scribbled on bits of paper. Scores worked out by hand. Messages flying around WhatsApp every evening as people celebrated unlikely heroes and complained that their "certain goalscorer" had somehow blanked again. Then more people wanted to play. And more. Soon there were dozens of us. Eventually, one enormous spreadsheet was trying to keep track of nearly 60 friends and family, players, scores, leagues, prize money and enough formulas to make Excel question its own existence. It wasn't elegant. But it worked.
More importantly... People absolutely loved it.
It turned every tournament into an event. Before long we weren't just playing during the World Cup. We played through the Euros. We played through the Premier League. When golf came around, we adapted the scoring for pars, birdies and eagles. We ran competitions during The Open Championship.
Different sports. Same idea. Keep it simple. Keep it competitive. Keep people talking. And that's exactly what happened. There was always chat. Always banter. Always someone convinced the scoring system was against them. Always somebody who'd written themselves off after the opening weekend before somehow climbing back into contention. The football became an excuse to bring people together.
Like most good ideas, it escaped its original audience. Friends introduced it at work. People who barely followed football found themselves checking scores because suddenly they had a reason to care whether a defender from Brighton kept a clean sheet or whether a substitute striker nicked a late winner.
One of the nicest surprises was seeing how quickly people understood it. You didn't need years of football knowledge. You didn't need to spend hours researching. You could simply pick your team, enjoy the matches and join in the conversation. Somehow the game stayed simple while still giving people plenty to debate.
That's exactly what was hoped for.
Winning was never the whole point There was usually a small contribution from everyone to create a prize pot. Just enough to make things interesting. But it was never a winner-takes-all competition. Prizes were spread around. Kids won. Adults lost to their children. Office bragging rights changed hands every weekend. Nobody felt out of it after one bad round.
That's something I want to bring to Fanfuse in the future too.
Bigger communities.
Bigger competitions.
Bigger prize pots.
Without ever losing the spirit that made the original game work in the first place.
Building Fanfuse has been a challenge
If you've used the website, you'll know it's still evolving. That's because, behind the scenes, there's no huge development team. It's just me. Like many people today, I'm lucky enough to have some incredible AI tools helping with coding, testing and speeding up the technical work. Lovable has done an amazing job turning ideas into working software. But technology doesn't invent the game. It doesn't decide the scoring. It doesn't choose the player groups. It doesn't debate whether something feels fair, balanced, or genuinely enjoyable.
That's still done by a human.
Every rule, every tweak, and every decision comes back to one question: Does this make the game more fun?
Four words guide every decision
Whenever I get stuck, I come back to four simple principles.
Fun.
Because that's why the game exists.
Universal.
Anyone should be able to play, whether they've watched every Premier League match for twenty years or only tune in for major tournaments.
Simple.
Easy to understand. Easy to explain. Easy to enjoy.
Engaging.
Not just for one weekend. For the whole competition. Those four ideas are where the name FUSE really comes from. Bringing people together through something fun, universal, simple and engaging.
This is only the beginning.
I don't want Fanfuse to grow too quickly. I want it to grow properly. Every feature, every improvement, and every competition should make the experience better rather than more complicated. This has become a genuine labour of love. If it eventually reaches thousands of players, I hope it still feels like the game that started with friends arguing over scraps of paper and sending far too many messages in a family WhatsApp group.
Because that's what football should do.
Bring people together.
Make us laugh.
Give us stories to tell.
And occasionally give your mum, your ten-year-old nephew or your grandad the chance to beat the self-proclaimed football expert.
So if you decide to join Fanfuse, thank you.
And if you have ideas, suggestions, or think something could be improved, I'd genuinely love to hear them. After all, this game isn't really being built for me.
It's being built for everyone who still believes football is at its best when it's shared.