Official FPL was introduced before the 2002/03 season(Origin of FPL), the premier league was already delayed in launching an official fantasy game after the likes of Telegraph, Mirror, and Sun all successfully ran their fantasy games from the mid-’90s. In this blog, let’s find out How Many Play FPL currently and also how many played FPL each season from the beginning of FPL.
Link to all our FPL history blogs covering the highest-scoring players each season, highest-scoring midfielders, defenders, forwards, goalkeepers, the origin of FPL, and more. Give them all a read if you want to know what happened back in the day.
When did FPL start and how many play FPL?
FPL was first launched just in time ahead of the 2002/03 season, as it was something really new, the first six gameweeks were declared as pre-season, and points scored during the season were not considered in the overall ranking. This meant there were only 32 official gameweeks in the season resulting in the only season in which the winner has scored less than 2000 points.
Note: Player scores were all recorded, only the manager points weren’t considered.
Michael Ricketts for Bolton against Fulham, 17 August 2002. He would go on to score 6 goals in 22 appearances that season(u/papoon)
There were 46,876 managers by GW15 in the first season and the first season finished with 76,284 managers. From less the 100K managers playing FPL in 2002/03 we how now hit 9 Million managers during the 2021/22 season with the 2022/23 season expected to be the season in which we would see 10 million managers.
Gameweek history of the FPL winner from the first FPL Season(2002/03)
Number of FPL Managers Each Season in Millions
- 23/24 GW38: 10.9 Million(10,905,021)
- 23/24: 8 Million (8,057,466 managers right before GW1 deadline, 245,772 increase from 22/23 GW1 deadline total. First-time FPL has crossed the 8 Million barrier before GW1 deadline)
- 22/23: 11.4 Million(7,811,694 – 7.81 Million prior to GW1 deadline)
- 21/22: 9.1m
- 20/21: 8.2m
- 19/20: 7.6m
- 18/19: 6.3m
- 17/18: 5.2m
- 16/17: 4.5m
- 15/16: 3.7m
- 14/15: 3.5m
- 13/14: 3.2m
- 12/13: 2.61m (Only year in which there was a dip in FPL managers compared to the previous year)
- 11/12: 2.78m
- 10/11: 2.4m
- 09/10: 2.1m
- 08/09: 1.9m
- 07/08: 1.7m
- 06/07: 1.3m
- 05/06: 700,000
- 04/05: 472,251
- 03/04: 312,026
- 02/03: 76,284
Sources of the numbers are from Wayback Machine
The reason for the dip in total FPL managers during the 12/13 season was because of the fact that prior to the GW1 deadline of the 11/12 season, the game crashed. FPL had to give a free Wildcard to managers but some of them could never play it seriously because of the crash and this might have caused a dip in registrations for the 12/13 season.
Here’s also a summary of the numbers from @FPLIran’s tweet
Yellow fields are estimates and white fields are absolute numbers.
FPL Started in the 2002/03 Premier League season. 76,284 managers played the first season of FPL
FPL hit one million managers by the 2006/07 season, the fifth season after the game was launched
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