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If you’ve ever looked at someone else’s Fantasy Premier League team and thought, “How can they afford all those players?” — chances are, you’re bumping up against the concept of team value.
This article dives into what team value actually is, how it changes, and most importantly — whether it really matters. Is it worth chasing price rises early on? Or is it just a distraction from the real goal: scoring points? Let’s break it down.
Team value is the total worth of your Fantasy Premier League (FPL) squad — and it’s made up of two parts: the value of your players plus any money left in the bank. So, if you look at my team (at the time of writing) it is worth £105.2. That is 15 players worth £104.8 and £0.4 in the bank. You can see your team value under the £ sign on your gameweek history.
At the start of the season, everyone’s team value is £100m. From there, your team value can increase or decrease depending on how the players in your squad perform in the transfer market. Simply put, players rise and fall in price based on how many managers are buying or selling them. It’s a bit more complex than that and we wrote about that here: Fantasy Premier League Price Changes Explained.
When a player is transferred in by a large number of managers his price can rise by £0.1m. But here’s the twist: you only profit half of that. If you buy a player at £6.0m and he rises to £6.2m, you can only sell him for £6.1m unless he rises again to £6.4m and then you can sell him for £6.2m.
When a player is transferred out by a large number of managers his price can fall by £0.1m. If you bought him for £6.0m and he fell to £5.9 then you lose £0.1m. The important thing here is to remember its all based on the purchase price v.s. the selling price because if the guy went from £6.0m to £6.1m and back to £6.0m then you don’t gain or lose anything.
Price changes happen overnight (UK time) at around 2 or 3 in the morning. I don’t know when exactly, I’ve never stayed up to find out. Just bear that in mind if you don’t live in the UK. If you find maths and timezones hard like me, then use a website like this: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
Before I start, I should set out the hypothesis I expect to find. Simply put, points matter and team value doesn’t.
I expect I will find that managers who buy players that score points will gain team value and therefore it will appear like team value matters. But those managers were not chasing team value throughout the season. Some managers may pursue team value more at the start but it will not be consistent throughout the season. Instead, they will buy players they think will score points and then others will follow them.
However, I do also think we will see a virtuous circle where managers with higher team value will pull away from managers without higher team value. So, that by the end, team value will have made an impact and made it more difficult to get a higher rank.
If we accept the line that most of the more expensive players in FPL are better at scoring FPL points (which isn’t always true) then it is hard to deny that a team with a team value of £105m will be advantaged over a team with a value of £100m. That £105m team can afford a Trent Alexander-Arnold at £7.2m the highest scoring £4.2m defender Ashley Young and have £2m left to spend.
I finished the season on £105.2m and my team looked better than Joes on £101.8m and we often found it harder to pick players for his team so I can see that argument. And, I don’t think Joe is bad at FPL by any means so I believe that team value can hold you back towards the end of the season.
To assess whether team value does affect performance in FPL, I turned to the Full90FPL Public League from the 24/25 season. (I have anonymised it apart from myself).
| Manager | Team Value | Points | Overall Rank |
| 1 | 105.9 | 2533 | 63043 |
| James | 105.2 | 2526 | 73877 |
| 3 | 103.0 | 2497 | 133153 |
| 4 | 107.0 | 2475 | 198770 |
| 5 | 103.3 | 2461 | 246941 |
| 6 | 105.1 | 2457 | 263570 |
| 7 | 106.9 | 2452 | 285120 |
| 8 | 104.2 | 2439 | 343753 |
| 9 | 101.8 | 2431 | 384942 |
| 10 | 104.2 | 2416 | 471322 |
| 11 | 102.9 | 2397 | 591387 |
| 12 | 103.7 | 2395 | 606310 |
| 13 | 104.5 | 2393 | 618819 |
| 14 | 101.2 | 2377 | 743173 |
| 15 | 104.1 | 2354 | 939378 |
| 16 | 103.1 | 2354 | 940648 |
| 17 | 101.8 | 2341 | 1058214 |
| 18 | 100.0 | 2341 | 1061821 |
| 19 | 101.3 | 2337 | 1099105 |
| 20 | 104.3 | 2332 | 1153361 |
| 21 | 101.8 | 2263 | 1969901 |
| 22 | 101.7 | 2257 | 2052343 |
| 23 | 99.2 | 2239 | 2291874 |
| 24 | 101.8 | 2221 | 2545074 |
| 25 | 100.8 | 2197 | 2891613 |
| Average | 103.2 | 2379 | 921100 |
You can see without me needing to point it out too much that generally the teams with higher overall ranks and higher points totals had a greater team value.
If you need the maths/stats then using Pearson’s Correlation test we found a 0.75 correlation between team value and total points and a 0.7 correlation between team value and overall rank. That indicates a very strong relationship.
Before you get carried away though, this only shows correlation and not causation. The higher team value could be a result of managers having players that score more points.
That’s certainly true for me. I don’t think I made a single transfer this year based solely on whether I was going to gain or lose team value. And I have the fourth highest team value in that list. In other words, it could be that better-performing teams naturally gain value — not the other way around.
To try and gain further understanding of whether team value really matters in FPL, I went to the overall top 25 from the 24/25 season.
| Manager | Team Value | Points | Overall Rank |
| 26 | 106.1 | 2810 | 1 |
| 27 | 104.9 | 2787 | 2 |
| 28 | 106.2 | 2779 | 3 |
| 29 | 106.2 | 2774 | 4 |
| 30 | 107.1 | 2760 | 5 |
| 31 | 107.2 | 2757 | 6 |
| 32 | 107.4 | 2756 | 7 |
| 33 | 107 | 2755 | 8 |
| 34 | 105.9 | 2755 | 9 |
| 35 | 105.6 | 2754 | 10 |
| 36 | 106.6 | 2753 | 11 |
| 37 | 106.1 | 2751 | 12 |
| 38 | 106.5 | 2750 | 13 |
| 39 | 106.8 | 2750 | 14 |
| 40 | 104.8 | 2750 | 15 |
| 41 | 105.2 | 2746 | 16 |
| 42 | 106.1 | 2737 | 17 |
| 43 | 105.7 | 2737 | 18 |
| 44 | 104.7 | 2737 | 19 |
| 45 | 106.7 | 2736 | 20 |
| 46 | 104.1 | 2736 | 21 |
| 47 | 106.4 | 2735 | 22 |
| 48 | 104.6 | 2733 | 23 |
| 49 | 106.1 | 2732 | 24 |
| 50 | 105.5 | 2732 | 25 |
| Average | 106.0 | 2752 | 13 |
Higher team value is common among the top finishers than in the Full90FPL League. On average, the team value of the top 25 is £3.0m higher than in the Full90FPL public league. Not only that, but the spread of values is tighter here. That implies that team value does matter in FPL.
On the other hand, the overall winner of FPL had about the same in team value as the overall winner of our league but the rank and points difference is huge. And, you can see that OR2 had less team value than I did.
For my stats/maths nerds, the Pearson correlation between points and team value in this sample was 0.51 and 0.49 for team value and overall rank.
Overall, I think we can prove correlation between team value and overall rank but proving causation from this set of data is not possible.
One of the most common strategies among seasoned FPL managers is to take early hits — especially in the first six Gameweeks — to chase price rises and build team value.
The logic is simple: by jumping on the hottest assets before they rise in price, you can squeeze extra value out of your budget and give yourself more flexibility later in the season. These early transfers are usually aggressive and pre-deadline, made before press conferences or full midweek fixtures, and often come at the cost of points.
So, I looked again at the 25 managers from the Full90FPL Public League to see who had taken hits GW 1-6 and whether that resulted in higher team value and better rank.
| Hits (GW1–6) | Managers | Avg TV | Avg Points | Avg Rank |
| 0 Hits | 19 | 103.1 | 2378.3 | 916,268 |
| 1 Hit | 2 | 103.0 | 2287.5 | 1,764,226 |
| 2 Hits | 1 | 104.2 | 2416 | 471,322 |
| 3 Hits | 1 | 107.0 | 2475 | 198,770 |
| 4 Hits | 1 | 103.1 | 2354 | 940,648 |
As you can see, it’s an extremely limited data set as most managers were good boys like me and didn’t take any hits in the first six gameweeks of the season. As you might expect then there is no clear trend but there are a couple of interesting points:
You guessed it. I ran the same analysis for the overall top 25.
| Hits GW1–6 | Managers | Avg Team Value | Avg Points | Avg Rank |
| 0 Hits | 20 | 105.9 | 2751.8 | 13.3 |
| 1 Hit | 3 | 106.3 | 2746.0 | 17.7 |
| 2 Hits | 1 | 107.1 | 2760.0 | 5.0 |
Managers who didn’t take any early hits still built excellent team value (£105.9m) — suggesting that smart picks and minimal transfers were sufficient. In fact, 80% of the top 25 managers took no hits in the first 6 Gameweeks and their average score was 2751 points with an average rank of 13 overall.
While one manager who took two early hits did achieve an even higher value and top-5 finish, the overwhelming trend was clear: you don’t need to chase value aggressively to finish at the very top — patience and precision trump early panic moves.
Based on the data we have collected and simple common sense we think that Team Value in FPL does matter but it is not nearly as important as picking players who score points.
I have taken a snapshot here so I cannot be 100% confident of what I have asserted. I would love to get more data and look at:
I think that has made me want to take even fewer hits next year. I didn’t chase team value really at the start of the season and it made the whole experience more enjoyable and it was successful.
I’d love to hear what you think about the team value question.