About

The game where the draft is the whole point

The $20 Draft is a free, pass-and-play auction draft. Two to four people, one screen, one budget, real players. Play alone against the computer, take on the daily draft that everyone gets, or fill the table with friends. No accounts, no app, nothing to install.

Why it exists

The best part of a fantasy league is the auction: the bluffing, the overpays, the one guy who somehow got a superstar for $3. The worst part is the eleven months of roster management that follow. This game keeps the auction and throws the rest away. A draft takes about ten minutes, ends with a verdict, and you can run another one straight after in a different sport.

It was built for the couch, the bar, the back seat and the group chat: hand the phone around, or put a laptop in the middle of the table. Because the bidding goes around the circle in turn, it works with three or four people without anyone shouting over each other.

The sports

Every sport also has an all-time greats pool, so you can put Barry Sanders up against Jim Brown or argue about Pelé versus Maradona with money on the line.

The movies

The same game runs on films. Five genres, action, horror, sci-fi, comedy and romance, each drafted by decade from the 80s to the 2020s or from the genre's all-time best. Around 140 films per genre, chosen for being the ones people have actually seen and argue about. Each film's hidden rating is half audience and half critics: its Letterboxd average and its Metacritic score, ranked within the genre, with both numbers shown on the verdict. Posters and release dates come from IMDb and Letterboxd.

The characters

The third topic drafts characters. Superheroes and villains from Marvel, DC, Invincible and The Boys, plus an "others" pool for the ones with no universe of their own (Star Wars, Harry Potter, the Transformers, the Ninja Turtles, Spawn, the horror icons); anime characters from Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia; cartoon characters from Looney Tunes, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and PBS Kids; and video game characters from Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo and the fighting games. Heroes, villains and anime characters are rated on raw power, on one scale across every universe; video game characters on strength with a nod to how big their games are. Cartoon characters are rated on how loved they are and how good their show is. Every one of those ratings is an editorial call, made to be argued with. Character pictures are the ones Wikipedia uses for each character, served from Wikimedia's image servers; a character without a Wikipedia article gets an initials badge instead.

The songs

The fourth topic drafts songs, in four genres: pop, country, hip-hop and rap, and rock, each by decade plus an all-time mode. The decades run from a "70s and before" pool, which also holds the 50s and 60s, through to the 2020s. Hip-hop skips that first one, because recorded rap begins in 1979. Unlike the characters, nothing here is an editorial call. Every song is rated on one number: its lifetime play count on Spotify, taken from the public totals published by kworb.net and captured on 18 September 2026. Those counts move every day, so the ratings are a snapshot rather than a live feed.

The one judgement call is how the number is turned into a rating. Spotify launched in 2008, so play counts are tilted hard towards recent music, and towards pop and rap over country and rock: a song that was enormous in 1985 can show a small fraction of the plays of a forgettable song from last year simply because nobody was streaming anything when it came out. Putting every song on one absolute scale would leave the older pools flat and dull, so each song is ranked against the other songs of its own genre and decade instead. A 1983 country hit is measured against 1983 country. Since that number is the whole rating, the card itself only shows a short spoiler-free note about the song; the raw play count is saved for the rating basis, so it only becomes visible once the song has actually been drafted.

The cars

The fifth topic drafts cars, in five classes: hypercars, supercars, sports cars (muscle cars are drafted in there too), daily drivers and off-roaders, each by decade from a "70s and before" pool through to the 2020s, plus an all-time mode. Hypercars are the exception and start in the 90s, because the extreme limited-run car does not really become a class of its own until the McLaren F1; the Ferrari F40 and the Porsche 959 are drafted as supercars instead. There is also a Full garage mode, which wants one car of every class in the same twenty-dollar draft. The 70s and 80s garages field four cars rather than five, for the same reason the hypercar decades start late.

What the hidden rating is built from changes with the class, because a Land Cruiser and a McLaren are not trying to do the same job and rating them on the same axis would be nonsense. Hypercars, supercars and sports cars are rated on their real published figures: peak power, 0-60 mph and top speed, standardised and blended, then ranked against the other cars of the same class and decade. Daily drivers are rated on how good they actually are at being a daily driver, which is mostly a question of how little they ask of the person who owns one. Off-roaders are rated on genuine capability, meaning how far from a road one can get and still come back. Those last two are editorial calls and the rating basis says so. Because every car is ranked inside its own class and decade, a 1970s off-roader can be a 99 without being quick, and an 80s supercar is never punished for not being a modern one. As with the songs, the card during bidding only shows a short spoiler-free note; the figures and the basis appear once the car has been drafted.

Where the ratings come from

Ratings are hidden during the draft and revealed at the verdict, and each one carries a note saying where it came from. Current NFL players use their Madden NFL 27 overall rating, current NBA players their NBA 2K27 overall rating. Formula 1 is rated on 2026 championship points, MLB on 2026 per-game and per-start production with a curve for each position, and soccer attackers on 2025-26 goals and assists per 90 minutes. Positions the box score cannot measure, every all-time pool, coaches and rookies are editorial calls, and the game says so rather than pretending otherwise. The how to play page has the full breakdown.

Rosters are updated by hand after each offseason. If a player is on the wrong team or a rating looks badly off, that is a mistake, not a take.

Who makes this, and how it is kept current

The $20 Draft is an independent side project built and maintained by one person, not a studio or a content operation. There is no editorial team, no outside funding and no sponsor: nobody has ever paid to have a player, a film, a car or a song placed in this game, and no league, label or manufacturer has any say over a rating.

The data is rebuilt by hand on a schedule rather than pulled live. Sports rosters and game ratings are redone after each offseason, when Madden and NBA 2K publish their launch numbers and the transfer and trade windows have closed. Film scores, Spotify play counts and car figures are captured on a stated date and that date is published alongside them, so you can see how old a number is instead of guessing. Everything drifts between builds, which is the honest trade for a site that does not run a live data pipeline.

Because the ratings are the whole argument, they are published in full rather than buried in the game: the ratings reference lists every entry with its number and the specific source or editorial standard behind it. If something there is wrong, send a correction and it goes into the next build.

What this site is not

The $20 Draft is an independent fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the NFL, NBA, MLB, Formula 1, FIFA, any league, club or team, or any player. Madden NFL is a trademark of Electronic Arts; NBA 2K is a trademark of Take-Two Interactive. Their ratings are referenced here as published, publicly reported figures. Team names, colours and player names are used for identification only and belong to their respective owners. Car makes and model names are used for identification only and belong to their respective manufacturers; performance figures are quoted as published. Film titles are used for identification only, and film posters are shown for identification of the film being drafted, served from IMDb's image servers; Letterboxd and Metacritic scores are quoted as published. Character names are used for identification only and belong to Marvel, DC Comics, Skybound, Amazon, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros., Hasbro, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, PBS, Sesame Workshop, Microsoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, Bandai Namco, SNK, the anime publishers and studios, and their respective owners. Character pictures are shown for identification of the character being drafted, served from Wikimedia's image servers as they appear on Wikipedia.

There is no gambling here. The dollars are play money, nothing is wagered, and nothing can be bought or won on this site.

Contact

Questions, corrections, a roster that has gone out of date, or a rating you want to argue about: email 20DollarDraft@gmail.com.

Privacy, briefly

The game runs entirely in your browser. Player names you type are never sent anywhere. The full details, including what third parties are involved when the page loads, are on the privacy page.