Frequently asked questions

Yes. Franchise Architect: Football is free, and there is nothing to buy inside it.

Franchise Architect: Football is free to play in early access. It is complete enough to run a franchise for decades, and it changes often; every change is dated in the changelog. Nothing is locked or invite-only. You can play the whole game now; it just keeps improving.

No. Open the start page and press Start. The game runs in your browser, and your league is saved there.

No AI services and no paid APIs. Every rival, every Advisor call and every headline is worked out by the game's own rules from your league's data. That is also why a challenge code can recreate the same league for a friend.

No. The league, clubs and players are fictional. Franchise Architect is not affiliated with or endorsed by any professional sports league, team or players association. The full notice is on the terms page.

We publish what we check it against. The Simulation explains the ceiling on elite talent, the real-world ranges that season statistics are held to, and where those comparisons stop working.

Start with How to Play, which walks through a full season. Inside the game, the Guide button opens a how-to, the full rules and a list of actions.

In the browser you play in, on this device. The game keeps rolling automatic backups and rewind points for recent major decisions. Clearing this site's data, or playing in a private window, removes your saves, so export a save file if you want a copy somewhere else.

Yes, two ways. Export a save file and import it on the other device, or turn on GitHub Gist sync in the game's settings. Gist sync uses a GitHub token you supply. The token is sent only to GitHub's API, is kept only for the current browser tab, and is never included in a save export. An optional passphrase lets the game detect whether a synced save was changed by someone else; it does not encrypt the save.

Updates migrate saves in place. When a change affects something you will notice in an existing league, the changelog says so in the note for that day.

Your league is saved in this browser. Nothing leaves it unless you turn on anonymous Community Stats or choose GitHub Gist sync. The website itself counts page views without cookies. The details are in the privacy notice.

An optional, anonymous view of what other general managers are doing: which eras they start in, how they draft and trade, and what it wins them. It is off until you turn it on, and you can stop and delete what you shared at any time. What is shared and what is not is set out once, in the methodology.

Every league can produce a challenge code. Send it to a friend; when they paste it into the box on the start page and press Accept Challenge, they get the same league from the same starting point. You each run your own copy and compare how it went.

There is a commissioner mode for up to four general managers sharing one league on the same device. Each general manager gets a club and stages their moves, then the commissioner advances the week. Lobbies are stored in this browser, so there is no online multiplayer.

A recent version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on a computer, tablet or phone, with JavaScript and site storage allowed. Nothing to download. Long simulations run faster on a computer, and the game stays responsive while it simulates on browsers that support background workers.

Yes. The game has phone and tablet layouts, with a menu drawer that reaches every screen, in both light and dark themes.

See Contact for the three ways to reach us.