Official rules

Version 1. You accept these rules when you enter the tournament, and the version you accepted is recorded against your account. Holding a Peffercorn account is not by itself entering.

Sponsor

The Sweepstakes is sponsored and administered by Peffercorn LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company (the Sponsor). These rules form a binding agreement between you and the Sponsor, which you accept by entering.

Contact

hello@peffercorn.com

Eligibility

Entry is open to individuals who, at the time of entry:

• are 18 years of age or older — or 19 in Alabama and Nebraska, or 21 in Mississippi, being the age of majority in those states;
• are legal residents of one of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia; and
• hold no more than one Peffercorn account.

Void where prohibited or restricted by law. The Sweepstakes is not open to residents of US territories or of any country other than the United States, and a prize will only be shipped to an address within the eligible states.

The Sponsor, its members, employees and contractors, and the immediate families and households of each, are not eligible to receive a prize. This exclusion is not a formality. Whoever holds the secret seed behind the deal can compute candidate packs offline and keep the best one, and no commit–reveal scheme in which the dealer holds the seed can prevent that. Making the people who hold it ineligible is the control that closes it — described in full under How the deal works.

Promotion period

The Sweepstakes runs across weeks 1 to 18 of the 2026 NFL regular season. Entry opens when an account is created and closes when the final week is scored. The season’s first game kicks off at Wednesday, September 9, 2026 at 8:20 PM ET; from that moment the players in it are locked, and every other player locks at their own club’s kickoff — see How to enter.

How to enter

Create a free Peffercorn account and enter the tournament. These are two acts, not one: an account on its own is not an entry, and you are asked to accept these rules at the moment you enter rather than when you register. No purchase, payment or subscription is required at any point, and none is offered as a route to an entry. Each account is dealt packs of 12 players, from which you build a lineup of 7. Each pack is one entry.

Entries are granted in series, and there are three ways to receive one: one entry for entering, one for the series open when you enter, and one for each series that opens after that. Entering therefore always grants 2 entries, whenever it happens. You never receive a series that opened before you entered.

Totals therefore differ by when you arrived, and later series do not close the gap. An account that enters before the season opens reaches 5 entries across the season; one that enters after series 2 opens reaches 4; one that enters after series 3 opens reaches 3; one that enters after series 4 opens reaches 2. What every entrant is guaranteed is their entering series and every one after it. Earlier entries are also stronger than later ones, because qualifying takes your best single week and a series 1 entry plays 3 of them. The totals above exclude the referral bonus described under Bonus entries; with it, an account holds at most 6 entries.

Every entry is an independent run at the bracket. An entrant holding several holds several separate slots rather than one slot with several lives, and two entries held by the same person can be drawn against each other. Nothing in the bracket groups entries by who owns them.

An entry that never posts a lineup never competes and is not ranked.

Each player locks when their own club kicks off, not at a single deadline for the week. Until then you may start them, bench them or swap them freely; from that moment they cannot be added to your lineup or removed from it, and the rest of your lineup carries on being editable until each of those players kicks off in turn. A player whose club is on a bye does not lock, since nothing about them is yet decided. Kickoff times are the league’s published schedule, and a game the league moves takes its lock with it.

Player trades

Winning a bracket match earns the right to trade exactly one player with the entry you beat — one trade per win, entirely optional, and irreversible once confirmed. The winner gives one player from their roster and takes one from the beaten entry’s; a roster always holds 12 distinct players. A player whose club has already kicked off in the following week cannot be traded in either direction. Ranked weeks — the qualifier and Wildcard Weekend — pair nobody and therefore earn no trade, a bye earns none, and the championship winner has no following game to trade for. House entries trade by a fixed published rule. The originally dealt packs remain published and verifiable unchanged; trades are recorded alongside them.

Bonus entries — the referral pack

One bonus entry method is offered this season, and it is free. Each entrant has a personal referral link, shown on their dashboard. When the first person who signed up through your link enters the tournament — accepts these rules, not merely creates an account — you are dealt one bonus pack. The bonus is capped at one bonus entry per account for the season, however many people join through your link, and it is the only entry available outside the series above. Referral credit requires that you have entered the tournament yourself at the time your friend enters.

The bonus pack is dealt from the series open at the moment it is earned, plays that series’ week, and is dealt by the same published commit–reveal procedure as every other entrant’s pack, so it verifies like any other. Referring yourself, or an account you control, does not qualify, and the Sponsor may withhold or revoke credit where it reasonably concludes accounts are duplicates or coordinated. No purchase is necessary to use or benefit from the referral link, and referring nobody never affects the entries the series above grant.

How the deal works

Packs are dealt by a published commit–reveal procedure. Before a series deals anything, the ordered list of its players and the SHA-256 hash of a secret server seed are published in a public commit; your own browser contributes part of the seed for your packs; and when the series retires the server seed is published, so any entrant can recompute every pack they were dealt and check it against what was promised. The full description, and a verifier that runs in your own browser, is at Provably fair.

What that proves, stated precisely: it proves the deal was fair. It cannot prove the operator was. It shows that your pack was not chosen for you after the fact. It does not, and cannot, prevent an operator obtaining good packs on accounts they control — which is why the eligibility exclusion above exists, and why it is a fraud control rather than a mathematical one. Packs held by the Sponsor’s own non-player entrants, described below, sit deliberately outside the provably-fair set.

How the tournament works

Weeks 1 through 3 are qualifiers, in which entries are ranked by their best single week. The bracket that follows is fixed at 32,768 slots across 15 single-elimination rounds, divided into 64 regions of 512. A region resolves over 9 rounds; its champion goes on to the championship bracket. The qualifier seats 32,256 entries, and one region is held back for Wildcard Weekend in week 4, which seats a further 256 by a ranked cut rather than by head-to-head play.

Every entrant who posts a lineup is guaranteed a slot in the bracket. Nobody is guaranteed a good one: once seated, the field is ranked as a whole.

The field contains non-player entrants

The bracket does not shrink to fit the number of people playing. Slots the qualifier does not fill are played by the Sponsor’s own automated entrants. You should expect the great majority of the 32,768 slots to be held by them. They are ordinary competitors in every respect that affects play:

• they hold a pack from the same committed series and build a lineup by the same rule;
• they are ranked against everyone, so one that qualifies well outranks a person who qualifies badly, and the two may be drawn against each other;
• one of them may win the tournament outright and be named champion; and
• none of them is eligible for any prize.

The number of slots in the bracket is therefore not the number of people competing for the Grand Prize, and no figure shown anywhere on the site should be read that way.

Scoring and results

Lineups are scored from nflverse / nflfastR play-by-play data, an unofficial public source. The NFL revises statistics for several days after games are played, and in this format a revision does not merely adjust a total — changing one play’s yardage changes the down and distance of every play after it. Accordingly:

• results are provisional on Monday and final on Tuesday;
• advancement is written only on finalization;
• results are final as published, and advancement already made is not automatically reversed by a later revision; and
• each game is scored under the rules version that was in effect when it was played, so a later change to scoring does not alter a completed week.

The Sponsor may correct scoring errors and account for revisions to official statistics, and will do so on the record.

Determining the winner

There is one winner, and one prize is awarded. Which prize depends on how far the best eligible entrant gets.

The Grand Prize — the console described under The prize — is awarded to an eligible entrant whose entry wins the championship: the final match, played in week 18. If an eligible entrant wins the tournament, that entrant wins the Grand Prize.

The Alternate Prize — the jersey described under The prize — is awarded only if no eligible entrant wins the championship. It goes to the eligible entrant whose single furthest-advancing entry reached the highest round of the bracket. The field holds the Sponsor’s own non-player entrants and one of them may win the tournament outright; when that happens the Grand Prize is not awarded, and the Alternate Prize is.

Exactly one of the two is awarded. Nothing is awarded for winning a week, a match, a round or a region, for qualifying, or for referrals; those are how the one winner is found, not prizes of their own.

The measure is rounds reached, not matches won. Entries seated by the Wildcard Weekend cut enter at round 1 without having played round 0, so two entries eliminated in the same round may have won a different number of matches.

Within a single match, the winner is the entry with:

1. the higher score;
2. failing that, the greater total yardage;
3. failing that, the fewer plays used;
4. failing that, the higher qualifying seed.

A championship has one winner, so the Grand Prize cannot tie. If two or more eligible entrants are tied on the round reached for the Alternate Prize, it is awarded to the entrant with:

1. the higher total points scored across all games played in the tournament;
2. failing that, the higher cumulative point differential;
3. failing that, the winner of a random draw conducted under the same published commit–reveal procedure used to deal packs, with the seed and method published so the draw can be checked.

The Sponsor’s decisions are final

Every determination under these rules is made by the Sponsor, in its sole discretion, and every one of them is final and binding in all matters relating to the Sweepstakes. That includes, without limitation: how any game, week or match is scored, and whether a result stands; every tiebreak, including any the procedures above do not settle; whether an entry, a lineup, a trade or an account is valid; whether a person is eligible; what any rule means, and how it applies to a situation these rules did not foresee; how to handle a data error, a revision by the league or the data source, an outage, or anything else that disrupts the Sweepstakes; and who, if anyone, is the winner. The Sponsor may correct errors, void entries, and modify, suspend or end the Sweepstakes as these rules describe. By entering, you agree to be bound by these rules and by the Sponsor’s decisions under them.

The prize

Exactly one prize is awarded in the Sweepstakes, to one person: the Grand Prize if an eligible entrant wins the championship, otherwise the Alternate Prize. Never both. The total value of everything awarded will not exceed $900.00. No other prize of any kind is offered or implied. Neither prize is transferable and no cash alternative is offered, but the Sponsor may substitute a prize of equal or greater value if the item stated becomes unavailable. The prize will be shipped to an address in one of the eligible states at the Sponsor’s expense.

The winner is responsible for all federal, state and local taxes on the prize. At the value stated the Sponsor does not expect to be required to file an information return, but the prize is taxable income to the winner whether or not one is filed.

Notification and claim

The winner will be notified at the email address on their account within 7 days of the final week being scored, and must respond within 14 days of the notice being sent. As a condition of receiving the prize the Sponsor may require proof of identity, age and residence.

If a winner cannot be reached within that period, declines the prize, is found ineligible, or fails to provide what is asked, the prize is forfeited and may be awarded to the next eligible entrant determined under Determining the winner.

Odds

This is not a random drawing. Whether an entry advances depends on how its lineup scores against the entry it is drawn against, and the odds of winning either prize depend on the number of eligible entries and how they perform. Because the bracket is filled to a fixed size with the Sponsor’s own non-player entrants, the size of the field is not the number of people competing for the prize — and because one of those entrants may win the tournament, the Grand Prize may not be awarded. The Alternate Prize is awarded in that case, so one prize is awarded whatever happens.

Conduct and disqualification

One account per person. The Sponsor may disqualify any entrant, and void any entry, for holding more than one account, for using any script, bot or automated means to create an account or set a lineup, for tampering with the operation of the Sweepstakes, or for any breach of these rules.

The Sponsor may modify, suspend or cancel the Sweepstakes if it cannot be run as planned — including where the NFL season is shortened or abandoned, or the data the game depends on becomes unavailable. In that case the Sponsor may award the prize on the basis of play up to the point of the disruption.

Release and limitation of liability

By entering you release the Sponsor from any claim arising out of participation in the Sweepstakes or acceptance or use of a prize. The Sponsor is not responsible for entries that are not recorded, for interruptions to the service, or for errors in third-party data on which scoring depends. Nothing in these rules limits any liability that cannot be limited by law.

By accepting a prize you agree that the Sponsor may state your handle publicly as the winner. No other personal information will be published.

Privacy

Peffercorn collects the email address and handle you provide, and the record of your play. They are used to run the Sweepstakes and to contact you about it, and are not sold. A winner may be asked for the additional information described under Notification and claim, which is used only to verify eligibility and deliver the prize. The full statement is the Privacy policy, and your account itself is governed by the Terms of use.

Governing law

These rules are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, without regard to its conflict-of-laws provisions. Any dispute that cannot be resolved with the Sponsor directly will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts sitting in Wyoming, and you consent to their jurisdiction.

Winners list

For the identity of the winner, write to the Sponsor at the address under Sponsor above, within 90 days of the end of the promotion period. We will reply by email.

Not affiliated with the NFL

Peffercorn is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or associated with the National Football League, the NFL Players Association, any NFL club, or Sony Interactive Entertainment. Player names and statistics are used to report the results of real games. No club names, logos or wordmarks are used. Statistical data comes from nflverse / nflfastR and is unofficial.