With the new Ligat HaAl season kicking off this Saturday, ONE has rebuilt significant parts of its popular fantasy football game — and the man who runs it, Amir Yaniv, laid out what has changed in an interview for the outlet's "Conversation of the Day" slot.
The headline change concerns goalkeepers, who Yaniv says have long been short-changed by fantasy scoring systems. Under the new rules, every save a goalkeeper makes earns his fantasy manager a point, while conceding a single goal in a match carries no penalty at all — only the second goal and beyond cost a point each.
Player pricing is also being handled differently this year. Rather than have staff set values by feel, Yaniv said an AI algorithm now calculates what each player should cost, aiming for a more accurate reflection of real form and output across the list.
Managers have also been given more freedom to build lopsided squads: the game now allows up to three players from the same club, up from two previously, opening the door to stacking a team that is expected to be particularly strong this season.
Each manager works with a total budget of 125 million (in-game currency) to fill out a squad. At the top of the price list sits Beitar Jerusalem's Omer Atzili, the single most expensive player in the game.
At Maccabi Haifa, the priciest name is striker Guy Melamed at 11 million, with Brazilian midfielder Bruninho close behind at 10 million — pricing that reflects the club's expected firepower heading into the new campaign.
Ligat HaAl's 14 clubs open the season this weekend, and the fantasy game is free to play through ONE's app or website, with managers signing in via a Google or Apple account. The platform also runs a parallel fantasy competition tied to Spain's La Liga.
As in previous seasons, ONE is dangling incentives to keep managers engaged through the year: weekly prizes throughout the campaign and a grand prize of an overseas trip for two for whoever tops the standings.
For a game that lives or dies on whether its scoring feels fair, the goalkeeper change in particular addresses a long-standing manager gripe — that shot-stoppers were fantasy football's most undervalued asset relative to the games they can single-handedly swing.
