Crowd Favourite — the Football Fan Favourites Game Scored on Real Player Picks
Why most football fan favourites games are scored wrong
Crowd Favourite is a daily football fan favourites game where you name the five answers most other players chose — and every score comes from the real distribution of picks recorded across every round played.
That sentence is doing more work than it looks. Almost every fan favourites game in football is scored against a survey taken once — we asked 100 fans — and then frozen. The number you are graded against might be years old, was never large to begin with, and cannot be checked by anyone playing. The alternative most sites reach for is worse: a fame formula that scores popularity from career statistics, which quietly assumes the most decorated player is the one people think of first. Football is full of counter-examples.
We know this because we made that mistake ourselves. Deep Cut, this game's sister, originally scored rarity from a formula over famous-club count, appearances and goals, and the code called that more honest than a survey because it was explainable. Players do not want an explainable formula. They want to know that only three in a hundred people thought of the same name.
- 766 players in the answer database
- 26 categories in the daily rotation
- 15–38 valid answers per category, by construction
- scores accurate to ±8 points before a category opens here
What is a football fan favourites game?
A fan favourites game inverts normal trivia. Normal trivia rewards knowing the answer nobody else knows; a fan favourites game rewards knowing the answer everybody else gives. The skill is not recall, it is empathy — modelling what the average football fan reaches for first.
That makes it the one game on this site where a casual fan can beat an obsessive. The other twenty-seven all reward depth of knowledge. This one rewards being normal, which is a genuinely different skill and a much friendlier place to start.
How to play in 4 steps
- 1Read the category
A football category appears, such as "Played for AC Milan". Every player in the database who fits it counts as valid.
- 2Name the obvious ones
Type 5 players who fit. Resist the clever pick — you want the names most people would say first.
- 3Watch the terrace board
Each answer fills a bar showing how many of every 100 recorded picks named that player. The most-picked answer in the category scores 100.
- 4Land the top pick
Hit the single most-picked answer and the Top Pick Bonus drops your weakest score. A perfect round is 500.
Where the fan favourite data comes from
Every valid answer submitted in Crowd Favourite or Deep Cut increments a counter for that category. Nothing else feeds it — no survey, no editorial guess, no imported list. The sample size backing your score is printed under the board while you play, so you can see exactly how much data is behind the number grading you.
A category opens when its scores are accurate, not when it hits a round number of picks. That distinction matters more than it sounds, and we only found out how much by measuring it.
This game shipped with a flat threshold: 250 recorded picks, a figure reached by arithmetic that sounded reasonable. Simulating the way the game actually records — five distinct answers per round, not five independent draws — showed that no single number can be right, because how much data a ranking needs depends entirely on the shape of the category:
| Category shape | Picks needed | Example |
|---|---|---|
| One dominant answer | ~100 | “Played for AC Milan” — almost everyone starts with the same name |
| Typical | ~150 | A clear favourite, then a long tail |
| Flat | ~650 | “Under 25”, “300+ appearances” — no obvious leader at all |
So 250 was simultaneously more than twice as patient as the steep categories needed and nowhere near enough for the flat ones. It now asks the question it actually cares about: the expected error in the score is computed from the recorded counts themselves, and a category opens once that falls under 8 points out of 100 — about half a tier band across a five-answer round, so your result is not decided by sampling noise. Below 100 picks the estimate is not trusted at all.
The figure is printed under the board while you play. As far as we can tell no other football fan favourites game publishes its threshold, let alone the accuracy behind an individual round.
What a fan favourite distribution looks like
An illustrative shape for "Played for AC Milan" — not live figures. Note how fast the share falls away after the first two names. That cliff is what a fan favourite round is really testing: not whether you know the category, but whether you know which two names the rest of the terrace reaches for.
| Answer | Score | Share | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paolo Maldini | 100 | 24% | The name almost everyone reaches for first |
| Kaká | 78 | 19% | Ballon d’Or winner, instantly recallable |
| Clarence Seedorf | 54 | 13% | Well known, but the third or fourth thought |
| Andrea Pirlo | 31 | 7% | Remembered more for Juventus |
| Ignazio Abate | 4 | 1% | Valid, but almost nobody names him |
Crowd Favourite vs Deep Cut: same data, opposite goal
The two games run on one shared pool of recorded picks. Every answer you give in either one improves the scoring in both — which is why the honest thing to do when a category is still collecting data is to send you to Deep Cut rather than fake a ranking.
| Deep Cut | Crowd Favourite | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Lowest total wins | Highest total wins |
| Best answer | The one nobody picked | The one everybody picked |
| Invalid answer | +100 (worst) | 0 (worst) |
| Bonus rule | Zero Shield — drops your worst | Top Pick Bonus — drops your weakest |
| Rewards | Depth of knowledge | Thinking like everyone else |
Fan favourite scoring and tiers
Five answers, up to 100 points each. A fan favourite round is won on the first two picks far more often than the last three.
| Tier | Total | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 📣 Voice of the Terrace | 500 | Five straight top picks |
| 🏆 Champions | 400–499 | Thinking with the crowd |
| 🌍 European Qualification | 320–399 | A solid, popular five |
| 📊 Mid-table | 220–319 | A mix of obvious and obscure |
| ⬇️ Relegation | Under 220 | Too clever by half |
Share blocks: 🟦 top pick · 🟩 67–99 · 🟨 34–66 · 🟧 1–33 · 🟥 not a valid answer.
About the authors
Built and maintained by the PlayFutbol Data Team. Career records behind the 766-player answer database are reconciled against Wikidata club-spell statements and cross-checked with Transfermarkt and club pages; popularity figures come only from picks recorded on this site. Read more about how PlayFutbol sources its data.
Frequently asked questions
What is a football fan favourites game?
A football fan favourites game asks you to name the answers other people gave most often, rather than the answer you personally think is best. Crowd Favourite runs a daily football category and scores each of your five players by how many other players named them.
How do you play Crowd Favourite?
A category is shown, such as "Played for AC Milan". You name 5 players who fit it. Each valid answer scores 0 to 100 based on how often other players picked it, and the most-picked answer in the category scores 100. Highest total out of 500 wins.
How is this different from other fan favourites games?
Most fan favourites games are scored against a one-off survey — "we asked 100 fans" — recorded once and never updated. Crowd Favourite counts every valid answer every player has ever given here, and shows you the sample size on screen while you play.
How accurate is the fan favourite data?
A category opens only when its scores are accurate to within 8 points out of 100 — that is the average gap between the score we award and the score infinite data would award. The board prints the live figure while you play, so you never have to take it on trust.
Why does a category sometimes say it needs more answers?
Because its answers cannot be ranked accurately yet. Rather than invent a popularity order, the board stays shut and shows you how far off it is. Playing Deep Cut on that category is what closes the gap — both games write to the same pool.
Why do some categories open faster than others?
Because how much data a ranking needs depends on the category. One with a name almost everyone reaches for is rankable after roughly 100 picks; one where a dozen answers are equally obvious needs closer to 650 for the same accuracy. A single fixed threshold would be three times too slow for the first kind and far too hasty for the second, so the gate measures accuracy instead of counting picks.
What is the difference between Crowd Favourite and Deep Cut?
Same categories, same data, opposite goal. In Deep Cut the rarest valid answer wins and you want a low score. In Crowd Favourite the most popular valid answer wins and you want a high score.
Is Crowd Favourite free?
Yes. Every game on PlayFutbol is free with no account, no signup and no credit card. Your streak is stored in your own browser.
Is there a new puzzle every day?
Yes, one category per day. Past days stay playable in the archive, and archive rounds do not affect your daily streak.
Can I skew the results by picking the same player over and over?
Not usefully. Only players that are genuinely valid answers for that category can be recorded, writes are rate limited per visitor, and archive replays are never counted at all.
Where do the percentages come from?
Every valid answer submitted in Crowd Favourite and Deep Cut increments a counter for that category. The percentage you see is that player's share of all picks recorded for the category, drawn from the same 766-player database behind every game here.
More daily football games
Past fan favourite categories stay playable in the Crowd Favourite archive, or browse all daily football games.