Joining a League

Public leagues

Public leagues are open to new members and discoverable inside the app. To find one:

• Open the Discover page from the GENERAL section of the sidebar.
• Browse the league cards — each shows the name, current member count, and a short description.
• Open a league's public landing page at /public/leagues/[slug] to see the standings and rosters before you commit.
• Click Join (or Request to join, depending on the league's settings) to send your request to the commissioner.

You can also reach a public league directly by URL if someone shares the slug with you, for example /leagues/spring-classic/join.

Private leagues

Private leagues do not appear on the Discover page. There are two ways in:

• Invitation code. Your commissioner shares a code; you paste it on the Join a League screen and submit. FanPoolHQ verifies the code matches an active invitation before forwarding the request.
• Direct invite by email. Your commissioner sends an invitation tied to your email address. The email contains a link that takes you straight to the join screen with the code prefilled.

Either path lands you in the same join-request workflow described below.

What happens after you submit

Submitting a join request does not give you a team automatically — it queues an item for the commissioner to review:

1. FanPoolHQ creates a LeagueMembership row in PENDING status for your account.
2. The commissioner sees your request in the Invitations tab of the league dashboard, with a badge in the COMMISSIONER section of their sidebar.
3. They can Accept or Reject the request. On accept, your membership flips to ACTIVE.

You'll get an in-app notification (and an email, depending on your notification preferences) the moment your status changes.

Getting your team

Acceptance into a league is not the same as owning a team. After your membership is active, the commissioner has to link your user account to a specific team through UserTeam. Until that happens you can browse the league as a member but you won't see anything under Roster Management.

If the link is slow to arrive, ping your commissioner — most leagues do team assignment in a single batch right before the draft.