Managing Team Owners

How ownership is stored

The link between a user and a team is a UserTeam row. When you "invite a GM," you are sending an email that will create a UserTeam link the moment the recipient accepts. When you "remove an owner," you delete that row — the Team survives, the user no longer manages it.

A team can carry more than one GM. Each UserTeam row has a role of OWNER or CO_OWNER, and both grant identical powers — roster moves, trades, team settings. The distinction is a label for the league, not a permission boundary, so a co-owner can do everything an owner can. Use it for genuinely co-managed teams, or to hand a team over gradually.

You manage all of this on Commissioner → Teams. Each team card lists its GMs as chips: click + Add owner to add another, the × on a chip to remove that one, and the ⇅ to flip a GM between owner and co-owner. Adding a second GM does not displace the first.

A team without an owner is a vacant team. The roster, stats, and history are intact; the team just shows as "no owner" until someone is invited in. Vacant teams can sit indefinitely (handy at the start of a new season while you recruit) or be filled by the GM Finder board.

Inviting a GM

You have three ways to fill an empty seat:

The GM Finder job board (/gm-finder) is the discovery layer for cross-league recruitment. Owners looking for a new league post a "GM available" profile; commissioners with vacant teams post LeagueOpening rows. The board matches the two sides without forcing direct email outreach. See the GM Finder section of the user guide for the owner-side flow.

Replacing an owner mid-season

If an owner goes inactive or asks to step away, you can hand their team to a new user without losing the team's history:

1. On Commissioner → Teams, remove the current GM from the team card (the team becomes vacant; roster and stats stay attached to the Team).
2. Invite the replacement using any of the three methods above, or add them straight from the team card if they are already a league member.
3. The replacement accepts and immediately inherits the active roster, the trade history, the cap state, and the standings position. From FanPoolHQ's point of view, the Team continued; only the human behind it changed.

This is a routine operation — no historical data is lost, no records are reset, and other GMs in the league see the change as a notification in their feed rather than a disruption.

Removing an owner

If you need to remove an owner outright (rule violation, league departure, account issues), the same team card handles it. Removing an owner:

• Deletes the UserTeam link (the user can no longer manage that team)
• Leaves the Team row vacant
• Does not touch the team's roster, trade history, stats, or season archives
• Notifies the affected user via email

If you also want to remove the user from the league entirely (not just from owning that team), that's a separate action on the LeagueMembership row — the user can be a league member without owning a team, and they can be removed at either level independently.

Promoting a co-commissioner

A LeagueMembership carries a role field. To promote a member to co-commissioner, switch their role from MEMBER to COMMISSIONER on Commissioner → Manage Members. Co-commissioners get the same admin surface as the founding commissioner — they can approve trades, edit league settings, run the draft, and even invite or remove members. Use this carefully; co-commissioners have full configuration power.

Most leagues run with one commissioner and zero co-commissioners. Promote a co-commissioner if you want a backup decision-maker, or if you genuinely co-run the league with another GM.

See also

• League Setup Wizard — initial team creation and the first wave of invites
• League Settings Reference — the invitations and members tabs in context