2024 Olympics Office Pool Format Ideas
July 1, 2024 by
Two online office pool formats (with Excel templates) for the Olympics that involve drafting countries and giving them a weighted score based on medal count, number of Olympians participating, or recent Olympic performances.
Option #1 - Draft + Medal Multiplier
PAUL'S FORMAT
- Everyone drafts countries, around 30 countries total. 10 people pick 3 each. Or maybe 8 people pick 4 countries each (snake draft).
- Pull the number of participants for each country from Wikipedia. 2024 participant counts are in spreadsheet below, pulled on 7/1/24.
- Each country gets a multiplier assigned based on their number of participants. The USA had the most participants at 590. So all other countries multiplier was based off this number.
- A country with one participant gets a multiplier of 590. 2 particpants get a multiplier of 295 (590/2) and so on.
- Each gold is worth 3 points, silver is worth 2, bronze worth 1, and then the total score is multiplied by the country multiplier.
- This way countries with fewer participants get more points for medaling.
- Using the 2010 medal count as an example, even though USA and Canada got the most overall medals, South Korea and Norway were higher scoring because of the multiplier.
Option 2: Salary Cap Based on Recent Results
JOE'S FORMAT
- Take the medal count from the last Olympics.
- Assign points (Gold 3, Silver 2, Bronze 1) for each medal for each country.
- Determine the total points for each country and set that as the 'cost' or 'salary'
- Each player gets 300 credits to spend how they like on up to 6 countries.
- Example 1 (USA, Cuba, Ukraine = $291 total)
- Example 2 (China, Australia, Indonesia, Estonia, Thailand = $300 total)
- You score for each medal during the Olympics (Gold 3, Silver, 2, Bronze 1)
- Whoever has most points at the end of the Olympics wins
- Tiebreaker: How many total medals (Gold + Silver + Bronze) will the USA get? Closest to wins. Doesn't matter if over or under.
- Super easy for amateur pool players to participate.
Option 3: Olympic Golf Pool
Automatic Scoring
- Everyone picks 6 golfers from separate tiers based on odds to win.
- Add the best 4 of 6 golfers scores to form your team score.
- Lowest team score wins the pool.
- BONUS: Scoring and picking is all managed online, so you don't have to do any of the work to track in a spreadsheet!
Summary
That's it! We don't have anything setup yet to manage this automatically on the site yet, so you'll have to manage your pool with one of the good old-fashioned spreadsheets provided.Enjoy!
-Sean
