Every Trade This League Made, and What Changed Hands

The League of Leagues has filed 74 trades across its first two seasons of operation, 31 in 2015 and 43 in 2016, with both sides of every deal recorded as filed. That uneven count is the first clue that trading in a three-sport league follows its own calendar, not the sports themselves.

Photo: Amtec Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0 · source file

What the ledger records

Our ledger holds every deal exactly as filed. No shorthand, no summaries. A trade posted on February 24, 2015, reads: Keri got John Brown, Grant got Chad Qualls. On March 6, 2016: Kogod got Adam Jones, Rank got LaMarcas Aldridge. The longest line in the file, dated August 29, 2016, runs: Keri got Mike Trout Josh Donaldson Aroldis Chapman, Sporer got Patrick Beverley $15 NBA FAAB Dylan Bundy Hunter Pence Sam Dyson. The format is name, got, assets received, comma, name, got, assets received. Dollar amounts appear mid-line when budgets move. Players from all three sports—baseball, football, basketball—can appear in a single transaction. The ledger does not separate them by sport. It does not flag which season a player belongs to. The reader must know the names, or look them up.

The 2015 count of 31 trades and 2016's 43 suggest a league learning its own rhythm. More owners had rosters worth adjusting. More budgets had been spent down to the point where trading became necessary. The spike came in year two, not year one.

Budgets as the asset

Three separate FAAB budgets operate in this league, each tradable, each renewable at $100 per sport per season. The minimum bid is $0. Tiebreakers run reverse order of standings on the day waivers process. What matters for trading is this: owners may trade the immediately following season's FAAB as well. During the 2018-2019 season, owners could trade 2019-2020 FAAB. The budget is not just cash. It is a claim on future flexibility, and it moves in both directions—spent down, traded away, acquired, hoarded.

The August 2016 line shows how this works in practice. Keri received three elite baseball players: Trout, Donaldson, Chapman. Sporer received one basketball player (Beverley), one baseball prospect (Bundy), two baseball veterans (Pence, Dyson), and $15 in NBA FAAB. The $15 is not a throw-in. It is a tradable asset with immediate utility, good for waivers or for trading again. Sporer gave up three top-tier assets and got back five, including budget. Keri consolidated. Sporer diversified. Both moves are recorded as single lines.

The three-sport structure means an owner can be rich in one FAAB pool and poor in another. A baseball-heavy roster may carry surplus NFL or NBA budget. Trading budget across sports is not prohibited. The rules do not fence the pools.

What cannot change hands

Future draft picks cannot be traded, with one exception: the current year's supplemental draft. That is the only draft capital that moves. The March 17, 2018, draft is the annual launch; the August 2018 supplemental snake draft is the only point where a pick can be packaged in a deal. Offseason pickups are prohibited entirely. The league does not allow roster moves between the end of one season and the start of the next. Trading, however, stays fully available. An owner with a hole in a March roster cannot fill it by waiver. They must trade for a player already rostered, or wait.

This creates pressure. An owner who loses a player to injury in February has two choices: eat the loss, or trade. The supplemental draft pick exception matters because those picks are shallow. They do not replace a lost star. They replace depth. A trade for a supplemental pick is a trade for lottery odds, not certainty.

The calendar in the rules document shows why this matters. March 17th, 2018 – League of Leagues Draft. Then the three seasons run in parallel: MLB, NFL, NBA. August, 2018 – Supplemental Snake Draft. The draft opens the year; the supplemental closes the window for adding draft capital to trades. After August, trading continues, but picks are off the table.

When the deals happen

The 31-to-43 jump from 2015 to 2016 tracks the calendar, not the standings. March brings roster construction. August brings the supplemental draft and late-season positioning. The 2016 spike likely reflects more owners understanding that trading budget in March shapes August options. A dollar of FAAB traded in April is a dollar that cannot be used in September. A dollar acquired in April can be spent, or traded again, or carried.

The uneven flow—31, then 43—suggests the league has not found equilibrium. The count could stabilize, or it could keep climbing as more owners learn to trade future budget. The 2018-2019 season's permission to trade 2019-2020 FAAB was a rule expansion, not a clarification. It formalized what some owners had already tested.

Reading a ledger line

The August 29, 2016, trade reads as consolidation versus diversification. Keri took three established stars in one sport. Sporer took five assets across two sports, including budget. The $15 NBA FAAB is not annotated as future or current. The rules allow either. The line does not say who initiated, who countered, how long negotiation took. It records the decision: these names, these dollars, this exchange.

A reader of the ledger learns what the league values by what moves. Players move in bunches. Budget moves in precise increments. The supplemental draft exception is rarely used—no line in the sample shows a pick changing hands—because picks are shallow and players depreciate fast. A trade in August for a player who will not score until September is a trade for scarcity, not production.

The ledger's 74 lines are the complete record. They show that in this format, the most useful asset is not the player who produces points but the budget that claims the next player who becomes available.