The British Universities & Colleges Sport Regatta is the biggest student rowing event in the UK calendar - and this year, for the first time, you can play it on Fantasy Rowing. Every BUCS-affiliated university is on the start line, the big boats go from time trial through to A finals across the weekend, and we've built a brand new University SuperLeague on top of it all so your club isn't just racing for medals on the water - they're racing for the leaderboard back in the boathouse too.
If you've played a multi-lane regatta on Fantasy Rowing before, BUCS works a teeny bit differently.
How scoring works - TT first, A Final wins it
BUCS uses a Multi-Lane + Time Trial format. Each event runs a time trial in the morning, the field whittled down into finals using reps, and the medals (and most of the points) are decided in the A final.
Both stages score, but they score very differently.
The Time Trial - bonus for the top three only.
| TT Position | Bonus |
|---|---|
| 1st | +3 |
| 2nd | +2 |
| 3rd | +1 |
Everyone else in the TT scores 0 for that race. The TT bonus is small but it's free upside on top of whatever your crew scores in the final.
The A Final - where the real points live.
| A Final Position | Points |
|---|---|
| 1st | 25 |
| 2nd | 15 |
| 3rd | 10 |
| 4th | 6 |
| 5th | 3 |
| 6th | 1 |
A crew that wins the TT and wins the A final banks 28 points, the maximum possible from a single event.
A worked example
Two crews, two different stories:
- Crew A wins the TT (+3), then wins the A final (+25). Total: 28 points.
- Crew B finishes 4th in the TT (0), then steals the A final from lane 6 (+25). Total: 25 points.
- Crew C wins the TT (+3), but bombs the start of the final and finishes 5th (+3). Total: 6 points.
- Crew D is 3rd in the TT (+1), but drops into the B final and wins it. Total: 1 point.
Two takeaways. First, the TT matters but it doesn't define the day — three points is the difference between a good final and a brilliant one, not the difference between winning and losing the event.
Second, qualifying for the A final is the single most important thing your pick can do. A B-final winner scores nothing. Pick crews you trust to make the cut.
The University SuperLeague - your club, your top five
Here's the bit that makes BUCS different from any regatta we've run before.
Alongside the individual leaderboard, every BUCS university has its own squad in the app — and those squads are competing in a SuperLeague ranking that runs in parallel with the personal game. The team scoring is simple:
Each squad is ranked by the summed points of its top 5 members across the regatta.
That's it. Your scores aren't pooled — only the top 5 from each university count toward the squad total, and the rest are riding shotgun. If you're a strong picker you can drag your university up the table single-handedly. If your university has fifteen strong pickers, you've got serious depth and you'll be one of the favourites.
A few things to know:
- Squads are scoped to the BUCS field. Only universities racing at BUCS have squads in this SuperLeague. There are no friends-and-family teams, no joke squads, no rival sports clubs. Every team on the leaderboard is racing crews on the water.
- You pick which squad to represent. Most players will represent their own university - but the picker is open. If you're at Imperial and want to back Oxford Brookes, that's your call. You can change your selection right up until predictions close, and then it locks for the regatta.
- Top 5 means top 5, not "anyone who showed up". A squad of twenty average pickers won't beat a squad of five ringers. This is a depth-of-quality competition, not a numbers game.
- Tiebreakers go to the 6th member. If two universities finish on identical top-5 totals, the higher-scoring 6th picker breaks the tie. So your contribution still matters even if you're not in your squad's top 5.
- The leaderboard updates live. As race results come in over the weekend, the SuperLeague standings re-rank in real time — same polling cadence as the individual leaderboard. A late upset in a Sunday A final can swing a university from 3rd to 1st in seconds.
Why this changes how you play
The SuperLeague flips the question from "how am I doing?" to "how are we doing?". Every pick you make is now also a pick on behalf of your university. Pick well in your strongest events and you might carry your club into the top 5. Skip the women's pair because you don't know the field — and you've left points on the table that your top-5 teammates can't make up.
What to do before predictions close
- Check the regatta page for the full event list and TT times — a lot of the events run to a tight schedule and the TT is over before you've had your morning coffee.
- Make your picks for every event you have an opinion on — the SuperLeague rewards depth, so even a mid-confidence pick beats no pick at all.
- Pick your squad in the SuperLeague step at the end of the predictions flow — your university by default, but the choice is yours, and it locks at the close of predictions.
- Tell your boathouse. Every extra picker is a deeper bench in the SuperLeague. A clubmate who joins on Friday and goes well across the weekend can absolutely land in the top 5.
Strap in. The TT is the warm-up — the A finals decide it — and somewhere across the weekend, one university is going to finish a long way clear of everyone else. The only question is which one, and how much of it your picks own.
