Fantasy sports, rebuilt for Brazil's biggest esports league.

A proven format that hadn't met mobile esports

Free Fire is one of Brazil's biggest games, with a stadium-filling competitive scene in the LBFF (Liga Brasileira de Free Fire). Fantasy sports is a proven engagement format, but it hadn't landed cleanly here: the mechanics don't map to mobile esports rhythms, and the audience isn't the one most fantasy products are built for.

In 2021 Garena, Free Fire's publisher, commissioned Webcore Interactive to build a fantasy platform for LBFF fans. The obvious reference was Cartola FC, Globo's fantasy football juggernaut. The brief: translate that energy, the drafting, the weekly check-in, the competition inside your group chat, onto Free Fire's calendar and its real matches. I joined Webcore's team as the freelance product designer.

Built from the game outward, not the genre inward

Traditional fantasy is individual: one player, one position, stats aggregated over a long season. The LBFF is squad-based, its matches are short, and its "player" is a pro competing inside a five-person team with a dedicated coach.

So the platform was designed around the shape of a real LBFF round rather than a football template. Users draft a squad of five pros plus a coach against a fixed virtual budget, inside a transfer market that opens and closes on a timer before match day. Points come from real performance: placements, eliminations, round-by-round consistency.

Dynamic prices turn drafting into an economy, rising and falling with each pro's championship form. Buy a player before the market reprices him, or pay a premium for the reigning star. Custom and private leagues put the competition inside your group chat, while the public ranking and most-picked players build a live meta on top. Results surfaced on the LBFF's own channels and broadcasts, so playing became part of watching rather than a second app to check.

The system that made it a game

FF Squad wasn't a promotional landing page. Behind the surface sat a system model: how pro-player data arrives from the LBFF, how prices update, how points are calculated per match day, how leaderboards refresh, how custom leagues get created and scored, all tied to a tournament calendar that couldn't be paused.

We designed that model alongside the product surface, because at this scope they're one problem. The shape of the data decides what's possible on the screen.

A web platform on the broadcast's calendar

FF Squad shipped at ffsquad.com.br in August 2021, for the LBFF 6 Série A season. Every round ran on the tournament clock: draft before the market closed, watch the LBFF live, then track points, wallet and ranking as the matches played out, chasing position, bragging rights inside your league and the season's prizes.

The Cartola FC of Free Fire

The Brazilian tech press framed FF Squad in one line: the Cartola FC of Free Fire. With Cartola among the most recognizable fantasy platforms in the country, the shorthand landed instantly with the LBFF's audience.

The platform ran through the LBFF 6 Série A season, with results featured on the league's own social channels and live broadcasts throughout the tournament.

Techtudo · "Free Fire anuncia FF Squad, jogo da LBFF no estilo de Cartola FC"
Tecnoblog · "Liga Brasileira de Free Fire ganha FF Squad, jogo parecido com Cartola FC"
Terra · "Free Fire anuncia jogo fantasy da LBFF"
GamingOnPhone · "Free Fire: Garena announces a fantasy game for LBFF named FF Squad"

Client · Garena (Free Fire) · for the Liga Brasileira de Free Fire (LBFF)
Agency · Webcore Interactive · São Paulo
Freelance product design · Davi Serrano