How We Value TE Premium

TE premium is one of the most popular dynasty variations, and most tools handle it with a hand-tuned toggle that raises tight end values by a fixed amount. We observe trades from leagues whose scoring settings we know, so we measure what managers in TE premium leagues pay for tight ends compared to managers in standard leagues.

What we measured

We isolated clean 1-for-1 trades where a tight end was exchanged for a non-TE, split by league type, and compared the prices. Tight ends consistently clear meaningfully higher in TE premium leagues than in standard leagues, and the premium grows again in “big TEP” leagues (more than a full extra point per TE reception). We publish the effect as multipliers rather than quoting fixed numbers here, because we recalibrate them as trade data accumulates and the market's premium can drift over time.

The premium grows slowly with the size of the bonus. Multiplying the scoring bonus several times over adds only a modest price increase. Managers pay for TE premium being on more than for its exact size, so TEP works in tiers rather than on a continuous scale.

We also checked whether elite tight ends deserve a bigger premium than mid-tier ones. The effect is roughly flat across value tiers, so every TE gets the same multiplier.

Our base values are already a blend

TE premium leagues generate a meaningful share of all tight end trades, especially in Superflex. Our published TE values already carry part of the TEP premium, in proportion to how much of the market TEP leagues represent. We measure that share continuously from the trade pool itself.

Setting your league's format adjusts TE values away from that blend in either direction. Standard-scoring leagues see TE values adjusted slightly down from the published blend, TEP leagues see them adjusted up, and big-TEP leagues up further. The adjustments are derived from the measured market ratios and the measured market shares, so the same math that says a TEP league should pay more says a standard league should pay less.

Validation

Before shipping, we validated the multipliers against package trades, deals the measurement never saw, since it was fit only on 1-for-1s. The TEP-versus-standard price spread replicated in those trades.

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