How Dynasty Trades Actually Happen
Only 6.74% of 183,795 completed dynasty trades were one player for one player. The median real deal moved four assets.
This is the audited production snapshot from 2026-08-27. The exact receipt is linked below.
The full asset-count distribution
| Assets moved | Completed trades | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 33,770 | 18.37% |
| 3 | 47,221 | 25.69% |
| 4 | 40,023 | 21.78% |
| 5 | 24,732 | 13.46% |
| 6 | 16,181 | 8.80% |
| 7 | 8,697 | 4.73% |
| 8 | 5,430 | 2.95% |
| 9+ | 7,741 | 4.21% |
A player and a rookie pick each count as one asset. The median is four. Exactly two assets moved in 18.37% of trades, but only 6.74% were one player for one player with no pick attached.
The result survives the obvious splits
- 1QB: 6.58% (1,904 of 28,943)
- Superflex: 6.77% (10,490 of 154,852)
- 2022 through 2026: 5.36% to 7.11% each season
How it was measured
I streamed every stored graded dynasty result in Read Option, deduplicated completed deals by their trade key, then counted the players and rookie picks that moved. The database connection was forced read-only. The public receipt contains aggregates only.
A clean player-for-player swap requires exactly two teams, one player on each side, and no picks or FAAB. A player or rookie pick counts as one asset. Medians describe deal size because the tail contains very large packages.
What this does not prove. It does not say a one-for-one is bad, or that a calculator is useless. It says the clean X-for-Y question is a small slice of the market. Most real negotiations need the whole package priced.
The corpus comes from public Sleeper leagues people brought into Read Option. It is not a random sample of every dynasty league. More active managers may be overrepresented, so treat the exact percentage as a description of this measured corpus.
Using it
Free to cite, link back if you do. For one specific deal, the trade grader prices the exact assets and checks the trade shape against real clearing behavior. This study explains how to use that price evidence. Is this trade fair? covers the mechanics.