How I won fantasy football in my first ever season - without using AI

The Premier League season might be long-forgotten already - but we're definitely still in the window where bragging about how well you did in fantasy football is just about acceptable.

Plenty of people will have been frantically checking the app on Sunday to see if they'd beaten friends, family or colleagues and topped their mini leagues.

Someone who was refreshing a little more than most is 23-year-old Everton fan Erik Ibsen.

But the Danish medical student managed to hold on to his lead to be crowned the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) champion - in his first season playing the game.

Ibsen only started playing because his sister was doing a work league and wanted some help, which turned into him picking his own team "for sibling rivalry".

But he tells BBC Newsbeat going on to then beat millions of others to the title is "completely insane".

"If you had told me at the start of the season I'd even be close I would have thought it's a joke," he says.

"I don't know how to put it into words. I don't think I understood what position I was in until I actually became number one.

"I remember when I was like number 18, just that alone was completely insane, but then to win it and bring it home."

FPL is the UK's most popular fantasy league, and claims to have more than 11 million players taking part.

Users face a £100m budget as they select squads of 15 footballers, who each earn points based on their weekly on-pitch performance.

Ibsen was 21 points ahead going into the final day of the season but ended up winning by 38 points thanks to a 14-point haul from his captain, and Manchester United's skipper, Bruno Fernandes.

"Of course there's been some luck involved but I have also put time into it and it's taken a lot of my energy," he says.

"It makes me feel like a football expert, even though I'm not really.

"I think my childhood dream was always to be a football manager.

"But I don't really have any education [in] football, all my analysis and statistical understanding is based off of my own education."

FPL has become so competitive that it's led to a whole industry of content creators offering weekly tips for anyone looking to sift through stats as the season goes on.

More players have been turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools - as Newsbeat found out in January - though not everyone agrees they have a place in the game.

It's fair to say FPL took over Ibsen's life even before he tells Newsbeat "you should see my Excel sheet".

"I think I was sitting with it four or five hours a day [in] the last week," he says.

"I have an exam in three weeks and I haven't even started studying for it."