CANCELLED: 2016 NFBC Post-Season Contest

[Deadheadz]

I'll commit to at least 3 more teams. Anyone else with me?

If we could use our winnings to buy more entries I would take one more.
But we cannot.

.

[marknym]

Oh man, that is terrible. Wish I knew you were considering this, I would not have spent so much time setting
my 3 teams. Hours lost. Last year you were recruiting heavily on here and warned about a minimum number needed. I figured this year was guaranteed. Wow that sucks.

I think anyone who got my email again today knows that we recruited heavily for this contest. I sent four separate emails personally to everyone who played last year. Sometimes your product isn't accepted. It's obvious there was little momentum this year for the contest and we waited as long as we could. Trust me, it wasn't our plan but around only 250 teams by less than 200 unique owners just doesn't cut it. Wish it did, but it didn't work out. Sorry.

Again, it was made clear last year that you had to hit a number or it was going to be cancelled. First mention I even saw of this was earlier this evening, something about you having to "make a call" on the contest. Even that was rather vague. Obviously it's your contest, your call. Just very disappointing to spend time on something not realizing it might go completely for naught. Also not sure how 280 was ok for last year but 250 with 90 mins to go this year wasn't enough.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'll commit to at least 3 more teams. Anyone else with me?

If we could use our winnings to buy more entries I would take one more.
But we cannot.

.

Correct. That is one part of what makes this contest tough to sell out. Several folks would love to use their winnings to buy post-season teams, but we currently don't allow that. Bummer for all.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Guess not....

Sorry, but Registration is closed. We didn't want anyone else to spend time on their lineups when the contest was cancelled.

[croakerkane]

i.e. I understang the decision.... Shame thogh. It was fun as hell last year....

[Greg Ambrosius]

Again, it was made clear last year that you had to hit a number or it was going to be cancelled. First mention I even saw of this was earlier this evening, something about you having to "make a call" on the contest. Even that was rather vague. Obviously it's your contest, your call. Just very disappointing to spend time on something not realizing it might go completely for naught. Also not sure how 280 was ok for last year but 250 with 90 mins to go this year wasn't enough.

Well, it wasn't any fun to lose $6,000+ on last year's post-season contest, but we went forward with it because we felt we were building a good product for future years. A lot of people liked the format, but obviously not enough to top last year's numbers. We had about a handful of signups over the last hour and were stuck at 250 for a long time. It's easy to do the math on 70 teams short of break even times $150 even before any credit card fees or anything else. We could have taken one for the team, but the message has been sent to us: This isn't a product we must have in the NFBC.

So we hear ya on this. I wish we could have gotten to 300 or so teams and we would have taken a loss again. But we weren't close and made a financial decision that was a tough one. It sucks. We love this contest, but obviously not enough folks do and so we move on. Sorry.

[Greg Ambrosius]

i.e. I understang the decision.... Shame thogh. It was fun as hell last year....

I agree and I think it made the MLB post-season more fun. Maybe next year we just go much, much lower with the prizes and sell out to the first 250 teams.

[skmetz51]

So are you saying that if we hit a certain number of teams by Wednesday to make it feasible for NFBC, we can still make this happen?

[skmetz51]

To me it seems sort of obvious that if everyone knew that a specific number of teams had to sign up, that you would have gotten enough teams to make it work. That didn't happen. The messages said "We are hoping to have 400 teams" but never said if we don't get 400 teams, there would be no contest. I think that a lot of people agree with me that there IS a lot of interest in a post-season contest, and if we start it on Wednesday, enough people could sign up and make this work for everyone. Thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

So are you saying that if we hit a certain number of teams by Wednesday to make it feasible for NFBC, we can still make this happen?

No, the contest includes tonight's game and of course that will be finished by then.

[marknym]

Again, it was made clear last year that you had to hit a number or it was going to be cancelled. First mention I even saw of this was earlier this evening, something about you having to "make a call" on the contest. Even that was rather vague. Obviously it's your contest, your call. Just very disappointing to spend time on something not realizing it might go completely for naught. Also not sure how 280 was ok for last year but 250 with 90 mins to go this year wasn't enough.

Well, it wasn't any fun to lose $6,000+ on last year's post-season contest, but we went forward with it because we felt we were building a good product for future years. A lot of people liked the format, but obviously not enough to top last year's numbers. We had about a handful of signups over the last hour and were stuck at 250 for a long time. It's easy to do the math on 70 teams short of break even times $150 even before any credit card fees or anything else. We could have taken one for the team, but the message has been sent to us: This isn't a product we must have in the NFBC.

So we hear ya on this. I wish we could have gotten to 300 or so teams and we would have taken a loss again. But we weren't close and made a financial decision that was a tough one. It sucks. We love this contest, but obviously not enough folks do and so we move on. Sorry.

Well thanks for the apology at any rate. Just to add, as far as the message being sent that this isn't a contest worth having, well it's not us who sent that message obviously, we were the ones who thought it was worth investing time and money in.
There is a market for this, seems it's a question of size.

[marknym]

one more suggestion... lop off the wild card games, lower the prizes, and see who still wants to play, see if the math works for you guys? maybe this can be salvaged and everyone can still be happy and those who wish can still have an extended NFBC run into October?

[skmetz51]

Agree.

[marknym]

Adding to my extreme disappointment, I had both Bautista and Trumbo on multiple teams, who both went deep tonight.

[chimpat]

Adding to my extreme disappointment, I had both Bautista and Trumbo on multiple teams, who both went deep tonight.

I had both as well, I'm sure several people did but still disappointing.

Hoping we can salvage this competition after the wildcard games.

[marknym]

Adding to my extreme disappointment, I had both Bautista and Trumbo on multiple teams, who both went deep tonight.

I had both as well, I'm sure several people did but still disappointing.

Hoping we can salvage this competition after the wildcard games.

27.3% had Bautista, 29% had Trumbo -- so we were up on quite a few people.

[steveymer]

Adding to my extreme disappointment, I had both Bautista and Trumbo on multiple teams, who both went deep tonight.

I had both as well, I'm sure several people did but still disappointing.

Hoping we can salvage this competition after the wildcard games.

27.3% had Bautista, 29% had Trumbo -- so we were up on quite a few people.

I also had both, and there were a few other players I felt good about that had surprisingly low ownership. I'm regretting this cancellation even more!

[Greg Ambrosius]

one more suggestion... lop off the wild card games, lower the prizes, and see who still wants to play, see if the math works for you guys? maybe this can be salvaged and everyone can still be happy and those who wish can still have an extended NFBC run into October?

I think this is a good suggestion for future years. Maybe we wait two days until the Wild Card games are decided and then set lineups starting with the weekend games. That would give owners a little more time to breathe and decide if they want to play in the post-season or not. Secondly, we need to lower the prizes and shoot for around 300 teams, not 400. And thirdly, it would help to have Player Accounts so that you could use your prize money to pay for these post-season teams.

These are all suggestions for future events. Right now we've deleted the Post-Season entries to eliminate the contest for this season and to settle up with the 2-3 owners who paid in advance. We apologize again for not filling this contest and going forward, but the demand just wasn't close. So now we plan ahead for 2017 and the start of the Draft Champions season. We're working on the site now and will launch in November. Thanks all and sorry about the post-season contest.

[Joe Sambito]

On to 2017...

Greg is the NFBC planning on being in Vegas for two weekends? What are we looking at 3/23-3/26 & 3/30-4/2?

[Greg Ambrosius]

On to 2017...

Greg is the NFBC planning on being in Vegas for two weekends? What are we looking at 3/23-3/26 & 3/30-4/2?

Yes. We are talking with the Bellagio, but it's early for them to release space for those busy weekends. We should know more soon, but yes we are looking at Sweet Sixteen weekend (wish we could do March Madness Opening Weekend) on March 24-26 and Final Four weekend of March 30-April 2nd. The Second Weekend Thursday to Sunday schedule will look very similar to this season.

The New York Hilton has no space for the First Weekend, so Tom is calling around. We'll have an update there shortly.

[76erfan]

at least easter is later this year and there is no conflict