Let's Do A Q&A With Greg and Tom

[DOUGHBOYS]

Why have the hometowns of drafters signing up for drafts been eliminated this year?

Last year, those City, States were instrumental in stopping some underhandedness by scheming drafters.

Missed this one...

[Greg Ambrosius]

Why have the hometowns of drafters signing up for drafts been eliminated this year?

Last year, those City, States were instrumental in stopping some underhandedness by scheming drafters.

Missed this one...

It's just a time issue more than anything else. I mean nobody else in the industry does this; we always did for transparency but now with about 8,000 teams it's time consuming for me and Tom.

We probably should have done it because of what happened last year, but we didn't. Sorry.

Due to the new state laws, soon everyone will have to show players in each event like we've been doing.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Tom and I are heading to live events a week from now and can't wait to see everyone in Las Vegas and New York. If you have any questions about our events, our contests, our numbers or anything else feel free to post here. We're busier than hell, but we'll do what we can to answer things here.

I just feel like we need a thread to interact with you guys despite filling up this forum with SOLD OUT leagues. We know those get tiring, but they really help us keep track of all of these contests. It's amazing how many of our leagues are selling out and filling up. Thanks to all of you for what should be another record year.

I'm here to converse if you have any questions or comments. Thanks all.

[Yah Mule]

I heard Ben Sheets sit in with the guys in the booth for a few minutes during the Brewers/Royals game. He really came across as a guy with a terrific perspective on the game and a great outlook on life. He really caught some tough luck with all that elbow trouble. Great pitcher when he was healthy.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Thought I would bring this back for the All-Star break....

1. Any updates on the new technology from SportsHub for the next baseball season?
What can we most look forward to?

2. Are you more floored by the Brewers excellence or by the Cubs mediocre first half as we approach the break?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Thought I would bring this back for the All-Star break....

1. Any updates on the new technology from SportsHub for the next baseball season?
What can we most look forward to?

2. Are you more floored by the Brewers excellence or by the Cubs mediocre first half as we approach the break?

It's a good question Dan.

Tom and I spent two full days with the new programmers last month and couldn't have been happier. We've known these guys for years and they are very familiar with our games. We came with a list of suggestions and they were receptive to improving every single one of them. There was never a "No, we can't do that." Obviously we have a lot of core requirements to complete just to get the entire game to our new site and make sure everything works perfectly, but we feel we can do that and enhance our games by November. The in-game software will be very similar to what you've known in the past, but more is coming.

We have fulltime programmers assigned to our products now and changes can be made instantly. I can't think of a better scenario than that right now. We aren't going to have delays going forward in making things happen. These guys have been so receptive to new ideas and they've provided several in return. They are taking great pride in wanting to be part of our team and making our site as efficient as it can be.

The No. 1 task we put in front of them at this meeting was: How do we save time with FAAB? I really believe that if we can save time for everyone on Sundays that we'll have happier customers and the ability to grow the number of contests everyone wants to play. It's too time consuming right now, so we have some good ideas going forward. I'll explain shortly.

As for individual upcoming changes that you'll see in 2018, here's a few:

1. The Online Draft Room is HTML based and looks and works great. It will be fully tested before baseball as CDM will use it this football season and another product will use it for football. You'll have a chance to see it shortly and make suggestions, but it's very clean and especially looks great on a desktop computer.

2. Everything will be on mobile. The new draft room and every aspect of the new site will be programmed so that you can use it on a desktop computer, a laptop, an iPad or a phone. It will scale to each tech device. That means you'll be able to draft from your phone, pick up free agents from your phone or any device; anything you can do on the desktop you'll be able to do on these other devices at the same speed. That's a huge upgrade from where we are now.

3. Improved FAAB software. Click and drag software is a must, while keeping features that we already have like quick Conditional Bids, copying bids, Tracking Players, etc. We've asked the programmers to look into ways to Search for players on all of your teams, Search for free agents available in all of your leagues, etc. If we could create a one page where all of your teams are located and you could search for players you have in each league, look up free agents that are available in each league more quickly that would save time for everyone. RT Sports does a good job of that and the hope is that we can do that as well. Our goal is to save time for owners with multiple teams and this one page concept can do that. Again, no guarantees here but this is what our programmers are looking into now.

4. When it comes to the Draft Champions leagues, we have a lot of requests to speed things up here. These all seem doable, but let's see what happens. First of all, we hope to start these after the World Series this year and every year going forward. The NFFC will also be guaranteed to start earlier in upcoming seasons, likely during March Madness. There's no reason why we can't turn the next season around faster with our dedicated team we have now. Also, I've tasked IT to come up with a faster way to start the next full DCs. There's no reason why we have to start the next day at 1 pm ET. The people who close out leagues are ready to draft, so we'll figure out a quicker way to start drafts once they fill and run KDS. We won't start a league at midnight, but we will begin leagues that start in the morning, afternoon or early evening shortly after they fill. Stay tuned. We will also look at adding 2-Round Ques or maybe even Ques for multiple upcoming rounds, along with individual draft clocks so that owners know their average time per pick. Drafting from a mobile device will also help to speed these DCs along, which is very important to us. We will also be able to turn off the clock overnite if we choose and resume the clock in the morning. We'll figure all of that out soon, but it's in the planning stages and should be ready by November. We should also have the ability to email or text every DC draft pick and the ability to turn both or one of them off if you'd like. That too would be a nice improvement for this format.

5. We have aggressive plans for the NFBC Cutline Championship next year because we believe in the optimal scoring format in baseball. We will have slow draft formats in the Cutline next year and an increase in prizes. Stay tuned.

6. Player Accounts will start with baseball winnings this season, so all of your 2017 winnings will be dropped into your new Player Accounts that are coming. You can cash it all out, or cash some of it out or pay for future games from that total. Just realize that all of your winnings are being reported to the IRS per the law, but you now will have your winnings deposited into your accounts more quickly and YOU decide what you want to do with it. Again, this will start with 2017 NFBC winnings and will always work this way for every sport going forward.

7. Your My Teams page will be improved too. CDM has a nice My Teams page that includes the round, pick and how many spots you are away from your pick. Ours will be very similar with those features.

8. The draft board will be slightly changed and will have updated photos.

9. We will have a page to show our champions with the big checks as we plan on giving every national champion a big check and featuring them on a special page. We always loved it when we could put our Main Event champion on the cover of Fantasy Sports Magazine; well now we'll feature all five NFBC national champions and add a photo to the writeup we do each year. We're also going to create a special NFC landing page where all sports will be featured for all to see. Hopefully that will explain to users that we're more than just a baseball contest or more than just a football contest. It's time to show some video of our live events there as well, along with more photos. We just didn't have the resources in the past.

10. You'll also get to meet Darik Buchar soon as he has joined Tom and me on the NFC staff. Darik is a former NFBC and NFFC player who is really helping us in football now and soon you'll see him at the New York and Las Vegas NFFC drafts and get to know him. He's one of us; a Duluth native (not a Packers fan, though), a die-hard fantasy player, and big-time sports guy. He's the perfect fit for us as we finally expand beyond Greg & Tom.

11. Our ADPs will be expanded to allow folks to pick any date they want to see the most current ADPs. We think we'll have a setup where you can pick March 3rd and see the ADPs between March 3rd and March 11th, if you have a draft that night. We want to give you the tools to access and splice the best ADPs in the industry.

12. Owned % and Active % will be improved on the team pages relating to each specific contest. Right now ALL drafts are included in one Owned % and Active % and it's not as informative. We'll improve that.

13. More unique editorial. We'll have an editorial team providing stories for the NFBC/NFFC/NFBKC, CDM and other SportsHub products very soon. More on this to come, but you should see more player notes on your team pages along with more Rotowire player notes with this new plan.

One thing I'm not sure we'll have right away is online auction software. There are a couple of new products debuting in the next 12 months and that one is going to take some time. We'll know more on this later, but I can't promise this for 2018 NFBC, but we all know that it's something we'd like to have as part of our products one day. Even if we don't build this ourselve, we will have a great alternative and will expand these offerings next year.

I'm sure I'm missing a few things as I look over my notes from that meeting, but we feel confident that these items will be part of 2018 NFBC. I know it's promising a lot, but the guys are working ahead and feel all can be added. It's one of the reasons we didn't jump into this right after the sale last October. We needed time to debut this product the way it was supposed to be rolled out.

You'll see one big addition before baseball that we'll roll over after football. Should be a nice add on to what the NFBC offers.

Hope this helps. Again, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we now have the dedicated personnel to grow from a tech standpoint, from a marketing standpoint, from an editorial standpoint, and on a games standpoint with the addition of Darik. I think we're going to be set up for a historic 15th NFBC season and beyond. Oh, and we have an online apparel store, so now you can even look good when you draft well. Be ready for a great season ahead and we'll update more as we dive into this. Tom and I will be working hands on with the programmers, so if you have any new suggestions send them our way.

As for No. 2, Tom and I are both FLOORED by the Brewers' success. We never saw this coming. Kudos to GM David Stearns and manager Craig Counsell for what they've done. Stearns has done a Theo-like job of turning this franchise around and Counsell has those kids playing hard every night. Their pitching staff is still not elite, but they've straightened out Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson and I love watching Josh Hader pitch. Knebel has been lights out, too. This is finally a team that could compete down the road for a few years to come and with Stearns running the show I like their chances now better than anytime since 1982.

Thanks all and good luck the rest of this season.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Ah gee, Greg, I was hoping for a more thorough answer
Good to hear that the elves are fast at work.

One idea that I'm shamelessly stealing from another site.....
Beside each name on our roster would be a red or green light.
As lineups are taken in by Rotowire each day, the green light goes on when our player is in the starting lineup.
The red light on, if not in the starting lineup.
I like the feature.
It lets me know at a glance how many of my players are getting the starting nod each day.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Ah gee, Greg, I was hoping for a more thorough answer
Good to hear that the elves are fast at work.

One idea that I'm shamelessly stealing from another site.....
Beside each name on our roster is a red and green light.
As lineups are taken in by Rotowire each day, the green light goes on when our player is in the starting lineup.
The red light on, if not in the starting lineup.
I like the feature.
It lets me know at a glance how many of my players are getting the starting nod each day.

That's an interesting addition. We will be working with Rotowire in new ways going forward, so I'll see if this is something we can add. Remind me of this one late next off-season before the season starts. Thanks.

And I did want to be thorough with all of the things we've asked IT to help us with. I'm sure some people think that nothing is going on before baseball drafts, but that's just not the case. In fact we had another company mock draft this morning to test the new software and improvements are added after each one of these. But they're also looking at our current setup and looking for tweaks with everything we have. There's a lot of work to be done here but the best move we made was to hire STATS for one full year of baseball, football and basketball before rolling everything over to a new, fully tested site. I'm excited for the next baseball season, but we have an exciting baseball season in front of us to finish first. Let's have a great second half of this season, have a Post-Season contest and then begin the drafting season shortly after the World Series. Sounds like a plan to me!!

[Deadheadz]

4. When it comes to the Draft Champions leagues, we have a lot of requests to speed things up here. These all seem doable, but let's see what happens. First of all, we hope to start these after the World Series this year and every year going forward. The NFFC will also be guaranteed to start earlier in upcoming seasons, likely during March Madness. There's no reason why we can't turn the next season around faster with our dedicated team we have now. Also, I've tasked IT to come up with a faster way to start the next full DCs. There's no reason why we have to start the next day at 1 pm ET. The people who close out leagues are ready to draft, so we'll figure out a quicker way to start drafts once they fill and run KDS.

Greg, I might be alone on this but I'll throw it out regardless.

KDS is something I think we'd like to be more involved in, at least as a viewer.
Whether it's the NHL or NBA draft lottery, a lot of sports fans are invested in the excitement surrounding who will get to pick where.

Is there a way to "schedule" the KDS and show it live? I guess that would be a hassle if you're still throwing names into a hat but there must be some Random Number Generator out there which has a cool/entertaining interface where you could program it to run KDS for the league and have a video or re-enactment of it available for the league participants.

Just a suggestion...

[Greg Ambrosius]

We don't throw names into a hat, nor have we done that since the first or second year. We form the leagues, lock the KDS preferences at a selected time and randomly pick a draft order shortly after that through a computer program. Then we have the computer run the KDS and the draft order is posted. Not sure if we can make it more exciting than that outside of showing the random draft selections at some point and have folks speculate whether they will get their desired preferences or not. We'll see what we can do, but first let's get everything to work correctly.

[Gates]

Hi Greg,
A little while back Hockey seemed to be the next sport addition but haven't heard since. Any chance you add Hockey in a near future?

Thanks
Gaëtan

[Greg Ambrosius]

Hi Greg,
A little while back Hockey seemed to be the next sport addition but haven't heard since. Any chance you add Hockey in a near future?

Thanks
Gaëtan

It won't be this year, but our new man Darik Buchar (from Duluth and a die-hard hockey fan) has been tasked with creating a new season-long hockey game. We will gladly take input from hockey enthusiasts during this process. It's all preliminary talk right now, but yes the company does want to get into more sports and in different formats. Stay tuned.

[King of Queens]

Ah gee, Greg, I was hoping for a more thorough answer
Good to hear that the elves are fast at work.

One idea that I'm shamelessly stealing from another site.....
Beside each name on our roster would be a red or green light.
As lineups are taken in by Rotowire each day, the green light goes on when our player is in the starting lineup.
The red light on, if not in the starting lineup.
I like the feature.
It lets me know at a glance how many of my players are getting the starting nod each day.

Dan, this is currently available (sort of). If you go to Live Scoring, anyone player with a "0-0" in their stats is in the lineup that day. If there's nothing there, they are out of the lineup. You'll see this hours in advance of the games actually being played.

Your suggestion is a good one for the new interface.

[Darik B]

Yes, a season-long hockey contest is in the works for the 2018-19 NHL season. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to get it done for the upcoming season. That being said, it is coming. Initial thoughts are to have an Online Championship (similar to our Rotowire contests for baseball and football), satellite leagues, and probably a higher entry contest as well.

In the coming months, I'll be asking for input & thoughts.

Thanks for asking, Gaetan, and we'll get this this done!

Darik

Hi Greg,
A little while back Hockey seemed to be the next sport addition but haven't heard since. Any chance you add Hockey in a near future?

Thanks
Gaëtan

It won't be this year, but our new man Darik Buchar (from just north of Duluth--Hibbing--and a die-hard hockey fan) has been tasked with creating a new season-long hockey game. We will gladly take input from hockey enthusiasts during this process. It's all preliminary talk right now, but yes the company does want to get into more sports and in different formats. Stay tuned.

[Edwards Kings]

Hockey? Isn't that one what they call what happens when a fight breaks out in Canada?

[Gates]

Yes, a season-long hockey contest is in the works for the 2018-19 NHL season. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to get it done for the upcoming season. That being said, it is coming. Initial thoughts are to have an Online Championship (similar to our Rotowire contests for baseball and football), satellite leagues, and probably a higher entry contest as well.

In the coming months, I'll be asking for input & thoughts.

Thanks for asking, Gaetan, and we'll get this this done!

Darik


It won't be this year, but our new man Darik Buchar (from just north of Duluth--Hibbing--and a die-hard hockey fan) has been tasked with creating a new season-long hockey game. We will gladly take input from hockey enthusiasts during this process. It's all preliminary talk right now, but yes the company does want to get into more sports and in different formats. Stay tuned.

[/quote][/quote]

Thanks Greg, Darik, FANTASTIC news...looking forward to it...Welcome aboard Darik!!!

Gaëtan

[Gates]

Hockey? Isn't that one what they call what happens when a fight breaks out in Canada?

Damn Wayne, you really know your hockey!!!

[marknym]

Looking forward to seeing the changes to the site in the future, thanks for keeping us updated Greg.

While we're making suggestions, is there any way that the overall standings for Draft Champions loading times can be sped up? I understand it probably has to do with the sheer quantity of teams involved... but then again I hear those computers are getting faster and faster every day. Reasonable ask?

[DOUGHBOYS]

Looking forward to seeing the changes to the site in the future, thanks for keeping us updated Greg.

While we're making suggestions, is there any way that the overall standings for Draft Champions loading times can be sped up? I understand it probably has to do with the sheer quantity of teams involved... but then again I hear those computers are getting faster and faster every day. Reasonable ask?

Piggybacking this request,....
When looking at a DC team and scrolling to Overall, can the Overall for the Draft Champions come up first?

It would be handy that if looking at a Main Event team that the Overall for that Event comes up first.
If looking at a Draft Champions team, the same thing. Etc, etc

[marknym]

Looking forward to seeing the changes to the site in the future, thanks for keeping us updated Greg.

While we're making suggestions, is there any way that the overall standings for Draft Champions loading times can be sped up? I understand it probably has to do with the sheer quantity of teams involved... but then again I hear those computers are getting faster and faster every day. Reasonable ask?

Piggybacking this request,....
When looking at a DC team and scrolling to Overall, can the Overall for the Draft Champions come up first?

It would be handy that if looking at a Main Event team that the Overall for that Event comes up first.
If looking at a Draft Champions team, the same thing. Etc, etc

yes, I second my piggyback. good add.

[Ichiban]

Thanks Greg,
The changes sound very exciting, and that they will add to the game a lot. One reason NFBC is so much better than all the other season-long fantasy games is that you literally make things better every single year, and really listen to our suggestions. I am particularly happy to hear about the mobile platform improvements. Drafting on my computer is fine, but being able to do FAAB easily on my iPhone, use it to check lineups and live standings would be fantastic. So I am really looking forward to this. From the way you handled that debacle in OL last season to the way you have handled this changeover, to all the other issues that have arose since I started playing here, I've never been more comfortable with the people running the game I was playing, and have never been so happy to give them my money.

P.S. The previous testimony was a real opinion from a real person who was not paid to endorse the product.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Thanks Greg,
The changes sound very exciting, and that they will add to the game a lot. One reason NFBC is so much better than all the other season-long fantasy games is that you literally make things better every single year, and really listen to our suggestions. I am particularly happy to hear about the mobile platform improvements. Drafting on my computer is fine, but being able to do FAAB easily on my iPhone, use it to check lineups and live standings would be fantastic. So I am really looking forward to this. From the way you handled that debacle in OL last season to the way you have handled this changeover, to all the other issues that have arose since I started playing here, I've never been more comfortable with the people running the game I was playing, and have never been so happy to give them my money.

P.S. The previous testimony was a real opinion from a real person who was not paid to endorse the product.

We appreciate every kind word. Now our goal is to make everything easier for you starting in 2018 so that you give us even more money for more teams!!

Seriously, I'm not a computer programmer, but I've tasked our new IT team to find ways to save time on everything we do, from starting slow drafts quicker, to making FAAB quicker by searching for available free agents in all of your leagues, to allowing FAAB on your phones. We may not get it all done in Year 1, but everyone knows what has to be done and we now have the programming resources to get this done. Plus we are committed to this industry long-term as you can see by NFBC and CDM paying the licensing fees to be in Indiana, Virginia, New York, Tennessee, Missouri and other states that some contests are exiting. We're paying these fees now because we plan on being in all of those states for the duration of our contests. It's a HUGE financial commitment from SportsHub and I know that our customers appreciate that.

I'm very excited about the future. I think we now have the tools and personnel and commitment in place to make all of our games the best they've ever been. Good luck this season and I look forward to next season.

[Deadheadz]

Greg

I'm guessing SportsHub will be taking a shot at running some sort of DFS either with or without NFBC. I honestly haven't been following along so maybe it's already been discussed. My bad if I missed it.

Would that be why we haven't seen a NFBC/FanDuel promotion this year as we had in the past couple of seasons?

If there was a DFS offering would you ever consider private tournaments where entrants must be an owner of an NFBC/NFFC/NFBKC team to qualify for admittance? To me it's only interesting if I'm competing against names I recognize so I have avoided the shark infested waters of DK/FD.

If the prizes got good, maybe outsiders would spend the money to get a season long team just to gain entry to your private DFS tourneys.

Just spitballing...

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg

I'm guessing SportsHub will be taking a shot at running some sort of DFS either with or without NFBC. I honestly haven't been following along so maybe it's already been discussed. My bad if I missed it.

Would that be why we haven't seen a NFBC/FanDuel promotion this year as we had in the past couple of seasons?

If there was a DFS offering would you ever consider private tournaments where entrants must be an owner of an NFBC/NFFC/NFBKC team to qualify for admittance? To me it's only interesting if I'm competing against names I recognize so I have avoided the shark infested waters of DK/FD.

If the prizes got good, maybe outsiders would spend the money to get a season long team just to gain entry to your private DFS tourneys.

Just spitballing...

No official word on those plans, but stay tuned.

The reason we haven't worked with FanDuel the last two years is because they have had a huge legal battle on their hands and have cut back on some of these industry-wide promotions. We certainly understand as they are fighting the states on legality throughout the country. It wasn't our choice to end this promotion, but we certainly understand what is going on with them and Draft Kings.

That doesn't mean we won't try to duplicate the contest we had in the past. We hope to return that in 2018.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I do want to say thanks to the many NFBC owners who have taken the time to send an email or text with suggestions on what they'd like to see in the new software. Most of the suggestions involve FAAB and some are extensive suggestions. Everyone is doing that because they just want the NFBC and NFFC to BE BETTER. Be more efficient for each owner. Be serviceable on every platform, especially smart phones. Be faster. We certainly agree and understand.

I can tell you that we're well on our way to improving FAAB. The new IT guys understand all of these needs and are actually enjoying the challenge of making this better. Whenever I give them a situation, they find a solution.

For instance, this week presented two challenges for NFBC owners with multiple teams. One, you had Carlos Correa go on the DL, among others. You want a quick solution to find out exactly which teams you have him on so that you can move him out of your starting lineup on Friday and find a possible shortstop replacement this week in FAAB. You also have Yoan Moncada being called up from the minors and want to know which leagues you're in that he's available.

Right now, you need to log into each team, click on Set Lineup to find Correa. Then you have to go to Free Agents to find Moncada. You make notes if you have either on each team, calling up each team separately.

Now if we could create one page with all of your teams on it and have you Search for Correa and it shows you every team you have him on that would be GREAT. How about a Search for Moncada that shows you which of your leagues he's a free agent in? That would be GREAT. Two clicks with two very important time-saving results. That "Player Search" page could be the key to saving you so much time every week in running your teams, especially when searching for free agents.

Now you still would have to go into those teams to make the necessary moves, but getting to that point needs to be the time saver. And we're trying to do that.

Keep the suggestions coming. I think we're making progress in this regard for 2018 NFBC. Thanks all.