2022 NFBC Auction Championship Grand Prize Will Be $20,000

[Greg Ambrosius]

When we make a mistake, we have to admit it and correct it.

And that's what we're doing today with the 2022 NFBC Auction Championship. We apologize for doing this, but the facts of today tell a different story than what we anticipated when we launched this contest in November.

As a result, we regrettably have to change the overall prize structure for the 2022 NFBC Auction Championship and move the grand prize from $30,000 to $20,000. We will now have $34,300 in overall prizes and will pay the Top 6 teams in the overall standings, rather than the Top 10.

The only good news is that prizes are now based on eight leagues instead of 12, so your odds of winning the $20,000 grand prize have gone from 1 in 180 to 1 in 120. The league prizes are not affected, but obviously the top prize now wins $10,000 less than first advertised.

Legally, to change an overall grand prize we must offer refunds to everyone who signed up under the old prize structure. I will email everyone who is currently signed up for the Auction Championship right now and give them this offer. We will refund in full anyone who wants it. However, if you are okay with the current prize structure, you don't have to do anything and we'll see you for the live or online auctions. Thanks.

We never like to change the prize structure for any contest after we announce the grand prizes and we will not be changing any other NFBC national contests this year. The Main Event is far behind our goal and yet we will fulfill the $175,000 grand prize. The Rotowire Online Championship is just 33% filled right now and yet we will guarantee the $150,000 grand prize. Same with the Cutline Championship and Online Auction Championship, which are both below projections. We feel that all of those have a chance to reach our goals because they are online and we expect a wild last 4-7 days of online activity.

But the live auctions are what they are right now and it doesn't look like anything is going to change the numbers. We haven't set any leagues up yet or hosted any live auctions, so we had to make this move now. We don't want this contest to lose money and give up on the overall format after this year; there's still good potential to grow the Auction Championship format in "normal" times.

Prizes were based on 180 teams and 12 leagues because that's a level we reached in 2018, 2019 and even in 2020 before the pandemic wiped out all of our live events. We finished with 8 leagues/120 teams in 2021 and this year we hoped to return to the higher levels with the pandemic improving, but the combination of Covid reaching high levels in January and February, and the stupid MLB lockout, limited the number of people who would attend our live events. And there's just no chance to reach that level now.

We have 5 full Auction Championship leagues in Las Vegas and 1 in New York City. There's a good chance that we will fill one more league in New York City and we've added a Saturday 5 pm ET league in New York City as well. Chicago has no chance, unfortunately, of filling an auction league. We have Auction Championship leagues Online on Monday, April 4th and Wednesday, April 6th, but both need a lot of help to fill up. So we're looking at 7 or 8 leagues, and if we somehow got to 9 leagues, we'd add prize money to the overall prize pool.

But it's time to let everyone know that we aren't hitting 12 leagues and we don't want to damage the contest for future years. The grand prize will be updated on the site to $20,000 and the overall prizes will be updated as well. Email me at [email protected] if you want to leave this contest and we'll take care of it right away. Hopefully, everyone will still love the live auction format enough to stay in their leagues and we can move forward this year with a $20,000 grand prize. Then next year we'll evaluate the situation without a 99-day lockout and with hopefully better health conditions and try to grow this contest again.

Thanks everyone. Sorry for the change and sorry we got it wrong on this one this year. Good luck in the leagues we do fill this year.

[Greg Ambrosius]

We now have 9 full NFBC $1500 Auction Championship leagues and 135 total teams. The grand prize remains at $20,000, but we now will pay the Top 8 teams overall. Here's the new overall prize pool:

NFBC Auction Championship
Overall Prizes:
1st Place - $20,000
2nd Place - $5,000
3rd Place - $4,000
4th Place - $3,000
5th Place - $2,500
6th Place - $2,000
7th Place - $1,500
8th Place - $1,000

Thanks to everyone who participated in this great contest. We are convinced that free of a lockout and a pandemic we will again push this grand prize to $30,000 in 2023 and shoot for at least 12 full leagues. I'm convinced that for our 20th anniversary season that New York and Las Vegas will have record participation and that includes in the NFBC Auction Championship. Good luck this year all and be ready for bigger and better things in 2023.