NFBC Message Boards

Season-long fantasy baseball leagues were the start of this industry. When Daniel Okrent invented the game of Rotisserie Baseball, these guys were ecstatic to bid for players in an auction, construct a team just like real MLB General Managers were doing and looking forward to making lineup changes just like the field manager. They never even thought that picking up free agents would be the biggest pain for owners and a possible death-knell for their invention.

One of the reasons why FAAB wasn't a big deal back then was because it was an AL-only or NL-only league and they had only $100 for free agents. During their regular conversations with the commissioner of the league back then, they just likely phoned in their bids to him. It became a pain in the butt after awhile, but searching for available free agents wasn't as hard as it is today in mixed leagues.

We are learning quickly that FAAB on Sundays is getting to be a pain for many of our own NFBC owners and our No. 1 goal here is to make Sundays easier for you. No matter what we do technologically, you will still have to spend the time during the week to find free agents, put them aside and set a bid for them. And if you are doing multiple teams, it gets to be a piece of work for hours on Sundays. We've heard this from many of you who do multiple leagues and we are trying to reduce the time needed for this on Sundays.

Heck, in trying to sell the Primetime this year to our veteran owners -- a Primetime that is going to have a great ROI and could be finished after this year if things don't turn around -- all I'm hearing about is that they hate FAAB in this 12-team format. They love the quick, less than 3 hours of drafting and they love their teams here. The Primetime could easily grow bigger than the Main Event if FAAB wasn't such a chore with this deeper free agent pool. It's just become too time consuming for owners on Sundays and we hear that.

So what can we do to help you with FAAB every week? Here's a start:

We are committing a Search button within any one of your Free Agent lists that will allow you to look for a player and see if he is available in every one of your NFBC leagues. This is a quick fix that we believe will be done by Week 1 FAAB. At the very least, it will save you time because if you have 10 NFBC leagues and you want to search for Jon Gray, for instance, you need to do this:

Click on Main Event Team Ambrosius
Click on Free Agents
Wait for Free Agents To Load
Search for Player

Now do this again for my next team, and my next team, and on and on. You can see how long it takes.

We will provide this:
Click on Main Event Team Ambrosius
Click on Free Agents
Wait for Free Agents To Load
Search for Player and Search for him in all of my leagues. I'm done. Let's do this now for another guy. I'm done. And you can keep doing this throughout the week and quickly know if he's available in all of your leagues.

We are promising to have this done. Now obviously the next step is being able to bid for that player in any league once you've found him. That's a piece of programming that will take a little more time to do and may not be ready right away. But we understand how valuable that next step will be. That is in the plans, but we can't guarantee when that will be done. Again that would save you even more time. With the quick fix, you will be able to bid for the player of the league you are logged into; but hopefully we can solve the bidding step soon.

Feel free to provide other suggestions when it comes to saving time in FAAB. Hopefully this quick fix on searching for available free agents knocks off some time for you on Sundays (and during the week) and allows you to even make quick fixes on Sundays.

We are also committing to improvements to Live Scoring so that enjoying all of this hard work is enriched even more. Here are two things:

1. Live Scoring is going to be faster, maybe even much faster. We know how to deliver this content as quick as possible now to NFBC Live Scoring and you'll notice this right away. Everyone believes this has been solved.

2. Coming in 2015 -- but likely not ready right away -- will be one page where you will have access to Live Scoring for all of your NFBC teams. The goal is to have a pulldown link from Live Scoring that will allow you to open Live Scoring for as many of your teams as possible. You can also close teams you aren't interested in looking at during that time. Go to Learn More above and pull down to FAQ and you'll see the type of technology we're talking about. You can see those Questions are all closed, but if you click on any Question the answer will pop open. That is what will happen with your teams in Live Scoring.

Having all of your teams readily available on one page -- and having them viewable like MLB Extra Innings has with 8 games on one channel -- is the way to go for all of our products. This is being done by our competitors in football and we have to do it as well for baseball, football and basketball. We can't say when this will be ready by because we have a lot more work to do, but we are committing to this plan and it will be coming in 2015.

I'll update the plans for the new online draft room as well. We have two major items we have to upgrade before allowing folks full access into that new HTML draft room, but it's coming along. The 15 guys in the Mia League were fantastic with their feedback and honestly we have 20 items that could be upgraded or added here and we have noted each and every one of them. Some are already done.

Also, we are paying our basketball winners in April via Player Accounts and allowing those owners to transfer winnings to future products, so that part is also on the horizon for each of you here in the NFBC. A Post-Season MLB contest is also in the works, which will be new for the NFBC, following on the heels of our 10 years of cool NFFC Post-Season contests.

We know you want to see these products before committing to additional leagues this year, but I feel confident in saying that we are going to make FAAB easier for you this year and Live Scoring more enjoyable for you. We will also keep both FAAB systems for you (new and old), so use the one you feel most comfortable with. To continue surviving and growing as the top high-stakes fantasy baseball contest in the industry, we know that improving FAAB is Job 1. We are going to get this done and we look forward to your suggestions to save even more time after this is done. It's just a quick fix now for Search, but hopefully it helps.

Thanks all and good luck in 2015.

Greg Ambrosius wrote:Heck, in trying to sell the Primetime this year to our veteran owners -- a Primetime that is going to have a great ROI and could be finished after this year if things don't turn around -- all I'm hearing about is that they hate FAAB in this 12-team format. They love the quick, less than 3 hours of drafting and they love their teams here. The Primetime could easily grow bigger than the Main Event if FAAB wasn't such a chore with this deeper free agent pool. It's just become too time consuming for owners on Sundays and we hear that.

Go with deeper benches for these 12 teamers. 10 player reserves, or even more. It'll deplete the FAAB pool some, make the draft more critical, make bidding on what free agents remain more critical.

And/or you can lower the amount of available FAAB to 500, 200, or less. Make those $1 pickups more important and a greater percentage of your overall allowance, and limit the need (or ability) to have to make multiple every week streamer buys.

I know these are radical suggestions, but might require radical ideas to make the 12-teamer more user friendly, more rewarding to the best players, and a more successful sell.

Also, if you want to sell this Primetime to 15-team stalwarts, add a greater incentive. While the lottery ticket aspect of pulling a Lindy is there, it's still a one in a zillion shot. Have a combined standings with a REAL reward.

Just some thoughts.

I find it hard to believe that FAAB is the issue with Primetime. If that were the case then it would also impact the roto 12 team leagues. The 12 team $350 has grown from 864 to 1248 teams since 2012 while having to deal with the same FAAB issues.

My guess is that the price point might be too high or that owners opt to buy 3-5, $350 teams for the same cost as a single $1500 entry. Allowing themselves to spread the risk and have the enjoyment of 5 drafts instead of 1.

Also, if you want to sell this Primetime to 15-team stalwarts, add a greater incentive. While the lottery ticket aspect of pulling a Lindy is there, it's still a one in a zillion shot. Have a combined standings with a REAL reward.

I like this idea a lot. A combined standings option would create a lot of interest.

Glenneration X wrote:

Greg Ambrosius wrote:Heck, in trying to sell the Primetime this year to our veteran owners -- a Primetime that is going to have a great ROI and could be finished after this year if things don't turn around -- all I'm hearing about is that they hate FAAB in this 12-team format. They love the quick, less than 3 hours of drafting and they love their teams here. The Primetime could easily grow bigger than the Main Event if FAAB wasn't such a chore with this deeper free agent pool. It's just become too time consuming for owners on Sundays and we hear that.

Go with deeper benches for these 12 teamers. 10 player reserves, or even more. It'll deplete the FAAB pool some, make the draft more critical, make bidding on what free agents remain more critical.

And/or you can lower the amount of available FAAB to 500, 200, or less. Make those $1 pickups more important and a greater percentage of your overall allowance, and limit the need (or ability) to have to make multiple every week streamer buys.

I know these are radical suggestions, but might require radical ideas to make the 12-teamer more user friendly, more rewarding to the best players, and a more successful sell.

Also, if you want to sell this Primetime to 15-team stalwarts, add a greater incentive. While the lottery ticket aspect of pulling a Lindy is there, it's still a one in a zillion shot. Have a combined standings with a REAL reward.

Just some thoughts.

I absolutely agree with everything Glen said. Making a 10 man bench with a $500 FAAB budget will definitely reduce some of the FAAB workload and make for a more meaningful draft.

I also totally agree that making some type of ATTAINABLE incentives for combining both scores or even firrst in one and maybe 1st-5th in the other might draw more folks in.

I love these two:
1) A combined standings option Main/Primetime I think this would bring in more people playing both This can be called a Superteam
2) Making a 10 man bench with a $500 FAAB budget for Primetime

The casual fantasy player prefers the 12 team league. 95% won't ever spend over $500 on a league. The player who doesn't mind spending $1500 would rather allocate his resources (TIME AND MONEY) for the 15 team and bigger payback leagues.
TIME is the bigger issue than $ actually. The FAAB tools are great. The system can only be marginally improved to save time. What you CAN'T save is the time needed to analyze faab the way it needs to be.

Quahogs wrote:The casual fantasy player prefers the 12 team league. 95% won't ever spend over $500 on a league. The player who doesn't mind spending $1500 would rather allocate his resources (TIME AND MONEY) for the 15 team and bigger payback leagues.
TIME is the bigger issue than $ actually. The FAAB tools are great. The system can only be marginally improved to save time. What you CAN'T save is the time needed to analyze faab the way it needs to be.

I do disagree a bit. There are A LOT of team playing the OC, which is a 12 team format. I believe another way is to tie in the OC prize structure to award entries into the Prime. I also think it needs to be promoted much harder. There are many different ways to increase the entries in the Prime.

Hey, it just might be the 15-teamer is a much better game for the true high stakes player as Juprinka stated.

Overall contests aside, how many stand alone big dollar leagues have filled with the 15-team format vs the 12-team.
There's a $13K, a pair of $10K's, multiple $5K's and Supers at 15-teams. The 12-team format is having trouble filling just one Super.

I know for me personally, I play the 15 team format because I'm passionate about it. I play the 12-teamer because of ROI.

That said, if FAAB for 12-team leagues are the issue, I think the ideas thrown out there earlier MIGHT help, but something's got to be done.

Glenneration X wrote:

Greg Ambrosius wrote:Heck, in trying to sell the Primetime this year to our veteran owners -- a Primetime that is going to have a great ROI and could be finished after this year if things don't turn around -- all I'm hearing about is that they hate FAAB in this 12-team format. They love the quick, less than 3 hours of drafting and they love their teams here. The Primetime could easily grow bigger than the Main Event if FAAB wasn't such a chore with this deeper free agent pool. It's just become too time consuming for owners on Sundays and we hear that.

Go with deeper benches for these 12 teamers. 10 player reserves, or even more. It'll deplete the FAAB pool some, make the draft more critical, make bidding on what free agents remain more critical.

And/or you can lower the amount of available FAAB to 500, 200, or less. Make those $1 pickups more important and a greater percentage of your overall allowance, and limit the need (or ability) to have to make multiple every week streamer buys.

I know these are radical suggestions, but might require radical ideas to make the 12-teamer more user friendly, more rewarding to the best players, and a more successful sell.

Also, if you want to sell this Primetime to 15-team stalwarts, add a greater incentive. While the lottery ticket aspect of pulling a Lindy is there, it's still a one in a zillion shot. Have a combined standings with a REAL reward.

Just some thoughts.

I concur on this. I think the best idea Glenn came up with is to expand the reserves so that there aren't dozens of players to sift through each week for the Prime Time rather than the few that everyone are competing for each week in the Main. And there is no reason why you cannot just push FAAB out to even an later run EST say from 10:00 p.m. to even 11:00 p.m. or even midnight. It should also be an instantaneous run so we are not waiting a half hour or more for the results to come through. Adding two DL spots for the Main Event would be a huge help as well in terms of not only FAAB and the available player pool, but team management as well. In this era of declining player health (or so it would seem), there is no reason that we should be penalized or forced into dropping players because they are "hurt" and blocking our abilities to play the game because we have to make the decision to either bite the bullet and drop them, or suck it up and be paralyzed until they get better and can play again usually at the expense of our season. Injuries are no fun, and yet they are part of the game, but it should not be to the point where it forces us to not be able to play the game to give us the best shot for our teams to win especially with the kind of money we have on the line. You offer "insurance" which we can buy in case our players get injured, why not have this type of insurance built in for our rosters? Works that way in real baseball, and can work in fantasy baseball too. Time to innovate in this area.

And my final comment on this is, knowing everything that you wrote to be a reality regarding FAAB going into the 2015 season, why is there a discussion just happening about it now when much of this should have been addressed and handled in the six months of the off season especially with the insufferably long turn around needed for anything to get revised, redone, or upgraded with IT? In your own words, the majority of what you put forth here is not getting done to make our lives any easier this year given how you make sound. More over-promising and under-delivering which has become the norm that we have unfortunately come to expect. I'm sorry, but I have read these same posts for too many years, and the changes and improvements that have been made to the FAAB process are too few and insufficient. Just my opinion which I'm sure I will get roasted for, but I'm not one to let this stuff ride and say nothing. But thank you for all of your efforts nonetheless.

Create two separate sign up lists for different leagues:
One having the current Sunday FAAB deadline, and a second one for Monday afternoon/evening.
I would definitely play in more leagues if I had the weekends free.

For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Gekko wrote:For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Once a month. The combination of both of these is fantastic. Great idea.

Quahogs wrote:

Gekko wrote:For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Once a month. The combination of both of these is fantastic. Great idea.

Hmmm, Greg -- looks like a league we play in and it seems to work for that.

The 12 team leagues are actually quite successful / popular, no? The 12 team Primetime is not. I don't think you should necessarily change the 12 team contest format / rules because of the latter.

As far as FAAB - I think NFBC / NFFC has the best FAAB system by far over all of the other contests. I like a couple of the improvements suggested but overall....it is already so much better than the others.

Quahogs wrote:

Gekko wrote:For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Once a month. The combination of both of these is fantastic. Great idea.

Sounds exactly like the football Cutline. That was popular, no?

We've been chatting this over at the Mia Draft. Price point might be the biggest issue. Most who are paying $1500+ have migrated towards the 15 team events and prizes. There's 350 leagues for 12 teamers. I think nothing talks like results. The signups for each Overall contest speaks volumes. The signups for the high dollar stand alone leagues speaks volumes. The signups for the Online Championships speaks volumes as well. That might be the price point that works for the 12-teamer. May be as simple as that.

Glenneration X wrote:

Quahogs wrote:

Gekko wrote:For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Once a month. The combination of both of these is fantastic. Great idea.

Sounds exactly like the football Cutline. That was popular, no?

This is something we want to create for baseball and hopefully will do next season. We would use that type of format in that contest for sure.

As far as the Primetime I'm not sure what the issue is that has resulted in that contest not growing the way we hoped. We've tried a variety of price points, we've raised the grand prize, promoted it aggressively, tied it in with two other national contest for bonus prizes. We're open to ways we haven't thought of but from my perspective it sure feels like we've done everything possible to make it an appealing contest.

Gekko wrote:For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Even better idea. FAAB once a month. I'm in.

Tom Kessenich wrote:
As far as the Primetime I'm not sure what the issue is that has resulted in that contest not growing the way we hoped. We've tried a variety of price points, we've raised the grand prize, promoted it aggressively, tied it in with two other national contest for bonus prizes. We're open to ways we haven't thought of but from my perspective it sure feels like we've done everything possible to make it an appealing contest.

[/quote][/quote]

Willing to bet that if you guys introduced a $350, 15 team contest you would see a drop in participation in Main event. Between the Roto and Prime you generated over $800K in entry fees, well over generated total of Main. Does not look like the 12 team format is struggling, just not growing where you guys expected possibly.

Glenn has nailed it. There's no technical fix that would improve the 12 team experience. It's a FAAB volume issue. Every week there are 90 extra players in the FAAB pool, most of whom cannot be ignored on a weekly basis. If you are a serious NFBC player, that means lots of extra time on a league that (for me) I care the least about due to the lower prize pool.

I think the market has spoken on this one. You're better off just trying to get the ME to 500 entries.

Quahogs wrote:The casual fantasy player prefers the 12 team league. 95% won't ever spend over $500 on a league. The player who doesn't mind spending $1500 would rather allocate his resources (TIME AND MONEY) for the 15 team and bigger payback leagues.
TIME is the bigger issue than $ actually. The FAAB tools are great. The system can only be marginally improved to save time. What you CAN'T save is the time needed to analyze faab the way it needs to be.

When I was planning my budget for teams this year, I considered a Prime Time team, but just opted for a second Main Event instead. The bigger payoff and the greater prestige attached to the ME made it a pretty easy decision.

I'm not sure about expanding the rosters in 12 team leagues. I definitely think 10 player benches are too drastic and it would likely encourage streaming SP. How about an eight man bench?

la Jolla wrote:

Gekko wrote:For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Even better idea. FAAB once a month. I'm in.

I could get behind a bi-weekly or monthly FAAB. One thing I found very intriguing about the Cutline format was the reduced free agency.

Yah Mule wrote:

la Jolla wrote:

Gekko wrote:For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Even better idea. FAAB once a month. I'm in.

I could get behind a bi-weekly or monthly FAAB. One thing I found very intriguing about the Cutline format was the reduced free agency.

While on the surface it sounds great, after further thought I'm not sure I'd be that into once a month FAAB at a $1500 price point. One reason why I think it works great for Cutlines is it's only $100 per entry. First time I can't replace an injured or benched or underachieving player for a month on a $1500 investment, I'd be regretting that investment for sure.

la Jolla wrote:

Gekko wrote:For 12 teamers...
1. Bigger bench
2. Run FAAB every other week or once a month

Even better idea. FAAB once a month. I'm in.

Great ideas by Glenn and Mark. I'd take it one more step and go to 15 bench players. With 38 players per team monthly FAAB works even better and total rostered players of 456 is close to 450 in Main, so FAAB pool will look about the same.