Wish List Of Improvements For NFBC 2018

[Greg Ambrosius]

Happy New Year Everyone!! Let's make 2017 the best year possible.

A lot happened in 2016, led by the Chicago Cubs ending 108 years of futility by winning the World Series in an epic Game 7 against the Cleveland Indians. In the NFBC, Rob Silver won the $125,000 grand prize for the Main Event as we capped off our 13th season. Shortly after that the NFBC and NFFC were sold from STATS to SportsHub Technologies and a new era began. See, I told you a lot happened in 2016.

We haven't talked much about what we have planned under SportsHub Technologies since announcing the sale, so let's catch up now and get a game plan for what lies ahead. We now have a team of programmers who are working on our new sites, so we finally have a chance to put our wish list together and know that these things can be included in the future. We've already passed many of these requests onto our new IT team, but let's put it down here to make sure we haven't missed anything.

So here's the plan for 2017 NFBC: Since the sale wasn't finalized until November, it was impossible to get a new site and a new game engine up and running in time for the 2017 baseball season. We would have had to cancel the slow drafts and everything else until March and that made no sense. So we are continuing to work with the STATS back-end software and using the same site we've used before. While we are completing this season, the SportsHub programmers are creating our new site and back-end software. The goal is to give it much of the same look and feel so that when the move happens in November of 2017 everything fits like a glove. Our guys are building the contest pages, draft room, back-end software and everything else now and we'll test throughout the baseball season. The STATS site will get us through the 2017 NFBC season with few changes to what we had last year and you'll see all of our changes starting in 2018.

This allows us to get through 2017 without any delays and gives us plenty of time to create and test the new site. It's the best way to make this transition work.

I know we've asked for your input before and didn't get to add all of the features you wanted in the NFBC, but now is the time to put that list together and make sure our programmers understand the additions we'd like. We've handed them these already, but feel free to add to them:

NFBC Programming Needs For New Site:
1. New HTML draft room

2. New draft room that allows for mobile device drafting

3. Draft Champions leagues that keep an average time per pick by each drafter

4. Multiple Round Ques

5. Registration from your mobile device

6. ADPs: We will expand the way owners can get our ADPs, allowing them to pick timelines (last 15 days, last 6 days, etc.) to get this information. Look for our ADPs to also show movement similar to the way we display Live Standings.

7. Player Accounts: Through our LeagueSafe partnership, we will be able to deposit winnings right into your Player Accounts and allow you to manage that money. You can cash out your winnings and receive a check, keep some of the winnings in your account for future purchases, or leave it all in. Just a heads up that whether you leave this money in your account or not, all of those winnings are taxable.

8. Team Page: We know that our competitors have one page where all of your teams are located with the latest standings and this is something that will be added in 2018.

9. Player Search Page: We know that our competitors have one page where you can easily find players that are on all of your teams. That one-stop page will be a major part of our new site, making it easier for you to run multiple teams.

10. Adding more features to the NFBC and NFFC app. Improving mobile is a key part of our future plans.

11. Adding lower-priced games. Draft and hold games (our DCs) are very popular because everyone wants to draft and few people want to do the work during the season. We believe there is a place to grow that area of our business with $25 and $50 private league price points. I look forward to adding these in 2017 and 2018.

12. Building our own online auction software.

If there are any tips to improve FAAB and save you time there, please post here. We plan on duplicating our Conditional Bid process, which I think is the best in the biz, and doing as much as we can to make FAAB easier for you. Any and all tips are welcome.

Oh, and we are able to take American Express again. I know that's a positive point for some of our customers. That is available for 2017 NFBC, so plan accordingly.

I know you haven't seen or heard a lot since the sale, but all of this is being worked on behind the scenes so that we have a site that is the best in the industry and one that can be easily added to at anytime. You're going to see a hands-on approach to our site like we've never had before because running games is all we're going to do here at SportsHub. We also have multiple games at the company, so you'll have some new offerings only for our unique community. It's possible that we could also expand to include in-season weekly games, Survivor pools, March Madness pools and more.

But right now SportsHub has taken the lead role in negotiating our licenses in multiple states. Trust me, this is an arduous and lengthy process. Thankfully we have the people who are talking to Gaming officials in New York, Tennessee, Indiana and other states and I think we'll be open for business in most states. This is not easy for individual game operators to do in every state, so it's good to be part of a team of games. Once we know what all of these extra costs are going to be we will have to address them, but for now we're just trying to get these licenses in hand to keep most of you playing with us.

So we're building out our new site over the next year, we're trying to be compliant in all of the states that have passed DFS laws and we're trying to add on the items you want to see on the new site. Again, you won't see the changes in 2017 NFBC, but they are coming. Happy New Year everyone and let's build a better future together. Here we go.

[Money]

Greg, two things, ADP's by time period were available in the NFFC this year, are they not going to be available in the NFBC this season?

Secondly, how will live scoring be impacted? The constant delays to load in YTD results and the clicking in and out of stats is a big frustration. Any plans to improve live scoring?

Thanks.

[JohnP]

Greg, two things, ADP's by time period were available in the NFFC this year, are they not going to be available in the NFBC this season?

Secondly, how will live scoring be impacted? The constant delays to load in YTD results and the clicking in and out of stats is a big frustration. Any plans to improve live scoring?

Thanks.

+1 on the live scoring. Big lag, regular problems with double headers, multiple occasions where stats had to be "re-run", etc.

[Red Sox Nation-]

Hi Greg- Your list looks good for enhancements.

Regarding FAAB- Can we get a way to search for any player across all leagues with the ability at that spot to bid on the player?

Central spot for FAAB. You mentioned being able to see all leagues/standings from one page as an upcoming enhancement. How about having the ability to work on FAAB from one spot showing all leagues?

Both of these additions would save a lot of time rather than drilling into each team.


Jason

[JohnP]

FAAB suggestions / possibilities:

- as many sort options as possible
- would be nice to search a player over multiple leagues to see if available in FAAB
- would be nice to have queue problem fixed for cutlines - was super cumbersome when queue got too long
- would be nice to click and drag as opposed to arrow up / down
- eliminate the 15-30 minute wait after deadline to display results

Maybe some of the above are already in place and I am just not remembering. Not sure how to make it all that much better. It is always going to take a lot of time and effort. Maybe some of the above and other suggestions will help but it feels like the trend surely is heading towards "non" or "limited" FAAB contests.

[Teufel Hunden]

I would like a 24 chess clock for all owners in a DC. Once their time is used up they are switched to full-auto for remainder of draft. At most DC's would then take 15 days and no longer would 1-2 owners be able to hold draft hostage. With improved queue/auto functions a 24 hour individual clock is plenty to accommodate work/life/sleep/player decision issues that arise.

[Bjs2025]

Like the idea of some cheaper contests. The only kind I'd be interested in are DC's that are best ball points, I think that is a niche currently filled by no one nationally and one the nfbc could take advantage of. Something like a $50 buy in, 15 team mixed with some of the Cutline scoring settings,

Also of most importance for me would be AL/NL only leagues. I know a couple, literally a couple, are done by Todd and Andy in auction season but why not offer a few 12 team only's at the $125, $250, $500 and $1000 price point? I'd be down for doing lots of those.

[Doctor Who]

If there is a way to copy an entire string of FAAB from one league to the next with whatever available players are available in other leagues, that would be great but don't know if it is possible. Also, I would LOVE the addition of one-week leagues and all my baseball DFS money would go there instead of DFS. So hopefully that can appear in 2018.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Hi Greg- Your list looks good for enhancements.

Regarding FAAB- Can we get a way to search for any player across all leagues with the ability at that spot to bid on the player?

Central spot for FAAB. You mentioned being able to see all leagues/standings from one page as an upcoming enhancement. How about having the ability to work on FAAB from one spot showing all leagues?

Both of these additions would save a lot of time rather than drilling into each team.


Jason

That's a great, great suggestion. I'll see if we can find a way to do that from that Player Search page. That would really save a lot of time. Great suggestion.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg, two things, ADP's by time period were available in the NFFC this year, are they not going to be available in the NFBC this season?

Secondly, how will live scoring be impacted? The constant delays to load in YTD results and the clicking in and out of stats is a big frustration. Any plans to improve live scoring?

Thanks.

I'll have to ask about the ADPs. We've had it that way in football the last two years, so I'll see about finally getting it the same way in baseball.

Obviously we want no issues with Live Scoring and Live Standings. The setup we have is nice right now, but obviously we all want better reliability and no issues. We will definitely discuss this and make it a priority. We know how much more fun the game is when Live Scoring and Live Standings work to perfection.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Like the idea of some cheaper contests. The only kind I'd be interested in are DC's that are best ball points, I think that is a niche currently filled by no one nationally and one the nfbc could take advantage of. Something like a $50 buy in, 15 team mixed with some of the Cutline scoring settings,

Also of most importance for me would be AL/NL only leagues. I know a couple, literally a couple, are done by Todd and Andy in auction season but why not offer a few 12 team only's at the $125, $250, $500 and $1000 price point? I'd be down for doing lots of those.

Oh, I forgot to add this one:

12. Building our own online auction software.

I know this is part of the plan, which will be a great addition to the NFBC and NFFC.

[Bronx Yankees]

I would like a 24 chess clock for all owners in a DC. Once their time is used up they are switched to full-auto for remainder of draft. At most DC's would then take 15 days and no longer would 1-2 owners be able to hold draft hostage. With improved queue/auto functions a 24 hour individual clock is plenty to accommodate work/life/sleep/player decision issues that arise.

I really like this suggestion. Puts everyone on the same footing as to how much time they can use.

If you do not go with it, please consider building in the capability to turn off the clock (while still allowing picks) during the overnight hours. I think there are many folks that would prefer DC leagues with 4-hour or 2-hour clocks (any maybe shorter) but for the overnight hours. Turning off the clock at night should make it easier for folks to embrace shorter times (especially if mobile drafting is made easier).

Thanks,
Mike

[Greg Ambrosius]

FAAB suggestions / possibilities:

- as many sort options as possible
- would be nice to search a player over multiple leagues to see if available in FAAB
- would be nice to have queue problem fixed for cutlines - was super cumbersome when queue got too long
- would be nice to click and drag as opposed to arrow up / down
- eliminate the 15-30 minute wait after deadline to display results

Maybe some of the above are already in place and I am just not remembering. Not sure how to make it all that much better. It is always going to take a lot of time and effort. Maybe some of the above and other suggestions will help but it feels like the trend surely is heading towards "non" or "limited" FAAB contests.

Good suggestions. As for running FAAB results, STATS waits 10 minutes before posting and then all 600+ leagues start to run. They only take a couple of seconds to run, but with so many leagues it can take 15-20 minutes to post everything. I know you want instantaneous FAAB results, but no matter who does it it will take a little time. Hopefully we can improve on it, though.

As for the trend "surely heading towards non or limited FAAB contests, I don't understand that. If we're able to bring in new customers with lower-priced DCs why not do it? Especially in baseball, where nobody offers that. We have a scoring format that works here and so I think you'll see NFBC $25's and $50's coming next year. Same with football. But our goal isn't to have all DCs; we like FAAB contests too. I think you're extrapolating too far there.

[Greg Ambrosius]

If there is a way to copy an entire string of FAAB from one league to the next with whatever available players are available in other leagues, that would be great but don't know if it is possible. Also, I would LOVE the addition of one-week leagues and all my baseball DFS money would go there instead of DFS. So hopefully that can appear in 2018.

Maybe sooner. Stay tuned.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I would like a 24 chess clock for all owners in a DC. Once their time is used up they are switched to full-auto for remainder of draft. At most DC's would then take 15 days and no longer would 1-2 owners be able to hold draft hostage. With improved queue/auto functions a 24 hour individual clock is plenty to accommodate work/life/sleep/player decision issues that arise.

I really like this suggestion. Puts everyone on the same footing as to how much time they can use.

If you do not go with it, please consider building in the capability to turn off the clock (while still allowing picks) during the overnight hours. I think there are many folks that would prefer DC leagues with 4-hour or 2-hour clocks (any maybe shorter) but for the overnight hours. Turning off the clock at night should make it easier for folks to embrace shorter times (especially if mobile drafting is made easier).

Thanks,
Mike

I believe that is being added.

[Bronx Yankees]

Glad to hear it. Thanks.

This suggestion is probably farther off in terms of timing, but if the NFBC adds its own auction software, it would be great to somehow merge the timing of a DC draft (or fast DC draft) with the auction concept. I'm not sure exactly how it could be done, but what made me think of it is that while I can handle a DC draft at anytime (thanks to e-mail notifications and the Auto Pick function for when I'm really tied-up), lately I've been having trouble clearing out a five-hour or so block to do one of the auctions that Andy runs (although I definitely will do one before the live events!). Anyway, just a thought for another day.

Overall, the improvements sound great to me. Will make for an exciting 2018 drafting season.

Mike

[Yah Mule]

1) Let me open as many windows as I like to to accommodate all my teams to view live scoring or work FAAB.

2) I don't want this to sound rude, but pictures of the players and other aesthetic considerations should of less concern in the draft room than simple functionality. I don't like losing space that could be used to see more available players utilized for other things.

[Greg Ambrosius]

1) Let me open as many windows as I like to to accommodate all my teams to view live scoring or work FAAB.

2) I don't want this to sound rude, but pictures of the players and other aesthetic considerations should of less concern in the draft room than simple functionality. I don't like losing space that could be used to see more available players utilized for other things.

I think you can see pictures of the players and have more room in the player default list. That's our biggest complaint from the new one; you can't see enough players there. In the Flash draft room you can see twice as many players. That makes a difference when you're on the clock and trying to make a decision.

I think we'll solve that in the new draft room. Seeing more available players is very important.

[Rainiers]

Nice. This all sounds great.

The one thing I'd love to see added is some flexibility in the Draft Room. Right now I can see available players ranked with my own rankings or by ADP but not by both. I'd love to be able to toggle between ADP rankings and my own rankings for the remaining players available.

All I need is four sortable columns and I'd be perfectly happy in the draft room: Player, Position, My Rank, and ADP. There would be various ways to get to that, e.g. make the ADP a data point OR allow us to download the ADP rankings and then allow us to edit a column we could call our own. In any case this something I'd love to have while drafting if you can fit it in to all the other things you are doing...

Not too much more to suggest as far as I'm concerned.

I agree with John P and would love to see the wait time after deadline for FAAB to go away as much to transparently display and confirm to all that may doubt the integrity of the contest as anything.

In other contests I've seen all the FAAB bid results including second, third, etc. get reported. If it is a programing limitation rather than a purposeful omission that is something the I'd like to see programed.

Thanks again for all you are doing and including us in the discussion.

[Bjs2025]

You may already have this feature and maybe I don't know about it but I am considering doing upwards of 10 satellite leagues this year and I wanted to know: is there a central place we can put our player rankings and then access them in every draft room that we go into? I certainly do not want to have to rank 345 players in every draft I do prior to doing it. It would be great to enter the draft room and select "Use My Rankings" and simply sort that way for the draft. Please just tell me I'm dumb and this exists.

[Yah Mule]

You may already have this feature and maybe I don't know about it but I am considering doing upwards of 10 satellite leagues this year and I wanted to know: is there a central place we can put our player rankings and then access them in every draft room that we go into? I certainly do not want to have to rank 345 players in every draft I do prior to doing it. It would be great to enter the draft room and select "Use My Rankings" and simply sort that way for the draft. Please just tell me I'm dumb and this exists.

Go to Draft Prep and you'll see a drop down box called Import from where you can access your rankings from other leagues.

[Deadheadz]

2) I don't want this to sound rude, but pictures of the players and other aesthetic considerations should of less concern in the draft room than simple functionality. I don't like losing space that could be used to see more available players utilized for other things.

I think you can see pictures of the players and have more room in the player default list. That's our biggest complaint from the new one; you can't see enough players there. In the Flash draft room you can see twice as many players. That makes a difference when you're on the clock and trying to make a decision.

I think we'll solve that in the new draft room. Seeing more available players is very important.

SOLVED
In our current DC as more than one manager said the screen showed only 3 players in the default list.
The trick is to scale the web page using Ctrl and the minus key. If it gets too small you make it bigger using Ctrl and the plus key.
Doing this you can have 11 players showing in your default list and still read it fairly well. The next smaller scale allows 18 players to show in the default list but it's not so easy to read their names. But most web browsers allow you to adjust it to suit your needs.

.

[Baseball Furies]

Here are some in no particular order:

Obviously there is a HUGE need to manage issues with the time clock in the DC's. These may have been mentioned, but I want to reiterate the need for an average pick time displayed for each owner, and this should also accompany their names on sign up lists for the DC's so everyone knows what they are getting themselves into when they are joining a particular league in terms of setting expectations on how the draft will flow and at least have somewhat of an idea on how long it will take to complete. This will remedy many customer service complaints that happen every year along with the corresponding thread which will invariably pop up on the message boards calling for lynching, blackballing, expulsion, shaming, demeaning of families, etc. of particular players which is not only bad for them, but horrible for PR, and the marketing of these drafts. There should also be a maximum total pick time assigned to each owner in a DC league for these drafts of "X" number of hours that once it has been used up, the owner is automatically shifted into auto draft status or something similar. A "sleep clock" which still allows picks to be made during "sleep" hours also should be implemented and works great. That means at say 10:00 P.M. EST for example, the clock stops until say 10:00 A.M. EST, but owners can still make picks as they like, but are not penalized or hampered by "sleep" or off peak hours or because they live on the West Coast.

The draft room chat is glitchy and obviously needs a BIG upgrade. It needs to be user friendly on mobile devices as well. The current pop out chat is terrible. This will help to improve the entire social experience during the draft. There should also be time stamps in the chat whenever someone posts or when picks are made so that owners can know when things have happened or have been communicated.

This one is a big one, and a must. Each league should have the option of assigning at least one owner to be the league admin with admin access to help out everyone else as the need arises. We all know that the "HELP" button is virtually worthless and is reliant on either Greg or Tom being available at any given moment over the course of dozens of simultaneous drafts at all hours of the day and night to intervene when a problem should arise. This is ridiculous. An owner admin could reverse picks as needed, make picks for players who may not be able to get to their computer or mobile device in a timely manner, but knows who they want, or if they are traveling and can't use their mobile device, etc. and wants to help keep the draft rolling especially in the faster DC's. An owner admin could stop the draft clock if need be for a problem, adjust the auto pick for a player as requested...just to name a few. But all of these would keep the draft moving without the need from outside support.

Text alerts in addition to or rather than emails of picks. This should be customizable with the ability to turn off and on for certain time periods of the day, and perhaps with a "snooze bar -like" interval function which would send out a follow up reminder text in a certain period of time if a pick has not yet been made. This would greatly reduce or even eliminate (thank God) the need for "facilitation" in some drafts to keep things moving.

And for the love of Jesus, Moses, Vishnu, and any other religious figurehead you can think of, please do away with the damn placeholders! There is no reason in this day and age that we as customers have to come up with MLB prospects, rookies, foreign players, and the like to add to the player pool once the draft season begins. They're all out there already, just have them all locked and loaded in time for November if that's when these thing are going to start. This is a pain in the ass inconvenience to deal with during these drafts to track and communicate effectively to everyone else.

I'm sure I'll have more to come, but there are so many little things that need to be fixed (i.e. the inability to search for players on a mobile device and to set a queue without being a gigantic project in frustration) as part of an overall software upgrade that I would assume would be obvious to any developer who knows how this game works...which I'm quite sure these guys are, right, Greg?

Oh and one more thing before I sign off for now: BETA TESTING! Please set this up far in advance of launching the new baseball product. I'll be one of these testers if need be, and I'm sure many of us die-hard veterans would volunteer as well. This way all the bugs and additional needed upgrades and fixes can be done BEFORE the product is rolled out for consumption by the general public.

[Deadheadz]

.

Oh and one more thing before I sign off for now: BETA TESTING! Please set this up far in advance of launching the new baseball product. I'll be one of these testers if need be, and I'm sure many of us die-hard veterans would volunteer as well. This way all the bugs and additional needed upgrades and fixes can be done BEFORE the product is rolled out for consumption by the general public.

I've gotta believe Furies is a Master Beta Tester.

.

[Yah Mule]

Good stuff, Mike. I would volunteer to beta-test. I also like the idea of a time clock. The variance in average pick times is huge. We rank the players we draft on everything imaginable, so there's no reason anybody should complain about having their own performance recorded. At the very least, you might see fewer drafters just blowing off 14 other people for eight hours without a word of communication.

One problem with slow drafts occurs after exhibition games begin and guys will sit on the clock to check the day's results before making their pick. No amount of shaming is likely to get through to this person. They will consider complaints to be the extra spoils of victory.

The league admin idea also has a lot of merit, although you might not find a volunteer in every league.