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We begin our 14th season of live NFBC drafts and auctions in Chicago with a Friday, 4 pm CT Auction Championship League at the Sheraton Northbrook. This auction league is like a home league to many of our guys in the Windy City as they swear this is as good as it gets. Can't wait to kick this one off for you guys.

The Main Event follows with 1 league at noon CT on Saturday in the same room. Unfortunately, we just weren't able to get enough interest in a 12-team Online Championship Plus League on Saturday night, either at $1500 or $750, so I apologize for that. A couple of the owners who were originally signed up opted for the online versions, so they did get in, but I apologize to those who missed out. It wasn't my intention, but the Online options filled up quickly.

Dean Peterson will be your host once again this week. If you need anything from Dean contact him at [email protected]. He's excited to see all of you guys again and he will be at the Sheraton Northbrook early on Friday afternoon. We are using both rooms for the auction and for the draft, so we should have plenty of space for you folks this year. I know it was always kind of cramped before, but not this year.

Most of you know where the Sheraton Northbrook is, but here's our contest link with directions:

http://nfbc.stats.com/baseball/venues/v ... d=NFBC_CHI

Best of luck to everyone in the Windy City and have fun.

thanks greg- I will talk with some guys and we will work on recruiting guys for next years main- to get at least 2 leagues. mike

Weather forecast: 40's and rain on Friday with a strong chance of Jay Lyons getting bombed at the auction.

Thanks to everyone who supported Chicago this season. I've heard loud and clear from Dean and other participants that Chicago was a blast and that there is a strong desire from all that were there to continue this location for a 15th season in 2018. I know that the Chicago Auction Championship brings together a special group of owners and all would like to see that continue for years to come.

We certainly haven't made any decisions about 2018 at this point and we appreciate the support from our members to do Chicago again. Trust me, it's SportsHub's desire to do more cities, not less cities in the future. But that being said, we left Tampa when we couldn't fill three leagues. We left Orlando when we couldn't fill three leagues. And our Fanball attempt to try up to eight cities in football was an epic failure. More people are drafting online today than doing so live with us, so that's just the harsh reality.

The setup for the auction in Chicago looked great with one U taking up two rooms. It was also good for the one Main Event. But to secure hotel space and meet food & beverage minimums we need more than two leagues over a weekend. I'm convinced that we can sell out that Chicago Auction by January next year, but can we sell out 2 or more Mains and even add a full 12-team league that night? If the answer is no then it makes it tough to return and that would be for any city that can't support more than two leagues in a season.

I've talked to Dean since the Chicago drafts finished and he told me how much the members want Chicago to return. I get it. It's a great group of guys that we'd hate to lose from the live events and Dean lives right there and loves the camaraderie and live drafts. He does a good job there and would host Chicago again. But the numbers need help if we're going to do it again.

Hope that makes sense. We have time to figure it out, but I wanted to publicly post this so that we can all be on the same page and work together to possibly keep a third city alive for the NFBC in 2018. We left Chicago in football because of lack of support and we aren't returning there this summer. Hopefully that doesn't happen in baseball. Thanks all and good luck this year.

In other words....