How About A $100,000 Grand Prize In The NFBC Cutline?

[Greg Ambrosius]

For the last two years, we've tried to become the only contest in the industry to advance the Best Ball format. Best Ball leagues are extremely popular in football as everyone loves to draft in football and everyone loves a league that doesn't require any FAAB or any Set Lineup. We get it there. But how do you do that in baseball?

It's impossible to do exactly the same way in baseball for a number of reasons. First of all, it's impossible to do it that way in Rotisserie Baseball because the computer can't decipher if a Save is more important than a Win or more important than 10 strikeouts. So you have to do a points system league like we've done in the NFBC Cutline Championship.

But we realize that even that isn't perfect because baseball has so many minor-leaguers who get called up during the season and thus having a league with no FAAB makes it very tough to draft early. And you have to have deeper drafts in baseball, unlike the 26- and 35-round drafts we have in football. It takes longer and it still involves some in-season management. At least we've found a way to do it without setting a starting lineup each week.

So despite a little extra work during the season, we're still VERY BULLISH on the Best Ball format in baseball. We not only want to continue with this format but we want to GROW it even more.

So we've had some meetings recently and looked at our current format and decided it was time for some tweaks that could make the contest MUCH BETTER. Let us know what you think with some feedback now.

This is our thinking now for the 2018 NFFC Cutline Championship:

1. GROW THE GRAND PRIZE TO $100,000: The grand prize has been $40,000 and $50,000 the last two years with more of a flatter payout scale. While that's good in a lot of ways, we feel like the big carrot is what folks like most and we're going to change the prizes here to reflect that. This is almost going to be the industry's Powerball lottery ticket as this is the one place you can turn $100 INTO $100,000!!

2. LOWER THE ENTRY FEE TO $100: That's right, let's turn this into a more affordable price to enter and give discounts for a 5-pack and 10-pack if you buy them all at once. The promotion of turning $100 into $100,000 will resonate in the industry especially when the Draft is the most important part of your season.

3. NO LEAGUE PRIZES: In the past, you had a 10 percent chance to turn $125 into $250, which really wasn't why you were playing. Nobody was playing in a 10-team league to win $125 in profit. It was the overall prize pool they were trying to get -- especially the $50,000 grand prize -- and getting to the "final table" was the goal. That will still be the goal, but we're turning all of that league prize money into more overall prize money. So getting to the final round of players above the Cutline means even more today and you will profit more.

4. GROWTH, BUT NOT TOO MUCH GROWTH: By transferring the league prizes to the overall prizes, we still have a reasonable projection to reach the $100,000 grand prize and our goals. In the last two years we've had 1,450 teams and 1,380 teams. Our new prize structure is based on around 2,100 teams, which we think is doable if we make the Best Ball format better and offer a $100,000 grand prize.

5. MORE DRAFTING WAYS: Let's add 10-team Cutline Sit 'n Go's this year. When they fill we draft. Get 10 teams and let's start a draft. We'll still offer nightly drafts on a consistent, regular basis, but adding this second drafting format should help as well. These will be set up as 8 hours per pick Sit 'n Go's, but we expect these to go much faster than our Draft Champions leagues.

6. ROSTER SIZES: We learned a lot in Year 1 and one of the things we learned was that we needed a strong core from the draft. Drafts were 36 rounds in 2016 and 38 rounds last year. These drafts got done in 2 to 2 1/2 hours last year, so there is some thought to going 40 rounds this year. Two extra rounds adds about 5-10 minutes, so let's do it.

7. DEALING WITH FAAB: Okay, so how do we deal with this one headache of the format? I'm open to suggestions, but I don't believe you can go without any FAAB. There are always players who are out for the year that you need off your roster in early April and early June, plus there are new players who come up through the minors who are worth picking up. How do we improve rosters without making the in-season work so tough that you refuse to play the Cutline? We will offer only two FAAB periods, but is there a better time to do these in April and June? Is there a better day of the week to do them? We are limiting owners to just 2 pickups per period without cutting anyone and any additional pickups after that, but how do we make that even simpler than it already is? Again, I don't see people drafting Cutlines early in the drafting season without FAAB, but nobody wants multiple teams if we make FAAB too much of a headache. I'm open for suggestions here while still expanding rosters to 44 players before the Championship Rounds. Help me out here.

Best Ball in Baseball. It can work. Adding another $100,000 grand prize to our list of contests can work. Very limited FAAB can work. Not setting a starting lineup can definitely work. Cheap drafts in December, January, February and March can definitely work.

I feel like this is a contest that can really grow, but we need your help and your feedback. Give us your feedback and let's make this a contest that is even better in 2018. Thanks all.

[mdecav]

My thoughts...

1. My personal opinion, but doubling the grand prize from $50k to $100k does not motivate me any more to participate in a Cutline. Maybe this is a marketing tool for non-NFBC players.

2. I'd rather see the prize floor of the Championship Round increased versus increasing the grand prize.

3. I found 38 rounds to be a good number. By the 32nd round or so you're basically picking from a hat. FAAB works well with 38 rounds of players picked.

4. Keep the two FAAB periods as-is. I found no issue with when we did them.

5. If there are no league prizes then there is no need to display an individual league - just an overall league of (hopefully around) 2100 teams.

[KJ Duke]

My thoughts...

1. My personal opinion, but doubling the grand prize from $50k to $100k does not motivate me any more to participate in a Cutline. Maybe this is a marketing tool for non-NFBC players.

2. I'd rather see the prize floor of the Championship Round increased versus increasing the grand prize.

3. I found 38 rounds to be a good number. By the 32nd round or so you're basically picking from a hat. FAAB works well with 38 rounds of players picked.

4. Keep the two FAAB periods as-is. I found no issue with when we did them.

5. If there are no league prizes then there is no need to display an individual league - just an overall league of (hopefully around) 2100 teams.

1. AGREED
2. AGREED
3. AGREED, unless we're going to get rid of roster expansion (which I'd prefer), then expand the draft rds
4. AGREED
5. AGREED

[KJ Duke]

All of the industry game operators seem to think players want a bigger grand prize and then a steep drop-off. Almost all of the players I talk to prefer a flatter (fairer) pay structure.

No doubt, there are a number of players in both camps, but has anyone polled the user base to determine which leads to more signups?

[mdecav]

All of the industry game operators seem to think players want a bigger grand prize and then a steep drop-off. Almost all of the players I talk to prefer a flatter (fairer) pay structure.

AGREED

[mdecav]

3. AGREED, unless we're going to get rid of roster expansion (which I'd prefer), then expand the draft rds

We need roster expansion because I know in January that I can re-jigger my roster given I am now directly competing against teams who draft in March with newer MLB roster information (injuries, closer competitions, etc.).

[cfolson]

I would be more likely to play the cutline if there were no transactions at all. I would be even more likely to play if the leagues had 15 teams.

[TRAIN]

The CUTLINE format, where half the teams are eliminated at the All-Star break and even more eliminated shortly after that, is a real problem for me.

This year I signed up for 5 Cutline teams. Here is what happened:

3 teams eliminated at the All-Star break
1 team eliminated in the 1st round of playoffs
1 team eliminated in the 2nd round of playoffs (August 27)

Since being eliminated completely in August, and not being in any other NFBC contests, I have not watched a single baseball game since then. As someone once essentially posted on these message boards:
If you had no fantasy stake in a sport, would you watch it?
In my case, the answer is no.

I also noticed that one of the best fantasy players in the NFBC, and from what I understand helped design the Cutline, had 23 Cutline teams this year with only 1 of the 23 teams making it to the final Wild Card Playoffs. I wonder how many more of those teams would have been in contention over the course of a full season. Quite a few I would bet.This tells me that buying a lot of teams in the current Cutline format is just not the answer.

Consequently, now that I know I can get by without watching baseball, unless there is a "full season best ball format contest" next year, I may just buy 1 or 2 Cutline teams next year and be done with it.

By the way, I agree with the following post:

All of the industry game operators seem to think players want a bigger grand prize and then a steep drop-off. Almost all of the players I talk to prefer a flatter (fairer) pay structure.

No doubt, there are a number of players in both camps, but has anyone polled the user base to determine which leads to more signups?

I think the NFBC should do a poll on this.

[Deadheadz]

3. NO LEAGUE PRIZES: In the past, you had a 10 percent chance to turn $125 into $250, which really wasn't why you were playing. Nobody was playing in a 10-team league to win $125 in profit. It was the overall prize pool they were trying to get -- especially the $50,000 grand prize -- and getting to the "final table" was the goal. That will still be the goal, but we're turning all of that league prize money into more overall prize money. So getting to the final round of players above the Cutline means even more today and you will profit more.

Even if the Cutline gets more entries in the first year of these changes, I think this one change will be the thing that causes us to look back and say "that was a mistake."

Say there's a 50 percent increase in entries and your'e still paying only the to 20 overall at seasons end. You now have max 20 people who look back and say "I did well."

Thousands will say "I failed. Do I really want to play again?"

At least in the current format you've got 1-in-10 who can say they won a prize and another 2-in-10 who can say they got close. Making the cut isn't memorable looking back on the season and deciding if you'll play again.


My proposal: Keep the price at $125 and keep the league prize. Otherwise it will seem more like a lottery.

In the World Series Of Poker there's a huge grand prize but you win nothing for beating the other 9 guys at your table. The reason so many hundreds of players flock to this event isn't just the enormous prizes for top 10 but they know if they finish in the top 1000 they will have made a profit.

If you can not keep league prizes don't make the mistake of putting all the prize money into that top 20 again because it will limit growth of entries. Expand to top 100 or whatever number gives the lower end winners their entry fee back plus 50 percent.

But please, don't run a lottery

[DOUGHBOYS]

$100,000 is a cooked carrot.
It's being done in other contests, so that, by itself, it's not a big deal any longer.
By taking it to $100,000 and eliminating league prizes, in poker parlance, 'outs' are being taken from the game.
If not having a supreme team, there will be little chance to make a profit.
I don't think that is the right course for the Cutline contest.

[Deadheadz]

$100,000 is a cooked carrot.
It's being done in other contests, so that, by itself, it's not a big deal any longer.
By taking it to $100,000 and eliminating league prizes, in poker parlance, 'outs' are being taken from the game.
If not having a supreme team, there will be little chance to make a profit.
I don't think that is the right course for the Cutline contest.

110% agreed

[Greg Ambrosius]

Lots of opinions, which is what I like. Keep them coming. We appreciate all of them and I'll gladly address each point once we get more thoughts. The idea is to get a wide range of opinions to make this contest better and make it GROW.

We may not have the perfect concept now, but that's why we solicited your thoughts. If you don't agree with our new concept, it's okay. But give us solutions or better ideas. Working together we'll make it right.

Nobody else is doing a Best Ball Baseball Contest. We are trying to create something that can last a long, long time and grow. The current format and prizes didn't grow the numbers last year; we fell from 1450 teams to 1380 teams. So a tweak is coming for sure. What that tweak is, I'm hoping for input from you folks. Thanks.

[Catch]

[quote="Greg Ambrosius"] I don't see people drafting Cutlines early in the drafting season without FAAB.

I believe you can add individuals not drafting early because of NO league prizes. If I’m competing for ONLY overall prizes, why would I draft early and end up with multiple injuries on my roster compared to my later drafts with full knowledge of who is having Tommy John surgery and others that start the season in the minors. At least drafting early, you do compete with nine others that have equal knowledge on draft day. I like this format and will continue to play it; but, it looks like a contest to draft during the month of March instead of January.

[Gekko]

100K grand prize gets my attention. With no league prizes, how deep would the overall leaderboard pay out? Top 50?

[Darik B]

All still a works-in-progress, Mark, but with no league prizes, the payouts would definitely stretch out further down..no question.

[Gekko]

Sounds good Darik. lets see what the final details look like; however sitting here right now, I'd be interested in a 10-pack and maybe a 20 or 50 pack depending on discounting. I never played a cutline league; however I think this contest plays to my strengths and am ready to take it down (with relative ease if I may be so bold)

[Gekko]

Idea for quicker drafts...move clock to 45 seconds or heck, even 30 seconds work for me. That's got to speed up drafts

[Gekko]

I might be missing something but can someone Explain how signing up for a Sit n Go makes sense. What if I sign up at 12pm; however it doesn't fill till 5pm when I'm out to dinner with the family.

[steveymer]

All of the industry game operators seem to think players want a bigger grand prize and then a steep drop-off. Almost all of the players I talk to prefer a flatter (fairer) pay structure.

Count me as another who prefers a flatter structure. I had a team in the first season, was put off by the onerous FAAB (and scoring errors, to be honest), but will have more prize money to play with this year and was thinking I'd get a cutline team or two. However, I have no interest in chasing an overall prize I have a negligible chance of winning (I don't waste my money on lottery tickets, either) and there's zero chance I play without league prizes. Obviously, there are others who like that sort of payout (and maybe those players tend to buy more teams than I would), but I thought I'd chime in since you asked for feedback.

[ToddZ]

Is it feasible to offer two price points, $100 with no league prize and $125 with $250 going to the league winner?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Is it feasible to offer two price points, $100 with no league prize and $125 with $250 going to the league winner?

The bigger question is: Do you want league prizes or not?

If the $250 league prize is what people are playing for, then we need STRONGER league prizes. Beef up the league prizes and lower the big carrot.

We felt most people were playing for the chance to get to the "final table" and win good overall prizes. A 1-in-10 chance to win $125 seemed like the lesser of two key payouts for our players. We might be wrong and will adjust if so.

Flatter prizes are what we have now. $50,000 for first, $25,000 for second and over $100,000 for the Top 5 finishers. With 140 leagues at $250 per league prize, that's $35,000 in prizes that could be given more to the Top spot and deeper into the overall prizes. The big carrot could also grow the contest, again adding to the overall prizes.

But if there is no interest in that and bigger league prizes are what everyone is after, then we'll re-evaluate it. The only way to have both is to have a format WITH GROWTH. The more teams we get the more league prizes we can give and the more overall prizes we can give. We can certainly keep the grand prize at $50,000 -- as Dan says, been there, done that with a $100,000 grand prize -- but we think bigger will help us grow.

Again, maybe not.

As for flat prizes, the biggest fantasy football contest has a $250,000 grand prize and a $35,000 second place prize and nobody is asking them to change. But KJ is right, this prize structure is cool when more owners profit. It's just if 1-in-10 profit within the league, that's lower than any ratio we offer in our other contests and lower than any other contest in the industry. So how do we do both, while again having the right mix of Best Ball/minimal FAAB? There are multiple pieces to fit together here.

Thanks for the feedback. All good. And as Darik said, this started with internal meetings and nothing is set in stone. We need your feedback for that. We have a month to finalize this before we roll out 2018 NFBC on our new site. Can't wait to get it done. Thanks.

[ToddZ]

Is it feasible to offer two price points, $100 with no league prize and $125 with $250 going to the league winner?

The bigger question is: Do you want league prizes or not?

I don't. I think it's silly to invest $125 to try to win $125. But apparently, others think otherwise. The suggestion was a means to appease both sides, keeping everything else the same.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I might be missing something but can someone Explain how signing up for a Sit n Go makes sense. What if I sign up at 12pm; however it doesn't fill till 5pm when I'm out to dinner with the family.

We plan on creating a time when leagues can't start after say 10 pm ET or earlier. If they filled during the night, they would start at like 9 am ET. But again, in this format the Sit 'n Go would have an 8 hour time limit to pick, so you'd never miss the clock unless you slept for 10+ hours!!

The Sit 'n Go means they will start after they fill, whether that be 5 minutes later, 1 hour later or 2 hours later. We are still discussing all of that. With STATS, they only programmed for drafts to start the next day at 1 pm ET. So if a league filled at 8 am, it didn't start until 29 hours later. Going forward, we hope people get used to drafts they sign up for selling out and then starting on that same day. Whether that's minutes, an hour or hours later, we will figure that out together, but no more next day at 1 pm ET starts.

Hope that helps. We have a great IT team that will program this the way we feel is best and this will be part of a broader discussion once this season ends. We will work on all of this together and make all of these online drafts work for everyone.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Is it feasible to offer two price points, $100 with no league prize and $125 with $250 going to the league winner?

The bigger question is: Do you want league prizes or not?

I don't. I think it's silly to invest $125 to try to win $125. But apparently, others think otherwise. The suggestion was a means to appease both sides, keeping everything else the same.

I think if we polled last year's teams -- and that's not a bad idea -- we'd find that people are playing for the overall prizes, not the $250. But I understand how dominating your league and getting nothing isn't appealing too. So as Mark said, how deep is the overall prize structure. Is there a way to use that same money to pay more overall prizes that makes those dominant teams still win $250 or more in the overall contest? It's possible.

Right now we pay the "final table" teams. Maybe we turn that money into paying those who make it to the Second Round AND the Final Table. I'm just spit-balling, but let's find out why people play the Cutline. Again, if there's no reason to draft early because league prizes are gone, then that's not good either. We won't get 200 Cutline leagues in March when the bigger contests excel. We need to figure this part out and get it right, so that learning the player pool early and drafting a winning team early is a benefit.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Idea for quicker drafts...move clock to 45 seconds or heck, even 30 seconds work for me. That's got to speed up drafts

The key to changing the clock is to have easy-to-use draft software. If you're not always Searching for players and struggling to use the Que, you can have selections at 45 seconds. If you can easily draft on the phone and any other device, you can more quickly complete Draft Champions leagues. So our belief is that yes with better technology we can quicken draft times for every NFBC format and make online drafts more enjoyable. But we have to make sure we're at that point first.

The online draft room was fully used by CDM in football and you can check it out in football right now with the Daily Drafts we just started in the NFFC. Free drafts are available tonight if you'd like to check them out. This concept will be developed and added to baseball this season, but more on that later:

http://nffcforums.stats.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=16392