Welcome To The 2019 NFBC Season - Site Is LIVE
Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2018 2:21 pm
We are proud to announce the launch of our 2019 NFBC season, which is our 16th season as the industry's only high-stakes fantasy baseball contest. We believe that NFBC XVI will be our biggest and best season to date. So let's get started.
It's hard to believe how far we've come in the last 15 years. During the debut season of 2004, we had 195 Main Event teams and four AL-only or NL-only auction leagues among Las Vegas, New York and Chicago. That's a total of 243 teams in our debut contest. Last year we had over 10,000 teams and we awarded close to $3.2 million in prizes. The NFBC has grown every single year from 2004 to 2018.
And we expect that trend to continue this year. We have all of the plans in place for 2019 and we will be launching earlier than ever before and drafting earlier than ever before. We're working hard right now to launch the 2019 season and we now have the site designed in a way that will allow us to launch even earlier in future years. Are you ready?
We have a lot of changes to announce for the upcoming season. We'll get into more detail on some of these as we announce individual contests and their rules, but let's get busy right now with all of the changes. We think you're going to like these. Here we go:
The NFBC Main Event's grand prize will be $150,000. The most coveted title in the fantasy baseball industry has had a grand prize of $125,000 for five years now and it's time to raise that carrot and keep it growing. The grand prize will now be $150,000 with second place increasing to $40,000 and overall prizes reaching the Top 15 in the final standings. League prizes will also increase with first place now rising to $7,000, second place to $3,400 and third place to $1,700. The top 5 finishers will all earn between $150,000 and $10,000. We will always look at add prize money after the grand prize as this contest grows, but it was time to increase the top prize and we will continue to fill in as the Main Event grows. Prizes are based on 540 teams after we reached 510 teams last year. Good luck all.
Entry Fee Increases. To pay out more in prizes, we are raising the entry fee in the NFBC Main Event to $1,700 and the Auction Championship entry will also rise to $1,400. AL-only and NL-only Auction League entry fees will also be $1,400. Last year, we decided not to charge for Events Fees or co-manager fees -- a savings of up to $125 per team -- as this being a part of doing business in this space. Most teams in 2014-18 were paying $1675 to compete in the Main Event, but now most of that extra $100 will go toward increased prizes. It also puts us closer in line with our competitors in another sport who have entry fees ranging from $1,800 per team to over $1,900 per team. Yes, it's an increase in these entry fees, but not much more out of line than we charged in past years with lower prize payouts.
Auction Championship Prizes Increase. With an increase of $100 in the NFBC Auction Championship (but again with no Events Fees or co-manger fees), the grand prize in the Auction Championship will now grow to $30,000 as we will now pay the Top 6 finishers. League prizes also increase to $7,500 with second place earning $3,350 and fourth place earning $1,400. We will be returning to Las Vegas, New York and Chicago this year and expect to fill 12 leagues again. For the AL-only and NL-only auction leagues, prizes will now increase to: 1st - $8,400 2nd - $3,250 3rd _ $1,600.
Online Championship Grand Prize Grows to $125,000. We are bullish on this contest as well and we believe it's time to grow this grand prize as well. Without any price increase, we are projecting growth in the number of teams and setting the grand prize up to $125,000. No other prizes are changing as we expect to increase the secondary prizes as we grow past this year's expected target number of just over 2,000 teams.
Cutline Championship Grand Prize Grows to $70,000. We have seen how the best ball format has grown exponentially in football and we are going ALL IN on that concept in baseball. The grand prize is growing by $20,000 this year, with second place overall growing to $25,000 and third place growing to $15,000. The entry fee will start at $150, but every third team will be $50 off. So in the past you could individually buy three teams for $375, but this year you'll be able to buy a 3-pack or three teams individually for $400. We are going to program the software to automatically give you that discount for a third team even if you buy them one by one and the same will be true this year for the Online Championship. We believe you can't just have one Cutline team, so we'll incentivize you for every third team!! How's that? (Note: The Cutline will also have special package discounts for 5-packs ($100 off) and 9-packs ($200 off) as well if you buy them at one time.)
Overnight Pause For Draft Champions Leagues: We have reduced the overnight pause for DC leagues to 6 hours this year as it will now go from 2 am ET to 8 am ET. All of the tools are now in the NFBC Draft Room to allow you to set your queue for the next round, or the next two rounds, or for any individual round, so you should be able to be prepared before going to bed or before rising from bed. With a 4-hour clock, you still have 10 hours, which is longer than you had with our 8-hour clock and no pause. And even in a 2-hour draft, that's still a total of 8 hours, so we are comfortable with the clock change. Just stay alert and USE THE NEW AUTO DRAFT TOOLS AND THE QUEUE.
Shortening The Final 20 Rounds Of Draft Champions Leagues: We are going to program DC drafts this year to shorten the clock in half for Rounds 31-50. We noticed in the past that the last 20 rounds took longer than the first 30 rounds and have the ability now to address that. Once we hit Round 31, the clock will automatically be reduced to 2 hours in a 4-hour draft and to 1 hour in a 2-hour draft. Again, we have all the tools to allow anyone the chance to set players in their Que for every individual round and we are going to do all we can to push folks to learn these tools. By reducing the time in the last 20 rounds, we believe the DCs will get done sooner, allowing more folks to do more leagues. Oh, and this year there is a timer on Draft Results that shows the amount of time each pick took. We are not going beyond that, but everyone will be accountable with each pick and the time will be shown.
Online Auctions: The NFBC now has its own online auction software and it will be ready when the draft room opens. We debuted the online auction software in football and it was a huge hit. It's fantastic. We will have price points of $150, $250 and $500, and we'll have FAAB auctions with 7 reserve rounds after the auction and DC auctions. The draft room opens as soon as the auction ends and the timer will work exactly the same as it does for the DCs (going from 2 hours to 1 hour after Round 30).
My Teams Page: The goal of the My Teams page is to eventually put tabs on that page for each sport and to combine all of your teams from all sports on this one page. We also want to create tabs for years so that you can hide teams from past years and just call them up by clicking any of those yearly tabs. We're not at that point yet, but that's the goal. Past teams from STATS will eventually get loaded into our system, but we're still not there yet. Also on My Teams, we'll default that page to the way it is now, broken down by contest categories, but we'll also allow you to change that page to have all of your teams listed in any order without the contest headers. We'll also allow you to Hide any teams that you want at some point this year. All of this still has to be worked on, but we heard you loud and clear last year and we are working on all of this. As a result of us switching the NFBC to a new platform that will allow us to roll the site over much easier from year to year, your 2018 teams might not be accessible right away, but it won't be long after the launch that we'll have those on your My Teams page. Again, that's part of this redesign we'll be working on now. Grab 2018 info now if you really need it for the first drafts.
Overall Standings: We will add one more piece to Overall Standings for our five national contests that we used to have in previous years. That's a number that shows how many spots you've moved up or down in the overall standings. We have an up or down arrow there now, but it didn't show last year how many spots you moved up or down that day. That will be there this year.
Players Share Page: We added this in football and will now make it even better. On your team page, under Stats there is a Players Share page that shows you how many teams you have each individual player that you've drafted on. It may show that you have Mookie Betts on 5 teams, Justin Verlander on 4, etc. That's helpful for people who have a lot of teams and an injury hits during the season. Now we're also going to break it down to show those shares by game style. That will let you know how many Cutline teams you have him in where you can't make a FAAB change and how many FAAB teams you have him on. That should save you some time.
Draft Board Big Sticker. We have added a link to the draft board that allows you to turn off the big sticker. We know that those Cutline leagues really cruise and sometimes the big stickers just arrive one after another, covering up the big board. You can now turn the big sticker off if you'd like on your own board.
Dealing With Unsigned Free Agents: Rule change for this year: Unsigned Free Agents will still be allowed to be drafted, but if they are not signed by Opening Day they won't appear in FAAB until they appear on a 25-man MLB roster. So in last year's case, Jose Bautista could have been drafted, but once Opening Day hits he now won't appear in FAAB until he reaches the major leagues.
Dealing with Rainouts on Monday/Friday: In the past, players locked 5 minutes before their first game on Monday or Friday and if there was a rainout they were still locked. The system is now being set up to allow those players to unlock if the game is called off and they won't be locked again until 5 minutes before their game on Tuesday or Saturday. Just another convenience change for you folks.
Add A Players Page: I feel bad that we don't have a page on the site to show photos of our live events or even a new video that Brady Tinker did for us during the live football event. We will eventually change that and showcase our great players on the site. Stay tuned. This is much needed. Our national champions holding the big checks will appear on this page as well. Can't wait.
NFBC $50/50 Teams Contest Returning: We are filling these up every week in the NFFC right now as we are using the Fanball DFS software. Every Tuesday during the upcoming MLB season, we'll be offering one of these $50/50 Teams contests with the top team earning a FREE 2020 NFBC Main Event entry, while paying second and third place prizes as well. We will use the Fanball scoring for this weekly contest. We'd like nothing more than giving out 20+ free entries this year with all of the weekly winners competing late in the year for an even bigger FREE entry. Stay tuned. We're excited about this concept.
Going on Auto Draft: If anyone times out once during a DC draft, they will automatically go on Auto this year. If anyone times out twice in a row in a 1-minute draft, they will automatically go on Auto this year. Obviously any owner can take themselves off auto after they are put on auto, but the goal is to keep everyone diligent and to keep drafts moving.
FAAB Improvement: There is one addition to FAAB we are discussing that should help owners with multiple teams. Let's see if we can fully implement this for 2019 (it was Darik's fine suggestion) and we'll announce it when we have it done. But we're not done improving FAAB and hopefully saving you folks time on Sundays.
Live Scoring Additions: Live Scoring is in real-time and our Team Stats page updates less regularly and fully after games are complete. We know a lot of folks love the Team Stats page, so if there's something there you like that maybe should be added to Live Scoring let us know. We want to get Live Scoring as good as it can get with the content.
Carolina Blue Hyperlinks: Again, we've heard you. The light blue text for every hyperlink is too hard to read, so we will be changing that to a darker blue. The company colors will remain on some headers and buttons, but the most important part to read that was in Carolina blue will be transitioned to a darker, more readable blue. You can thank us with a Corona in Las Vegas!!
Dealing with 2-Way Players: Our stance on a 2-way player is that we will develop in the software one player who owners can draft and use him at the start of the week either as a Pitcher or a Hitter. Not both. And not separate. We have NOT developed this software yet because Shohei Ohtani has no chance to pitch this year and it's unlikely that Brandon McKay will reach the majors this year. We have many other programming needs ahead of this, but we will be prepared for this in the next year and this is how we are going to program it. So in Ohtani's case, on Monday you either put him in as a DH or as a pitcher. And you can't use him as a DH on Friday after using him as a Pitcher on Monday because obviously he's locked on Monday as a Pitcher. So there you have it.
1099s: Last year we began reporting your 1099s as your earnings for all of that year minus your entry fees for all of that year. This year we have a chance to take it a step further that may help you. I'm going to let Darik follow this post with the information since he's more of an accounting guy than I am. Stay tuned for that and sign up early (and pay) if you'd like. Thanks all.
New Exempt State: Vermont residents are now exempt from competing in the NFBC, NFFC and NFBKC. The state fees for a fantasy sports license are just too high to justify. Sorry.
Registration and the 2019 web site will be live in early to mid-November. We are working hard to launch all of this soon, so stay tuned. But as you can see, we've fully looked at the past year and made the changes that will make this game better than ever. We will continue to listen to your suggestions, so feel free to post comments or ideas here. The IT team is going to be busy as you can see, but we love the suggestions. Let's make this the best year ever and award you folks the most prize money ever. Thanks all and welcome to NFBC SVI (that's for Tom, who loves Roman numerals)!!!
It's hard to believe how far we've come in the last 15 years. During the debut season of 2004, we had 195 Main Event teams and four AL-only or NL-only auction leagues among Las Vegas, New York and Chicago. That's a total of 243 teams in our debut contest. Last year we had over 10,000 teams and we awarded close to $3.2 million in prizes. The NFBC has grown every single year from 2004 to 2018.
And we expect that trend to continue this year. We have all of the plans in place for 2019 and we will be launching earlier than ever before and drafting earlier than ever before. We're working hard right now to launch the 2019 season and we now have the site designed in a way that will allow us to launch even earlier in future years. Are you ready?
We have a lot of changes to announce for the upcoming season. We'll get into more detail on some of these as we announce individual contests and their rules, but let's get busy right now with all of the changes. We think you're going to like these. Here we go:
The NFBC Main Event's grand prize will be $150,000. The most coveted title in the fantasy baseball industry has had a grand prize of $125,000 for five years now and it's time to raise that carrot and keep it growing. The grand prize will now be $150,000 with second place increasing to $40,000 and overall prizes reaching the Top 15 in the final standings. League prizes will also increase with first place now rising to $7,000, second place to $3,400 and third place to $1,700. The top 5 finishers will all earn between $150,000 and $10,000. We will always look at add prize money after the grand prize as this contest grows, but it was time to increase the top prize and we will continue to fill in as the Main Event grows. Prizes are based on 540 teams after we reached 510 teams last year. Good luck all.
Entry Fee Increases. To pay out more in prizes, we are raising the entry fee in the NFBC Main Event to $1,700 and the Auction Championship entry will also rise to $1,400. AL-only and NL-only Auction League entry fees will also be $1,400. Last year, we decided not to charge for Events Fees or co-manager fees -- a savings of up to $125 per team -- as this being a part of doing business in this space. Most teams in 2014-18 were paying $1675 to compete in the Main Event, but now most of that extra $100 will go toward increased prizes. It also puts us closer in line with our competitors in another sport who have entry fees ranging from $1,800 per team to over $1,900 per team. Yes, it's an increase in these entry fees, but not much more out of line than we charged in past years with lower prize payouts.
Auction Championship Prizes Increase. With an increase of $100 in the NFBC Auction Championship (but again with no Events Fees or co-manger fees), the grand prize in the Auction Championship will now grow to $30,000 as we will now pay the Top 6 finishers. League prizes also increase to $7,500 with second place earning $3,350 and fourth place earning $1,400. We will be returning to Las Vegas, New York and Chicago this year and expect to fill 12 leagues again. For the AL-only and NL-only auction leagues, prizes will now increase to: 1st - $8,400 2nd - $3,250 3rd _ $1,600.
Online Championship Grand Prize Grows to $125,000. We are bullish on this contest as well and we believe it's time to grow this grand prize as well. Without any price increase, we are projecting growth in the number of teams and setting the grand prize up to $125,000. No other prizes are changing as we expect to increase the secondary prizes as we grow past this year's expected target number of just over 2,000 teams.
Cutline Championship Grand Prize Grows to $70,000. We have seen how the best ball format has grown exponentially in football and we are going ALL IN on that concept in baseball. The grand prize is growing by $20,000 this year, with second place overall growing to $25,000 and third place growing to $15,000. The entry fee will start at $150, but every third team will be $50 off. So in the past you could individually buy three teams for $375, but this year you'll be able to buy a 3-pack or three teams individually for $400. We are going to program the software to automatically give you that discount for a third team even if you buy them one by one and the same will be true this year for the Online Championship. We believe you can't just have one Cutline team, so we'll incentivize you for every third team!! How's that? (Note: The Cutline will also have special package discounts for 5-packs ($100 off) and 9-packs ($200 off) as well if you buy them at one time.)
Overnight Pause For Draft Champions Leagues: We have reduced the overnight pause for DC leagues to 6 hours this year as it will now go from 2 am ET to 8 am ET. All of the tools are now in the NFBC Draft Room to allow you to set your queue for the next round, or the next two rounds, or for any individual round, so you should be able to be prepared before going to bed or before rising from bed. With a 4-hour clock, you still have 10 hours, which is longer than you had with our 8-hour clock and no pause. And even in a 2-hour draft, that's still a total of 8 hours, so we are comfortable with the clock change. Just stay alert and USE THE NEW AUTO DRAFT TOOLS AND THE QUEUE.
Shortening The Final 20 Rounds Of Draft Champions Leagues: We are going to program DC drafts this year to shorten the clock in half for Rounds 31-50. We noticed in the past that the last 20 rounds took longer than the first 30 rounds and have the ability now to address that. Once we hit Round 31, the clock will automatically be reduced to 2 hours in a 4-hour draft and to 1 hour in a 2-hour draft. Again, we have all the tools to allow anyone the chance to set players in their Que for every individual round and we are going to do all we can to push folks to learn these tools. By reducing the time in the last 20 rounds, we believe the DCs will get done sooner, allowing more folks to do more leagues. Oh, and this year there is a timer on Draft Results that shows the amount of time each pick took. We are not going beyond that, but everyone will be accountable with each pick and the time will be shown.
Online Auctions: The NFBC now has its own online auction software and it will be ready when the draft room opens. We debuted the online auction software in football and it was a huge hit. It's fantastic. We will have price points of $150, $250 and $500, and we'll have FAAB auctions with 7 reserve rounds after the auction and DC auctions. The draft room opens as soon as the auction ends and the timer will work exactly the same as it does for the DCs (going from 2 hours to 1 hour after Round 30).
My Teams Page: The goal of the My Teams page is to eventually put tabs on that page for each sport and to combine all of your teams from all sports on this one page. We also want to create tabs for years so that you can hide teams from past years and just call them up by clicking any of those yearly tabs. We're not at that point yet, but that's the goal. Past teams from STATS will eventually get loaded into our system, but we're still not there yet. Also on My Teams, we'll default that page to the way it is now, broken down by contest categories, but we'll also allow you to change that page to have all of your teams listed in any order without the contest headers. We'll also allow you to Hide any teams that you want at some point this year. All of this still has to be worked on, but we heard you loud and clear last year and we are working on all of this. As a result of us switching the NFBC to a new platform that will allow us to roll the site over much easier from year to year, your 2018 teams might not be accessible right away, but it won't be long after the launch that we'll have those on your My Teams page. Again, that's part of this redesign we'll be working on now. Grab 2018 info now if you really need it for the first drafts.
Overall Standings: We will add one more piece to Overall Standings for our five national contests that we used to have in previous years. That's a number that shows how many spots you've moved up or down in the overall standings. We have an up or down arrow there now, but it didn't show last year how many spots you moved up or down that day. That will be there this year.
Players Share Page: We added this in football and will now make it even better. On your team page, under Stats there is a Players Share page that shows you how many teams you have each individual player that you've drafted on. It may show that you have Mookie Betts on 5 teams, Justin Verlander on 4, etc. That's helpful for people who have a lot of teams and an injury hits during the season. Now we're also going to break it down to show those shares by game style. That will let you know how many Cutline teams you have him in where you can't make a FAAB change and how many FAAB teams you have him on. That should save you some time.
Draft Board Big Sticker. We have added a link to the draft board that allows you to turn off the big sticker. We know that those Cutline leagues really cruise and sometimes the big stickers just arrive one after another, covering up the big board. You can now turn the big sticker off if you'd like on your own board.
Dealing With Unsigned Free Agents: Rule change for this year: Unsigned Free Agents will still be allowed to be drafted, but if they are not signed by Opening Day they won't appear in FAAB until they appear on a 25-man MLB roster. So in last year's case, Jose Bautista could have been drafted, but once Opening Day hits he now won't appear in FAAB until he reaches the major leagues.
Dealing with Rainouts on Monday/Friday: In the past, players locked 5 minutes before their first game on Monday or Friday and if there was a rainout they were still locked. The system is now being set up to allow those players to unlock if the game is called off and they won't be locked again until 5 minutes before their game on Tuesday or Saturday. Just another convenience change for you folks.
Add A Players Page: I feel bad that we don't have a page on the site to show photos of our live events or even a new video that Brady Tinker did for us during the live football event. We will eventually change that and showcase our great players on the site. Stay tuned. This is much needed. Our national champions holding the big checks will appear on this page as well. Can't wait.
NFBC $50/50 Teams Contest Returning: We are filling these up every week in the NFFC right now as we are using the Fanball DFS software. Every Tuesday during the upcoming MLB season, we'll be offering one of these $50/50 Teams contests with the top team earning a FREE 2020 NFBC Main Event entry, while paying second and third place prizes as well. We will use the Fanball scoring for this weekly contest. We'd like nothing more than giving out 20+ free entries this year with all of the weekly winners competing late in the year for an even bigger FREE entry. Stay tuned. We're excited about this concept.
Going on Auto Draft: If anyone times out once during a DC draft, they will automatically go on Auto this year. If anyone times out twice in a row in a 1-minute draft, they will automatically go on Auto this year. Obviously any owner can take themselves off auto after they are put on auto, but the goal is to keep everyone diligent and to keep drafts moving.
FAAB Improvement: There is one addition to FAAB we are discussing that should help owners with multiple teams. Let's see if we can fully implement this for 2019 (it was Darik's fine suggestion) and we'll announce it when we have it done. But we're not done improving FAAB and hopefully saving you folks time on Sundays.
Live Scoring Additions: Live Scoring is in real-time and our Team Stats page updates less regularly and fully after games are complete. We know a lot of folks love the Team Stats page, so if there's something there you like that maybe should be added to Live Scoring let us know. We want to get Live Scoring as good as it can get with the content.
Carolina Blue Hyperlinks: Again, we've heard you. The light blue text for every hyperlink is too hard to read, so we will be changing that to a darker blue. The company colors will remain on some headers and buttons, but the most important part to read that was in Carolina blue will be transitioned to a darker, more readable blue. You can thank us with a Corona in Las Vegas!!
Dealing with 2-Way Players: Our stance on a 2-way player is that we will develop in the software one player who owners can draft and use him at the start of the week either as a Pitcher or a Hitter. Not both. And not separate. We have NOT developed this software yet because Shohei Ohtani has no chance to pitch this year and it's unlikely that Brandon McKay will reach the majors this year. We have many other programming needs ahead of this, but we will be prepared for this in the next year and this is how we are going to program it. So in Ohtani's case, on Monday you either put him in as a DH or as a pitcher. And you can't use him as a DH on Friday after using him as a Pitcher on Monday because obviously he's locked on Monday as a Pitcher. So there you have it.
1099s: Last year we began reporting your 1099s as your earnings for all of that year minus your entry fees for all of that year. This year we have a chance to take it a step further that may help you. I'm going to let Darik follow this post with the information since he's more of an accounting guy than I am. Stay tuned for that and sign up early (and pay) if you'd like. Thanks all.
New Exempt State: Vermont residents are now exempt from competing in the NFBC, NFFC and NFBKC. The state fees for a fantasy sports license are just too high to justify. Sorry.
Registration and the 2019 web site will be live in early to mid-November. We are working hard to launch all of this soon, so stay tuned. But as you can see, we've fully looked at the past year and made the changes that will make this game better than ever. We will continue to listen to your suggestions, so feel free to post comments or ideas here. The IT team is going to be busy as you can see, but we love the suggestions. Let's make this the best year ever and award you folks the most prize money ever. Thanks all and welcome to NFBC SVI (that's for Tom, who loves Roman numerals)!!!
