NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

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Greg Ambrosius
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NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Feb 18, 2020 3:18 pm

So I'll give credit where credit is due. KJ Duke has been influential through the last 17 years of providing advice and suggestions to improve and expand our high-stakes offerings. He's like a financial whiz or something!! ;) Through the years, he has given me some ideas that were already out there in the industry and through some conversations about them we've created some new contests or rules in baseball and football.

One of those examples involves the Draft Champions contests we run. He told me about Ant Sports about 12 years ago and how Draft 'n Hold leagues were becoming more popular even with inferior software. That led to us improving the format and creating the NFBC and NFFC Draft Champions leagues, which are now industry stalwarts.

KJ and Todd Zola also helped us develop the scoring for Cutline Best Ball Baseball, the industry's first optimal scoring baseball format. That eventually led to Cutline football as KJ liked that "cutline" survivor format.

He also posted late last year about adding Side Challenge games to the NFBC and NFFC, allowing owners with existing teams the chance to win more prize money among friends in similar contests. I always liked this idea as other contests have it as well, but I wanted us to control the software rather than hire a third party partner to do it. I took the idea to our IT department in the Fall and we began to explore the possibilities of offering this.

And I'm happy to report that I think we have the system ready to go now, but we still need your help with this. So here's the general idea:

** With any of our national contests, any owner could create a Side Challenge contest and create a separate set of national rankings. This Side Challenge Contest would include separate prize money that will be awarded to the top teams. So for instance, if KJ created a Main Event Side Challenge, anyone with an existing team could put in whatever the price determined in advance was. Let's say it was $100 or $200, anyone would see the Side Challenge symbol on their My Teams page and enter before or after they have drafted to be part of this additional national game.

** The NFBC will pay 90 percent of entry fees to the top players. We will have a sliding scale for how deep we pay down, such as Top 3 for 10 teams or less, Top 4 for 20 teams or less, etc. Those parameters haven't been finalized yet, but you get my point. Since a customer is creating this game, the payout will be based on the final number of entrants based on a pre-described percentage for 1st place, 2nd place, etc. If we got 200 teams at $200 each, we'd have $36,000 in prizes (90% of $40,000) to give out to the top teams. First place would likely be in the $18,000 range and then secondary prizes would account for the remaining $18,000.

** This Side Challenge can be for the Main Event, but someone could also create one for the Online Championship, Draft Champions, Solo Shot, Online Auction Championship or any other national contest. Again, that person would determine the entry fee for the Side Challenge and people would have to join from their My Teams page before Opening Day.

** There's no additional FAAB work, drafting or starting lineup work to be done. And while you might think the same people would win the Side Challenge who win the national contest, that's not necessarily true. The top teams in the national contest may not have entered, or one owner may have chosen one of his multiple teams to compete in the Side Challenge Contest and that team didn't turn out to be his best team. We might have some surprising winners in these Side Challenge games as the stat categories will have different leaders.

Anyway, it was a good idea when KJ suggested it on the Message Boards and our IT team liked the challenge of putting this together. We're not the first company to do this, but we think we can make this very easy to jump into and at an affordable price. And it might be worth the price of admission to watch your teams in a second set of national standings for that same team. Oh, and there's more prize money you could win, too.

Once we have this completely finalized we can post a step-by-step process in how this works and how you can enter a Side Challenge Contest. We also will discuss how someone can first set one of these up. It's still a work in progress, but we're so close we thought we'd solicit some feedback and advice.

Okay, thanks again to KJ and thanks to anyone who can give us feedback. We look forward to adding this soon and getting things rolling. Thanks all and good luck.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by King of Queens » Tue Feb 18, 2020 3:27 pm

Great concept. Is there a maximum amount that will be allowed as a Side Challenge Contest entry fee?

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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Feb 18, 2020 3:41 pm

King of Queens wrote:
Tue Feb 18, 2020 3:27 pm
Great concept. Is there a maximum amount that will be allowed as a Side Challenge Contest entry fee?
No, not if the customers set it up. This has to be customer driven for obvious reasons and it can be one-on-one or as many folks as the Side Challenge Contest gets. We will handle the entry fees and prize disbursements for all Side Challenge contests that are created. Hope that makes sense.

And, of course, this will carry over into football, where it could be very well received.
Greg Ambrosius
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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Wed Feb 19, 2020 9:11 am

King of Queens wrote:
Tue Feb 18, 2020 3:27 pm
Great concept. Is there a maximum amount that will be allowed as a Side Challenge Contest entry fee?
So two points since my initial post:

1) Side Challenge Games can be offered on private leagues as well. So if someone in the Diamond Auction League wants to create a separate Side Challenge Game they can do that. Same with satellite leagues, Supers, Ultimates or even Platinums.

2) Someone has asked if the 10% charge is constant for any prize level? It's a good question because obviously we take less of a percentage for higher entry fee contests and could do that here. One reason we can do that, though, is that we ask each owner to pay by check so that we don't incur the 3% credit card fee. In Side Challenge Games, we obviously would have to take credit card charges for everything because we can't be chasing down checks after games have already started.

So my answer is that yes, I think we can take a lesser fee for higher entry level Side Challenge Games, but I don't have that figure yet. Again, we have the credit card fees and possible charges denied or hassles there, but we will figure something out there. There is no maximum amount at this point, but give us a heads up if it's more than the entry fee of the league. Thanks.

Hopefully we can unveil this software soon and then we can double our fun this year. Thanks for the positive response so far here everyone.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by KJ Duke » Wed Feb 19, 2020 5:16 pm

Thx for the attribution Greg, but you guys have gone way beyond what I suggested!

I thought a single-entry only contest with each Main entrant allowed to select only one team to enter a side pot would've been fun, eliminating the impact of ME owners that load up on multiple teams. We still don't have that ... but I'm happy to see you guys build-in this functionality to see where the demand for it might develop. 8-)

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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:27 pm

KJ Duke wrote:
Wed Feb 19, 2020 5:16 pm
Thx for the attribution Greg, but you guys have gone way beyond what I suggested!

I thought a single-entry only contest with each Main entrant allowed to select only one team to enter a side pot would've been fun, eliminating the impact of ME owners that load up on multiple teams. We still don't have that ... but I'm happy to see you guys build-in this functionality to see where the demand for it might develop. 8-)
I'm not sure what you're saying. You can create that same Side Pot Game. You can limit how many teams any individual owner will be able to enter in this Main Event Side Pot Game that you create and what the entry fee is. We are creating those tools to let you decide that. Poll the members and see what type of entry fee they want and then set it up as 1 entry per owner and have some fun.
Greg Ambrosius
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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by KJ Duke » Wed Feb 19, 2020 9:19 pm

Thanks Greg! Sounds like fun. I posted a poll on twitter to test my initial thought on price point ...

Hop on over to https://twitter.com/kj_mlb if you want to vote. 8-)

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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by mdecav » Sat Mar 07, 2020 7:41 am

So is this a thing now?

Is this happening?

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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Sat Mar 07, 2020 9:37 am

mdecav wrote:
Sat Mar 07, 2020 7:41 am
So is this a thing now?

Is this happening?
Yes. I'll give an update on Monday. There was a lot of testing that needed to be done to put in things like pulling stats from those contests, refunds if needed, etc. We wanted to make sure we were comfortable with all of that before getting this out there. I'll know more after Monday's meeting, but we'll have this out there soon.
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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Mon May 18, 2020 3:25 pm

Okay, the software is completed for NFBC Side Challenge Games for 2020. Let's wait until we know we have a baseball season before creating a whole bunch of leagues, but let's get you familiar with the software in the meantime.

Under My Teams, pull down to Side Challenge.

Click on Side Challenge Lobby.

There are no contests there now, but you can create one by clicking on the green "Create Side Challenge" button.

All of these contests will be set up by you, the paying customers. You set the parameters of any Side Challenge you want to create and when you enter a contest you are agreeing to the terms set up by a fellow NFBC owner.

Once you click on "Create Side Challenge" then click on the baseball icon for an NFBC contest. There you can name a Side Challenge Contest and make it Private or Public. You can enter ONLY ONE OF YOUR TEAMS for any Side Challenge. So if you create a 100-team NFBC Cutline Side Challenge Contest, you pick the one Cutline team you want for this contest, so pick the right one.

The person who creates the Side Challenge decides if this is a public or private contest. A public contest has to state the number of entries and if it doesn't sell out everyone is refunded. So if KJ creates the 100-team Cutline Side Challenge, all prizes are based on 100 teams and it goes off if it sells out. If it doesn't sell out, everyone would get their entries refunded and anyone could create another Side Challenge with 50 teams or whatever the right number is. But all public leagues -- which allows anyone to join from the Side Challenge Lobby -- must sell out to go off.

The Private league is also created by an NFBC owner and the number of max entries is determined by that owner. Again, ONLY ONE TEAM PER OWNER. That owner also stipulates how long the contest is set for (it can be a weekly Side Challenge, monthly, season-long, whatever he chooses) and how many places the contest will pay out. That's determined by the individual who creates the Side Challenge.

To enter a Side Challenge owners need to get the private promo code from that owner to enter. A max number of teams is entered by the creator of the league, but prizes can be resized if teams fall short of the goal. Every owner would have a prize breakdown on the number of teams up to the max level and would have easy access to a refund at any time before the start of this Side Challenge, knowing how many teams are in the contest. Both private and public leagues will have easy access to join and easy access to ask for a refund.

No more than ONE TEAM PER OWNER for any Side Challenge. You can certainly enter different teams in different Side Challenges, but each side contest will have no multiple team ownership. Also, residents of certain states that are eligible to play in the NFBC and NFFC will be ineligible to play in the Side Contests. I'll list those states soon.

Please don't create any Side Challenges at this point, but hopefully once we have a more certain start to the season we can add some fun to your existing teams. All payouts are 90 percent of the prize pool, so plan accordingly. Thanks all and enjoy.
Greg Ambrosius
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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by King of Queens » Mon May 18, 2020 4:06 pm

Great news, Greg! Finally people are about to put their Money where Their Mouth is.

One important question: are funds for side pot challenges collected up front? I wouldn’t want anyone to disappear into the night :lol:

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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue May 19, 2020 8:10 am

King of Queens wrote:
Mon May 18, 2020 4:06 pm
Great news, Greg! Finally people are about to put their Money where Their Mouth is.

One important question: are funds for side pot challenges collected up front? I wouldn’t want anyone to disappear into the night :lol:
Yes, you'd sign up for a Side Challenge contest just like you would for any contest, paying with credit card or money on account. We are just facilitating these contests and will collect the money and pay out at the end of the contest. I think we'll have some unique Side Challenges and we hope everyone has fun with these "additional" contests without additional drafting/FAAB/Set Lineup, etc. Enjoy.
Greg Ambrosius
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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Thu May 21, 2020 7:39 am

The Side Challenge Contest software now allows more payout options for owners who set up this contests. You can now set these up for payouts of anywhere from winner-take-all to Pay Top 10 and everything inbetween.

We have set up the payout percentages for each option so that it's easier and quicker for someone to set up a Side Challenge Contest. Each of these will have 90 percent payouts at these percentages:

· Winner-take-all

· Top 2 as 70%, 30%

· Top 3 as 60-30-10

· Top 4 as 50-25-15-10

· Top 5 as 50-25-12-8-5

· Top 6 as 50-25-12-7-4-2

· Top 7 as 50-22-12-6-4-3-2

· Top 8 as 50-20-10-6-5-4-3-2

· Top 9 as 50-20-9-6-5-4-3-2-1

· Top 10 as 45-19-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

Hope this helps. Good luck everyone.
Greg Ambrosius
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Re: NFBC Side Challenge Games Will Be Available In 2020

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Sun Jul 19, 2020 6:52 pm

Okay, so now that we have a Sprint Main Event and a Sprint Rotowire Online Challenge, the technology is out there for anyone to create a Side Challenge as well. Heck, you can do it for any contest, national or individual league.

Go to My Teams and pull down to Side Challenge. There anyone can set up a side challenge at the prices available and for the number of teams you want. Just one entry per owner, though, for any Side Challenge.

Who's up for creating a new prize pool while using your same lineups? The technology is there, so use it if you'd like. Then tell me about it!!

Thanks all and enjoy.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
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