That means we could launch the 2025 NFBC website on Tuesday, November 5th. Heck, it's Election Day, so why not shoot for that day!!!
What a great diversion from this wild political cycle than to draft your first baseball teams while others are debating the future of our country. Hopefully we can launch that day.We already have dozens of NFBC $150 and $50 Draft Champions leagues going right now using the 2024 Draft Room, but we'll convert to the 2025 Draft Room once the site launches. Oh, and if you want to grab screenshots of all your 2024 draft boards, FAAB results or anything else please do so before we turn the site over to 2025. All of that information goes into the ether when we roll over the site. You can still see League Standings, Overall Standings and some other stuff on your Historical Teams page, but grab everything you want now before we move into 2025. Thanks.
Okay, speaking of 2025, we are excited about the upcoming season. We already have our host venue in Las Vegas as we'll host drafts, auctions and camaraderie at Park MGM March 19th through the 25th. We also are returning to the East Coast thanks to Mike Massotto as he is organizing "The Godfather Games" in Robbinsville, New Jersey. We have a ballroom at a Hampton Inn & Suites on Friday-Saturday, March 14-15 and hope to host 3-5 live events out there. I'm excited to go out there myself and get auctions, Main Events and an Ultimate League live in New Jersey.
Now for 2025 NFBC. We have some changes to pricing and formats and I want to post them all here. Let's go:
** The entry fee for the NFBC Main Event will increase $50 from $1750 to $1800. ALL $750 FROM THESE INCREASED FEES WILL GO TOWARD AN INCREASE TO THE LEAGUE PRIZES!!! League prizes have not been updated for years as we pushed the grand prize and overall prize totals higher, so we felt it was important to increase the league prizes this year. First place in each league now earns $7,500, second place increases to $3,600 and third place increases to $1,800.
To make this math work, we've had to lower some secondary prizes in the Main Event overall, but nothing changed among the Top 5 finishers and we're still paying the Top 34 overall teams, compared to the Top 35 last year. We really felt that increasing the league prizes had to be a priority this year and I think we've done that with an increase of $750 to each league, including an increase of $500 to the league champions.
Now, we are going to give everyone a chance to save a little more even with this price increase. We will offer an Early Bird Special of $75 off per Main Event team -- the highest we've ever discounted a Main Event entry -- if you sign up for a Main Event team by December 31st. You don't even have to pay for that team until Feb. 15th, but by signing up and committing to one or more Main Event teams we'll discount each entry by $75. We will NOT offer a discount like this from January 1st on. Yes, maybe $50 off a 2-Pack, but nothing as substantial as this. We are confident that we will sell out the NFBC Main Event for a 21st time this year, but having people commit by December 31st helps us and saves you money. Sound good?
** We will offer Rotowire Online Championship Extended drafts this year. Each year, our first Rotowire OC league of the year is around January 1st. That's been our kickoff for this contest each year and we'll fill 200 or more leagues each year. But we found out that the industry is embracing these Extended drafts (slow drafts, if you will) and it makes sense to offer them for the Rotowire OC, which has a $150,000 grand prize. We will offer OC Extended drafts right out of the gate and we will shut them down in late February. We are NOT going to offer these during the last month of the drafting season, but if you want to draft in a 12-team, 30-round format at your own pace, we will make that happen. We will NOT be offering Main Event Extended drafts, but we do believe it can work for this format. Hope you agree and have fun with this contest.
** The entry fee for the $1500 Auction Championship will increase to $1600 this year. Once again, it's a way to boost league prizes that really need it in this format. We pushed the envelope to get the grand prize to $30,000 and to increase the overall prize pool, but we haven't increased the payout percentage enough within the leagues to keep up. So $1,200 of the $1,500 raised by this increase goes right to the league prizes. First place now jumps $750 to $8,500, second place jumps $300 to $3,800 and third place jumps $150 to $1,650. We are still shooting for 12 leagues and the overall prize pool is the same as last year when we finished with only 11 leagues. Should we get more than 12 leagues this year, the secondary overall prizes will benefit.
The $2,500 Auction Championship leagues remain the same as the Super pays 69.33 percent in league prizes, while the $1600 leagues pay 58.1 percent in league prizes. The dollar amounts to the overall are the same for each contest, but the Super still pays the Top 3 a nice percentage of total revenue.
** Discount Changes. We are making a few slight changes to our Special Packages and discount offerings. First, our "Kohl's Cash" 5% off offer will be limited to contests over $100 and under $2,500 going forward. You may have noticed that in the past we offered a 5% discount for the same contest if you signed up within 5 minutes. This was my "Kohl's Cash" idea because my wife ALWAYS spends the Kohl's cash she gets and she swears she's saving us money!!!
Anyway, the majority of this went to Gladiators and $50 DCs and it was misleading to Platinum, Diamond and Ultimate players since we really didn't have multiple contests at those price levels. So now you'll get 5% on any NFBC contest over $100 and under $2,500 if you quickly purchase a second item of the same contest.Also, in the past we allowed "double dipping" on the Special Packages offerings. If you bought a Rotowire OC team, for instance, and then quickly took 5% off the next team and even another 5% off a third team, the software would reward you with another $50 off that third team for a 3-pack. Now the logic has been changed to counting those 5% discounts individually and the 3-pack will individually be counted when the second and third teams are paid at full price. We know a lot of you loved this loophole and we didn't close it in the past, but it was adding up more than we anticipated, giving close to 10 percent discounts. We will address this a different way going forward.
** The grand prize for the NFBC Best Ball 12's has increased from $10,000 to $12,000. This format continues to grow and thus we need to incrementally continue to grow this grand prize. However, it also has taken participation away from the NFBC Cutline Championship -- which is also a Best Ball national contest -- and thus changes will be coming to that contest. We are going to limit that contest to a set number of participants this year and see if that will help the Cutline survive for the future. Stay tuned for more details.
** We are looking to add Sit 'n Go's in 2025. This might be a work in progress, but there are certain contests where starting them as soon as they fill makes a lot of sense. Obviously, these have to be contests that fill on a daily basis and during a time where contests fill on a daily basis, but there is some merit to trying these this year. The DC 50's that don't use KDS is one type of contest and maybe other DCs could work that way as well. We look forward to getting feedback from all of you on this and seeing if this format works for certain NFBC contests.
We'll unveil all Contest Overviews with prizes, draft dates and times, and more next week when the site launches. These are the only changes we anticipate for 2025 as contest rules remain the same. Minimum Innings Pitched, Position Eligibility, Scoring, etc. are all the same. We didn't make a single game change to the NFBC contests, mainly just prize changes.
Thanks all for 21 great, great years. Now it's time for Year 22 and another record-breaking year. Thanks all and we'll see you soon in the draft room!!