I don't blame anyone for waiting to start drafts until they are sure that the upcoming season is going to start and finish on time, but yesterday's news was the best news we've heard in some time. It appears that in the final year of the CBA, the players are NOT going to take a reduction in pay again and the owners have decided to push forward and hope that crowds can return to games sooner rather than later.
Now, when the CBA ends and 2022 is on the table, that's another discussion/headache, right?
I also don't blame anyone for waiting to make travel plans for 2021 live events or to cancel them outright. Safety has to be the first concern of everyone and we certainly have plenty of online options for those folks who don't want to take the risk of doing live events. We did safely host live NFFC events at the Bellagio in Las Vegas in September and have plans right now of hosting live events in New York City, Las Vegas and Chicago, but everyone has to make their own decisions when it comes to live or online.
All I can say is that we'll do everything we can at the live events to make them safe for those who do attend. In September at the Bellagio, we doubled the size of the draft U's and were able to rent 11 foot x 7 foot screens for the ballrooms. Those live events in Las Vegas went off without a hitch and everyone had a great time, while staying safe. We'll do the same thing this year in Las Vegas if needed. In New York and Chicago, we'll spread out as much as space allows and rent the largest screens those venues offer. In New York, they might force us to limit the Saturday Main Event to only two leagues in the big ballroom, but we'll work with the Stewart Hotel on all of that when the time is right. Heck, we just hope New York let's us fly into the state by March.
All of this will be discussed and evaluated in the next two months. As we've seen in our country, a lot changes in a hurry, both in a good way and in a bad way. Let's just plan for baseball right now and worry about how we draft those teams for a little later. That being said, we are planning to move forward if allowed by the states to host in New York, Las Vegas and Chicago and hopefully some folks will join us at each venue.
The good news is that despite the uncertainty of baseball until now, NFBC folks have been having a blast drafting teams on our site. We are ahead of last year's record pace in the Draft Champions leagues and we've had multiple Best Ball Cutline and other Best Ball format drafts as well. I love to see so many people drafting, but what I love even more is seeing people find the formats that work best for them. I mean we have full 4-hour leagues, 2-hour leagues, 1-hour leagues, 30-minute leagues and MTM's "super fast" leagues. Some of these 50-round DCs are getting done in 5 days, 7 days, 10 days, 12 days, and in MTM's case, 36 hours. It's heartening to see 3-7 rounds being done per day and I think the software is helping to keep things moving. Whatever it is, the "slow draft" format has improved immensely over the last three years and it's because of recommendations from all of you that have led us to this happier place.
Now for some good news within the NFBC front: Yesterday we added a fourth full-time front person to our staff. Brian Bolf has joined me, Tom and Darik and he will work closely with Darik and Tom in monitoring and growing our online drafts. Brian is a long-time friend of Darik's who has watched online drafts for us in the past and is a die-hard fantasy player. He's probably watched thousands of our drafts through the years when we get really busy in baseball and football, and we knew it was time to bring him on full-time.
And the reason we need another hand on deck is that we plan on growing the online drafts to suit everyone on both coasts. In the past, we've mainly offered online drafts between 7 pm ET and 10 pm ET. In the last year we've expanded to 11 pm ET offerings because Darik volunteered to work late. But we really are short-changing the West Coast audience with our Midwest work hours and by adding Brian to a late-night shift we feel like we can have a regular diet of 11 pm ET and maybe even midnight or 1 am ET offerings for the Online Championship and Best Ball contests. In the past, Tom and Darik spent much of the night promoting our contests on the Message Boards or on Live Chat and then when they filled they jumped into those draft rooms to monitor them. We stopped trying to fill more late-night drafts. With Brian there to monitor most of those drafts, Tom and Darik can set up a later draft time and see if there's interest for one more each night. We'll now treat the West Coast like the East Coast with 9 pm PT and 10 pm PT if demand warrants it.
Brian is also going to help us push our BestBall10s contests and push more nightly contests there as well. That $10 entry fee format has tens of thousands of owners drafting at BestBall10s.com and most of the drafts are slow drafts. But with one dedicated employee watching and pushing those contests on a more regular basis, I think you'll see more nightly drafts filling for baseball and football. And if we can introduce that format to new customers, eventually they'll find the other offerings we have here at the NFBC and NFFC. So Brian is on board and you'll likely get to know him in the draft rooms and even on Live Chat as he helps us fill and then monitor our online drafts.
A fourth employee also will help us monitor the Live Chat, the Message Boards and emails more closely and have someone available to answer your questions at most times of the day. It also helps us on weekends as for years we've worked seven days a week during the busy draft days, weeks and months. So again, get to know Brian because he's going to be valuable to us when we need additional help the most.
And you can even say hi to him here!!!
We'll use this thread to keep sane dialogue moving forward on the MLB season, the NFBC drafts and anything else that is on your mind (outside of politics). We always answer questions on Live Chat, but feel free to post any thoughts or questions here and we'll reply to everyone on this thread. The forums can still be used in a positive way and in a good promotional way even though social media is the way many of you talk these days. For me, this is still a great place to hear back from many of you and to communicate with most of you.
When I think of things I want to discuss, I'll do it here. For now, the message is that we're full-steam ahead for the 18th season of the NFBC and we hope that many of you can join us as well. There's no guarantee that it will be a smooth ride, but let's hope for a full season that includes more fans with each week that goes by and healthy players throughout the season. Stay well everyone and stay in touch.
