Live Chat Thursday With Greg & Tom: Thursday

[Greg Ambrosius]

Okay, we're inbetween sports and have some time to talk some baseball. Post your questions in advance if you'd like to get the ball rolling and we'll answer anything and everything!! Keep it clean, boys, because my kids now know how to log onto the Message Boards!!

Tom and I will jump on for a Live Chat on Thursday around 3 pm ET and take your baseball, football, Packers and even family questions that you have for us. It's time to get things really rolling around here and there's so much going on in the industry that it's worth having a Live Chat once a week. I'm also going out to Las Vegas next week and will participate in the 13-team (yes, 13 teams!!) FSTA Draft. I think we finished 5th last year, but this year we're going to win it all!!! I'm taking our NFBC ADPs with me for guidance, so don't let me down guys.

Before then, I'm going to Lambeau Field on Sunday for the Packers-Cowboys game. If I die of exposure (don't ask) that day, it's been fun. But if we win and move on to Seattle, it will be a happy day. GO PACK GO!!

Okay, what questions do you have for us? We're ready even before Thursday, but if nobody participates before then we'll see ya at 3 pm ET tomorrow. Let's have fun with this and we'll do it more often. Thanks all and enjoy.

Oh, and by the way, tonight we have John Pausma on our STATS Fantasy Advantage show around 11 pm ET on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio 210/87. John won the $150,000 grand prize in the NFFC Primetime, so if you need a loan at a good rate give us a call and we'll hook you up with John!! Congrats CHAMP and we'll talk tonight.

[76erfan]

Are you concerned at all with sign up rates for the 12 team NFBC Primetime live events? Do you think thats because people see the online championship as an alternate? On the other side of the equation....Auction interest seems to be at an all time high? Any thought to increase leagues/prizes there?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Are you concerned at all with sign up rates for the 12 team NFBC Primetime live events? Do you think thats because people see the online championship as an alternate? On the other side of the equation....Auction interest seems to be at an all time high? Any thought to increase leagues/prizes there?

This is your contest and if demand wanes on the Primetime then we'll know it's not meant to be and move on next year. But I still think a live 12-team Main Event has merit and we're committed to it. We slightly reduced the grand prize this year because we had 84 fewer teams than expected last year. So we'll shoot for 21 leagues this year and hope it works out. I think it will.

Why can't we fill up a single Primetime league in New York City? I don't have the answer. We seem to fill Primetime Onlines, but I sure wish we had a lot of full Saturday night Primetimes like we do in football. But again, you guys sign up for what you like and if 12-teamers aren't appealing in baseball outside of the Online Championship then we'll adjust next year. But for this year, ROI sure looks good in the Primetime and hopefully someone wins the $80,000 and the $75,000 cash bonus. I'd love that.

As for the auction, we've raised the entry from $650 to $750 to $1,000 to $1,200 in recent years. We didn't want to raise that again, but you are correct that demand is very high this year. If we get more than 9 leagues, you'll see additional overall prizes and next year we'll budget accordingly and figure out a way to get that grand prize up to $25,000. That would be very cool. We love the Auction Championship format in baseball and that contest is shaping up very well right now.

We like the early signups this year, but there's no doubt the industry has changed. More people are still doing DFS football games -- even well into the post-season -- and we probably won't get everyone's full attention until the Conference Championship games are done. We'll be here when baseball folks are looking for the best season-long game to play.

[Edwards Kings]

Pitching rich Mets? Strange that they have not pulled of any trades yet with Colon, Degrom, Gee, Montero, Niese, Syndergaard, Wheeler, and Harvey all primed for rotation spots. They say you can never have enough pitching, but this is overdoing it. Do you see them making a move (shortstop maybe) and if so, with whom or is Cuddyer going to be the big splash for them this year?

[ALL-IN JD]

John Mayberry Jr. was actually their big splash!!

[Edwards Kings]

John Mayberry Jr. was actually their big splash!!

I see you jumped in on the 10:00 am Auction...there goes the neighborhood!

[ALL-IN JD]

I wanted to donate more money to my favorite charity, Bob Partecelli Inc. !!

[Edwards Kings]

Do you think you will ever find yourself saying "Great! I just snagged Clay Buchholz for my team!"?

[DOUGHBOYS]

The Braves sign Josh Outman and AJ Pierzynski....
You know, John Mayberry doesn't sound that bad...

[Greg Ambrosius]

Pitching rich Mets? Strange that they have not pulled of any trades yet with Colon, Degrom, Gee, Montero, Niese, Syndergaard, Wheeler, and Harvey all primed for rotation spots. They say you can never have enough pitching, but this is overdoing it. Do you see them making a move (shortstop maybe) and if so, with whom or is Cuddyer going to be the big splash for them this year?

You want me to figure out the Mets? I'm only human, Wayne!!

I'd love to see deGrom, Montero, Syndergaard, Wheeler and Harvey in the rotation this year and see if they can build around that rotation, but they still have extra parts to trade. I assume a trade is coming at some point this season, but I doubt that you see any more signings by the Muts. Cuddyer is the splash, or ripple, for the Mets this year.

[Red Sox Nation-]

Hi Greg,

I know this is going to be a difficult question since you're not in IT but i'll ask. Will we see any FAAB enhancements? We've come a long way with enhancements to the FAAB system thru the years and I'm curious if anything is in store.

To me all other enhancements are secondary. FAAB is the timesuck and necessary evil to success here and it's the single biggest reason I can't enter as many leagues as I'd like. The easier FAAB is to execute the more leagues we enter.

On a related note: Can we get FAAB to process immediately at 10PM EST once bids lock? Since I don't think these are manually calculated its tough to understand why this can't be accomplished. I understand a week 1 delay ensuring everything is status quo. Once FAAB goes thru thats just the beginning. Then comes the tough lineup decisions. Some folks especially on the east coast would like to sleep at a reasonable hour so every minute helps here.

Thanks for listening and looking forward to the best time of the year in March/April

Jason

[Greg Ambrosius]

Hi Greg,

I know this is going to be a difficult question since you're not in IT but i'll ask. Will we see any FAAB enhancements? We've come a long way with enhancements to the FAAB system thru the years and I'm curious if anything is in store.

To me all other enhancements are secondary. FAAB is the timesuck and necessary evil to success here and it's the single biggest reason I can't enter as many leagues as I'd like. The easier FAAB is to execute the more leagues we enter.

On a related note: Can we get FAAB to process immediately at 10PM EST once bids lock? Since I don't think these are manually calculated its tough to understand why this can't be accomplished. I understand a week 1 delay ensuring everything is status quo. Once FAAB goes thru thats just the beginning. Then comes the tough lineup decisions. Some folks especially on the east coast would like to sleep at a reasonable hour so every minute helps here.

Thanks for listening and looking forward to the best time of the year in March/April

Jason

It's not a hard question Jason. We want you guys to save as much time on FAAB as you do. Outside of speed of loading player stats, what is the No. 1 item you want improved with FAAB? We have a To Do List right now for the upcoming season and if there's anything that can make FAAB easier than it is now and gets you to take more teams, I'll put it at the top. I've asked to keep both systems active for this season because some owners still are used to the older version, but in time we certainly want the new FAAB setup that you guys helped us build be the way to go.

Yes, we have looked over the timing of FAAB and have some solutions. However, we are going to keep a 10 minute buffer to make sure there are absolutely no issues with FAAB. So let's just say that FAAB is running at 10:10 pm ET every Sunday. Then all bids will start processing at that time and you should see all bids within 15 minutes. At the end of last season when there were obviously fewer bids, FAAB was running within 5-7 minutes. I expect this to be similar this year, but everyone should realize that bids start processing at 10:10 pm ET each and every week to make sure everything runs correctly. I'm convinced all bids should be run before 10:30 pm ET every week after Week 1.

Hope this helps and keep the tough questions coming. We want everyone on the same page.

[Red Sox Nation-]

Thanks Greg. A couple things that come to mind and have been brought up by others in the past:

*Ability to see if a player is available in other leagues that we're playing in. For example - A new closer emerges or a big prospect is called up. The type of player that we'd most likely be interested in on all teams. It would be great to search for the player on one of my teams, pull up the player page, and see a listing of other teams I own him where he is available. This is a MAJOR TIME SAVE. Right now I'll have to manually run through all of my FAAB teams individually to find them. I do realize this is probably not the easiest project for IT but it would be a home run. I'm sure the football guys out there would cheer for this as well.

*Ability to add a player to FAAB thread from the player page. We actually used to have this option Pre-STATS. Right now we search for a player by name. Then we click the hyper link of the player to see if he's owned. If he's available we then need to search for that player in the player list. We can eliminate the last step with this option.

I'm sure others can chime in but these two come to mind. I'm all about time savers. It's already the best FAAB system in the market (anyone use sportsline? ) It's great that you take our feedback and over the years we've seen many enhancements due to that. Keep up the good work

Jason

[Doctor Who]

Greg, if you were to join one of your events, which one would it be and why?

With all the experience you have gotten from auctions, what game plan are you most comfortable with?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Thanks Greg. A couple things that come to mind and have been brought up by others in the past:

*Ability to see if a player is available in other leagues that we're playing in. For example - A new closer emerges or a big prospect is called up. The type of player that we'd most likely be interested in on all teams. It would be great to search for the player on one of my teams, pull up the player page, and see a listing of other teams I own him where he is available. This is a MAJOR TIME SAVE. Right now I'll have to manually run through all of my FAAB teams individually to find them. I do realize this is probably not the easiest project for IT but it would be a home run. I'm sure the football guys out there would cheer for this as well.

*Ability to add a player to FAAB thread from the player page. We actually used to have this option Pre-STATS. Right now we search for a player by name. Then we click the hyper link of the player to see if he's owned. If he's available we then need to search for that player in the player list. We can eliminate the last step with this option.

I'm sure others can chime in but these two come to mind. I'm all about time savers. It's already the best FAAB system in the market (anyone use sportsline? ) It's great that you take our feedback and over the years we've seen many enhancements due to that. Keep up the good work

Jason

Good suggestions. The Bid from Player Page should be doable. We talked about that before and it was a top item to complete; we did have it before. I'll talk with IT about that one, but I'm pretty sure it's on the agenda already.

I don't know how complicated the other item is, but it doesn't sound easy. That doesn't mean we can't do it. I'll bring it up and see what can be done. No doubt it would be a HUGE help for everyone. I'll see what we can do. Honestly, we know what can be done and has been done elsewhere in the industry for seeing many of your teams on one page and that's the ultimate goal going forward. We've talked about that already, but again not an easy project.

Keep the ideas coming and we'll see what we can do. I agree, our FAAB is good but it can always be better. Thanks.

[Edwards Kings]

The Braves sign Josh Outman and AJ Pierzynski....
You know, John Mayberry doesn't sound that bad...

I get what Hart is doing. And if the reload is successful, I will invite him to dinner (cioppino, coq au vin, 2011 Uproot Wines Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc, paris-brest, VSOP cognac). If not, I will invite him to lunch (vienna sausages, saltines, moon pie - the old one I just found in my truck, RC cola).

It is going to be a long two years until the stadium opens.

[Doctor Who]

The Braves sign Josh Outman and AJ Pierzynski....
You know, John Mayberry doesn't sound that bad...

I get what Hart is doing. And if the reload is successful, I will invite him to dinner (cioppino, coq au vin, 2011 Uproot Wines Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc, paris-brest, VSOP cognac). If not, I will invite him to lunch (vienna sausages, saltines, moon pie - the old one I just found in my truck, RC cola).

It is going to be a long two years until the stadium opens.

Try being an Astros fan the last couple of years. Been horrible for longer than that, just now are we starting to get over the hump to being competitive again.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Greg,
I think I know the answer to this as being 'Too much money and IT time', but I'll ask anyway.

With all the interest in auction drafting, is there a chance that that the NFBC could build a 'home park' for auctions?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Are you concerned at all with sign up rates for the 12 team NFBC Primetime live events? Do you think thats because people see the online championship as an alternate? On the other side of the equation....Auction interest seems to be at an all time high? Any thought to increase leagues/prizes there?

One more point on the Primetime this year: Prizes are based on only 252 teams this year and last year we had 240 teams. We know a lot of people will draft these Online, which is fine, but doing these Live are great too because we can zip through these in less than 3 hours. In Las Vegas, some guys will do Primetimes at 10 am and 1 pm with time to eat and take a break inbetween. So I love these and wish the New York audience would carve out time on Friday like we do in Las Vegas for a few of these, or at least on Saturday night.

Now, back to the odds of winning. We are shooting for only 21 leagues in the Primetime. If you win your league, you have a pretty good shot at an overall prize or even the $80,000 grand prize. The Main Event may have 420 or more teams this year, by comparison. Also, last year we had almost 120 owners who took teams in both the Main Event and the Primetime and hopefully we can top that number this year.

If we are going to attract new customers to the NFBC, I do think it's important to have a 12-team Main Event. It's not easy to just jump into our 15-team Main Event at $1,600 off the bat. Many of you have done it and continue to play that format, which is fantastic. And yes, we do have the 12-team Online Championship that continues to grow each year, but I still believe in the 12-team Main Event and hope it grows this year. I think it will.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg,
I think I know the answer to this as being 'Too much money and IT time', but I'll ask anyway.

With all the interest in auction drafting, is there a chance that that the NFBC could build a 'home park' for auctions?

Dan, it's a good question. It's certainly not about the money, but all about the time. We know there is a market for online auctions and we'd love to have them for all of our sports. We've talked about this internally and everyone agrees it would be a good addition to our contests.

But do we build that right now instead of the new online draft room? Do we build it before upgrading other areas like FAAB, Live Scoring or mobile apps? Do we build this before something like the NFBC Cutline, which we think can really be a hot product? I know we want all of these items, but building an online auction site is definitely going to take a lot of programming time. It's far down on the list at this point, unfortunately.

I just finished our Thursday call with IT and we have a lot of good things rolling right now. We have a lot to finish in the coming months. I look forward to the day when Online Auctions are at the top of the list because obviously there is demand for this product in all of the sports we currently offer and we have to continue to innovate and offer new contests to be successful. Thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

*Ability to add a player to FAAB thread from the player page. We actually used to have this option Pre-STATS. Right now we search for a player by name. Then we click the hyper link of the player to see if he's owned. If he's available we then need to search for that player in the player list. We can eliminate the last step with this option.

Jason, I want to make sure I'm getting this one right. Is this request different from the Bid On Player button on a players' team page? Late last year we did add the Bid On Player link on each players' page in the NFBC; it wasn't there for NFFC this year but will be there before next season. Is that what you are asking for? It seems like we did eliminate that last step with this button. Just confirm please.

Just an FYI: Last year when we added the new FAAB system, we took this button off the player page for awhile so that we could redirect folks to the new FAAB page. That's where it will take you from the Bid On Player button on his page. Just an FYI if you use that button this year. Good luck all and I hope I answered this one correctly.

[Gekko]

I just finished our Thursday call with IT and we have a lot of good things rolling right now. We have a lot to finish in the coming months.

Have the position eligibilities on the draft board been corrected? If not... Can u shed any light on an ETA and what the problem is, specifically?

Without more information, this situation is approaching a "complete and utter lack of confidence" vote for STATS IT. Sorry to say. When it seems like the company doesn't care (talking IT), it reduces consumer loyalty. Then again STATS IT might not care...

[Greg Ambrosius]

I just finished our Thursday call with IT and we have a lot of good things rolling right now. We have a lot to finish in the coming months.

Have the position eligibilities on the draft board been corrected? If not... Can u shed any light on an ETA and what the problem is, specifically?

Without more information, this situation is approaching a "complete and utter lack of confidence" vote for STATS IT. Sorry to say. When it seems like the company doesn't care (talking IT), it reduces consumer loyalty. Then again STATS IT might not care...

It's definitely not an "IT doesn't care" situation Mark, even though you may think so. And of course it looks that way when this isn't fixed. I hate to admit it, but it wasn't fixed last year either. Miguel Cabrera was wrongly listed on the draft board all last season as 1B when he was 3B eligible. That was wrong. We had a couple of other players who were listed wrongly on the draft board as well last year. This year we have 7 players who are correctly listed in the draft room and wrong on the draft board, listed as DH.

I don't understand it completely, but it's obviously pulling that data on some of these players from a STATS list outside of the NFBC eligibility list. Why? I don't know. But the draft room list is being pulled from the correct NFBC eligibility list and every time you pick a player you know what his position is. Our draft board is old and needs to be updated and that's where we are spending the IT time. The new draft board in the new online draft room will be the same one you saw last year at the live drafts with the big player sticker with a photo of the player and the draft board we had at the live drafts. When that draft board is added to online drafts we will be done with these 7 wrong positions, the data will come right from our NFBC eligibility list and we won't have the refreshing every 45 seconds on the draft boards. We'll bang out a lot of problems right away.

We are still working on the new online draft room, but there has been some testing done already and this should all be implemented before our heavy load of online drafts are scheduled in February, hopefully well before that. And that software is also built already for football and with early testing should be ready for the football season in 2015. It's HTML technology, not Flash, and should be easily used on many devices.

I'm not sure why the current draft board isn't an easy fix with those 7 players (and why just those players, like Cabrera last year?), but I'm more eager to get the new software implemented so that we never have this problem again. I wish it was done today. Hope this helps.

[Catch]

Hi Greg,
Requesting a couple games to be added to your list:
1) With the success of the auctions, can you add a TWELVE TEAM SUPER AUCTION on Sunday, March 29th @ 1pm (Bellagio). This added game will not impact the PRIMETIME game as there is one that day @ 10am. Sign me up first!
2) With no cutline this coming year, can you add back the 10 team satellites. And if you are asking me for a date, I prefer the $500 version on Monday, March 30th. Again, sign me up first!
Thanks, Tom Z

[Roy's Outlaws]

Greg , As far as the software for online line Auctions, It looks like it could take Stats IT department many years to get to the programing done on this ? It might be a lot more cost affective and get the game up and running by going out and buying up one of the already existing sites ?

Since we have add 2 more Auction in NY this season for the Auction Championship. Can you let the player in the NY Super Auction vote to be private or part of the championship. All other Supers are private league. WE should be allow to decide if we want to lose $3500 out of the prize pool or Not . I don't know which way the vote would go as I have heard support on both side, but the league show have the right to decide.