Here's The Plan For Draft Champions Leagues
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 9:37 am
We are off to a great start in the NFBC Draft Champions Leagues and we're so glad to bring in so many new customers thanks to the NFBC $50 DCs. The 4-Hour and 2-Hour time frames rather than 8 hours not only has been a big hit for our customers, but is now being copied by our competitors in baseball and football. It's amazing how long it takes to make change and how easily people can adapt to that change.
With that being said, we still have to set a deadline on when we can start these Draft Champions Leagues and get them finished before the start of the Major League season on Thursday, March 29th. We also need to do something about these final leagues taking longer than leagues that start in December and January. Every year we have to shorten the time frame of these last drafts to get them completed, so we plan on being more pro-active this year.
So here's the plan:
We will stop taking signups for the NFBC $50 Draft Champions Leagues after Tuesday, March 6th. Those are all 4-Hour leagues and thus we'll turn those private leagues off so that we have 23 days to finish them. We will still offer nightly $50 Draft Champions Express leagues, but the 4-Hour leagues will conclude after leagues fill on March 6th.
We will stop taking signups for the NFBC $150 and $400 4-Hour Draft Champions Leagues on Wednesday, March 7th. Again, that still gives us 22-23 days to complete them. We probably have a little wiggle room here with this format, but three weeks out is about as close to Opening Day as we want to get for this format.
We won't put a hard, fast cutoff date for the NFBC $150 2-Hour Draft Champions Leagues, but likely the weekend of March 8th-10th will be it. We know we can finish these in 10-15 days, but we have seen them drag on for 17 days or so. Hopefully everyone who enters these last ones will understand a sense of urgency there.
Okay, now for a more drastic change and I think it's something we will put into the rules for 2019:
All Draft Champions Leagues that start on March 1st or later will have their selection times shortened by 1 hour once they complete 30 Rounds. We have seen where these last 20 rounds do drag in NFBC Draft Champions Leagues, especially in drafts that start once spring training begins. A lot of people like to take the extra time to watch spring training performances or reports and thus those last 20 rounds seem to drag on and on. We eventually have to drastically cut those times as we get into those final days, sometimes down to 15 or 30 minutes per pick. We always get these drafts completed, but the idea isn't to force everyone to be online for the last day to complete 10 rounds.
We don't have this technically installed yet, so this is something that me, Darik and Tom will manually do. When we see a DC hitting Round 31 that started on March 1st or later, we will move the 4 hours per pick to 3 hours and the 2 hours per pick to 1 hour. If that speed is too fast for your liking, then definitely don't jump into a 2-Hour DC. But let's see how this goes and hopefully it will be better than changing the time to 30 minutes over the last two days of your drafts.
I know some people have asked us to shorten the time in half for the 4 Hours, but let's see how reducing it by 1 hour works. Again, we're not trying to force these picks on you and we know that you all are working during the day, but the system now is set up so nicely that you can easily put players in your Que for any round. If you get auto-picked, it should be taking a Round 35 pick from the top of your Que. And if you don't know how that works, contact me and I'll walk you through it.
We will also look at shortening the over-night Pause soon. Now that we have the multi-round Ques where you can put different players in different rounds, we feel a 6-Hour overnight Pause is suitable. If we agree to that, we will Pause the draft clock from 2 am ET to 8 am ET. If you're not on the clock before you go to bed, you can easily set your Que for one or more rounds and really not miss a pick even if you sleep 8 hours. Hope this makes sense.
We've come a long way this year in improving the experience of competing in the Draft Champions format. Moving away from 8 hours per pick has been a sweet move and an industry trendsetter. Moving to 2 hours per pick was a smart move. Finding ways to get through the last 20 rounds makes sense, as does shortening the overnight Pause. Let's keep fine-tuning this so that this format continues to grow each year and the experience gets better and better. Keep the ideas coming and let's lead the way in this great, great format.
Thanks all and plan accordingly going forward. We're ready for another record-breaking season in the DC format.
With that being said, we still have to set a deadline on when we can start these Draft Champions Leagues and get them finished before the start of the Major League season on Thursday, March 29th. We also need to do something about these final leagues taking longer than leagues that start in December and January. Every year we have to shorten the time frame of these last drafts to get them completed, so we plan on being more pro-active this year.
So here's the plan:
We will stop taking signups for the NFBC $50 Draft Champions Leagues after Tuesday, March 6th. Those are all 4-Hour leagues and thus we'll turn those private leagues off so that we have 23 days to finish them. We will still offer nightly $50 Draft Champions Express leagues, but the 4-Hour leagues will conclude after leagues fill on March 6th.
We will stop taking signups for the NFBC $150 and $400 4-Hour Draft Champions Leagues on Wednesday, March 7th. Again, that still gives us 22-23 days to complete them. We probably have a little wiggle room here with this format, but three weeks out is about as close to Opening Day as we want to get for this format.
We won't put a hard, fast cutoff date for the NFBC $150 2-Hour Draft Champions Leagues, but likely the weekend of March 8th-10th will be it. We know we can finish these in 10-15 days, but we have seen them drag on for 17 days or so. Hopefully everyone who enters these last ones will understand a sense of urgency there.
Okay, now for a more drastic change and I think it's something we will put into the rules for 2019:
All Draft Champions Leagues that start on March 1st or later will have their selection times shortened by 1 hour once they complete 30 Rounds. We have seen where these last 20 rounds do drag in NFBC Draft Champions Leagues, especially in drafts that start once spring training begins. A lot of people like to take the extra time to watch spring training performances or reports and thus those last 20 rounds seem to drag on and on. We eventually have to drastically cut those times as we get into those final days, sometimes down to 15 or 30 minutes per pick. We always get these drafts completed, but the idea isn't to force everyone to be online for the last day to complete 10 rounds.
We don't have this technically installed yet, so this is something that me, Darik and Tom will manually do. When we see a DC hitting Round 31 that started on March 1st or later, we will move the 4 hours per pick to 3 hours and the 2 hours per pick to 1 hour. If that speed is too fast for your liking, then definitely don't jump into a 2-Hour DC. But let's see how this goes and hopefully it will be better than changing the time to 30 minutes over the last two days of your drafts.
I know some people have asked us to shorten the time in half for the 4 Hours, but let's see how reducing it by 1 hour works. Again, we're not trying to force these picks on you and we know that you all are working during the day, but the system now is set up so nicely that you can easily put players in your Que for any round. If you get auto-picked, it should be taking a Round 35 pick from the top of your Que. And if you don't know how that works, contact me and I'll walk you through it.
We will also look at shortening the over-night Pause soon. Now that we have the multi-round Ques where you can put different players in different rounds, we feel a 6-Hour overnight Pause is suitable. If we agree to that, we will Pause the draft clock from 2 am ET to 8 am ET. If you're not on the clock before you go to bed, you can easily set your Que for one or more rounds and really not miss a pick even if you sleep 8 hours. Hope this makes sense.
We've come a long way this year in improving the experience of competing in the Draft Champions format. Moving away from 8 hours per pick has been a sweet move and an industry trendsetter. Moving to 2 hours per pick was a smart move. Finding ways to get through the last 20 rounds makes sense, as does shortening the overnight Pause. Let's keep fine-tuning this so that this format continues to grow each year and the experience gets better and better. Keep the ideas coming and let's lead the way in this great, great format.
Thanks all and plan accordingly going forward. We're ready for another record-breaking season in the DC format.