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February 21, 2006 12:03 PM Subscribe
Looking to establish an Fantasy Baseball league with an auction style draft amongst a group of people nationwide. I'm figuring online chat is the best method. Any suggestions on both software and process? Free services are ideal.
Online chat really is your best bet. As a user of several different Fantasy Sports hosting providers I can say that most of their draft software is utter crap.
posted by nulledge at 12:17 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by nulledge at 12:17 PM on February 21, 2006
What would one use for chat? 37signals' Campfire would have worked, but it turns out it was all just an attempt to make people pay for a service. Bastards.
posted by yerfatma at 12:34 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by yerfatma at 12:34 PM on February 21, 2006
I know it's not free, but my football league has been very happy with cbs sportsline. We've been using it for five or six years now, and the service has really come into it's own the last couple of years, especially the draft. Like you, we're scattered around the country. It might seem like a lot of money, but it's worth it, and besides, this is something that (hopefully) you'll be on a few times a day for more than six months. Having a good site is worth it. 150 bucks, spread out over 8 or 10 guys, really isn't that much. I'm guessing that their baseball stuff is as good as their football.
posted by incessant at 12:35 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by incessant at 12:35 PM on February 21, 2006
Response by poster: couldn't you use something like Yahoo! fantasy baseball for the draft
Yahoo doesn't offer an auction feature. In this setup people bid on the players they want, not just select when it's their turn from all available players.
posted by Yukon at 12:36 PM on February 21, 2006
Yahoo doesn't offer an auction feature. In this setup people bid on the players they want, not just select when it's their turn from all available players.
posted by Yukon at 12:36 PM on February 21, 2006
Best answer: I know it's not free, but my football league has been very happy with cbs sportsline. We've been using it for five or six years now, and the service has really come into it's own the last couple of years, especially the draft. Like you, we're scattered around the country. It might seem like a lot of money, but it's worth it, and besides, this is something that (hopefully) you'll be on a few times a day for more than six months. Having a good site is worth it. 150 bucks, spread out over 8 or 10 guys, really isn't that much. I'm guessing that their baseball stuff is as good as their football.
Different strokes and all, but I absolutely loathe Sportslines over layout, plus every year at the beginning of the season they seem to have massive issues with waivers, rookies, scoring, and assorted other mishaps.
From several years of experience the best way to do an auction is to have an auctioneer run it through some sort of chat room, and have a spreadhseet/online app tally dollars and players.
posted by nulledge at 1:11 PM on February 21, 2006
Different strokes and all, but I absolutely loathe Sportslines over layout, plus every year at the beginning of the season they seem to have massive issues with waivers, rookies, scoring, and assorted other mishaps.
From several years of experience the best way to do an auction is to have an auctioneer run it through some sort of chat room, and have a spreadhseet/online app tally dollars and players.
posted by nulledge at 1:11 PM on February 21, 2006
If you'd like to post some more details such as league size, bidding rules, league host, etc. I'll see what I can do to help formulate a solid auction plan.
posted by nulledge at 1:20 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by nulledge at 1:20 PM on February 21, 2006
As far as the chat feature goes, Ventrilo is a pretty nifty (and free) application that will allow you to setup a voice chat channel for a group of users. It's a cool VOIP solution that would work well in this situation. Each "owner" would need to have a microphone (ideally a headset). Then the commisioner just needs to run the server, tell everybody how to connect to it, and you're golden.
posted by stovenator at 2:31 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by stovenator at 2:31 PM on February 21, 2006
While just about every stat service will offer some kind of serpentine draft software, the only online auction software I've really come across is FantasyAuctioneer.com.
It's $30 for them to simply host your auction, but it's $70 total if you want them to host your auction and your league for the entire year (through RotoWire.com). I've demo'd it in the past, and was really, really impressed. Much more objective and reliable than a chat room.
Personally, I don't think RotoWire's league hosting service is all that hot, but I haven't used them in a couple of years and they may have improved. (And even if they didn't, I still like just about any paid league hosting service over a free one on Yahoo -- you just have so much more control over the settings).
I work for the company that owns TQStats.com, so feel free to take my recommendation for them with a grain of salt if you like, but I really like them the most, and I've used about everything.
posted by mattwatson at 2:40 PM on February 21, 2006
It's $30 for them to simply host your auction, but it's $70 total if you want them to host your auction and your league for the entire year (through RotoWire.com). I've demo'd it in the past, and was really, really impressed. Much more objective and reliable than a chat room.
Personally, I don't think RotoWire's league hosting service is all that hot, but I haven't used them in a couple of years and they may have improved. (And even if they didn't, I still like just about any paid league hosting service over a free one on Yahoo -- you just have so much more control over the settings).
I work for the company that owns TQStats.com, so feel free to take my recommendation for them with a grain of salt if you like, but I really like them the most, and I've used about everything.
posted by mattwatson at 2:40 PM on February 21, 2006
Response by poster: nulledge, nothing is set in stone but I'm figuring on 12 teams, 5x5, $260. Probably use Yahoo for the management simply from familiarity and ease of access. Any and all ideas would be great. First year with auction...always been snake draft.
posted by Yukon at 8:03 PM on February 21, 2006
posted by Yukon at 8:03 PM on February 21, 2006
Best answer: You're going to need at least 4+ hours budgeted to get it done all in one sitting (assuming 10 man rosters, average a minute per round of betting). I would caution against ventrillo simply because it would be too chaotic to track voice bids, chat gives you the luxury of a timestamp.
A third party person to run the auction is a must. Assuming that you're having each team nominate a player to bid in order, you'll want to recap at the end of every 12 bidding rounds. Better yet would be publishing players taken and dollars remaining to a website. The first few cycles will take a lot longer to complete than the mid to late ones. Some of the rounds at the end will be bitter as well as people will fight over the last decent player at a position. You'll want your auctioneer to have a quick count to move things along.
PS. Take a buck flyer on Matt Cain.
posted by nulledge at 3:21 AM on February 22, 2006
A third party person to run the auction is a must. Assuming that you're having each team nominate a player to bid in order, you'll want to recap at the end of every 12 bidding rounds. Better yet would be publishing players taken and dollars remaining to a website. The first few cycles will take a lot longer to complete than the mid to late ones. Some of the rounds at the end will be bitter as well as people will fight over the last decent player at a position. You'll want your auctioneer to have a quick count to move things along.
PS. Take a buck flyer on Matt Cain.
posted by nulledge at 3:21 AM on February 22, 2006
12 teams, 5x5, $260
That is incredibly generous of you. Unless you mean you're expecting me to cough up $30. Then you can fuck right off.
posted by yerfatma at 4:30 AM on February 22, 2006
That is incredibly generous of you. Unless you mean you're expecting me to cough up $30. Then you can fuck right off.
posted by yerfatma at 4:30 AM on February 22, 2006
Response by poster: nulledge, awesome advice. I will find an independent auctioneer and everything will be tracked (hopefully live) through a blog so people can keep straight what has happened.
on preview: Thanks for clarifying the roster thing, you had me confused
posted by Yukon at 5:27 AM on February 22, 2006
on preview: Thanks for clarifying the roster thing, you had me confused
posted by Yukon at 5:27 AM on February 22, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by TonyRobots at 12:08 PM on February 21, 2006