Options for fast online auctions? (1 Viewer)

[Genester]

I took this from another thread, but it seems like it might be a nice option for Auctions: www.couchmanagers.com

It looks like this is free as well.

(yeah that was my post) try: couchmanagers.com

couchmanagers.com looks promising, but doesn't appear to be a finished product, yet (e.g. no way to pause an auction, unless you extend the time limit for bidding). I chatted to the support person briefly and they admitted the product is still being developed (which I appreciate knowing). Net, this is still very much "use at your own risk".

 

[GregR_2]

Just hunted the what's new at MFL and no positive updates in regards to fast online auctions.

At this point what I'm leaning towards with my league is to use the MFL slow auction capability to do a fast auction. My thought is to work it like this...

We get everyone online at the same time, and hooked into the same chat session, IM, or even better a teleconference call if possible, for communication. The MFL software is used for submission of all bids so it's clear who submitted the bid first and that they have cap room. When the commish sees the bidding on a player peter out the commish announces he's closing the bidding on the player unless someone speaks up in the next X seconds that they are still bidding. If no one speaks up in time, the commish manually ends the bidding on that player and the next player gets submitted for bidding.

It would be slower than what FA had, but it should at least get us through the top crop of free agent veterans in a reasonable fashion. If we didn't make it through filling everyone's roster in the time we can get everyone together, we could then finish it off with the continuing slow auction, or through blind bidding waivers.

 

[KellysHeroes]

bump

 

[GregR_2]

Ok, a little bit of new information. Maybe useful to some.

The MFL setup window for auctions shows the time increment in terms of days. I realized I'd never actually tested if you could put a decimal in there to have something less than 24 hours on the timer.

Just tested it and you can. I set it to .5 and got a 12 hour timer, set it to .25 and got a 6 hour timer. Set it to .0007 and basically got a 1 minute timer.

Now still on the bad side, there isn't a live auction window that auto-updates to show each new bid. So having a 10 or 15 second timer like we used on FA probably isn't doable as people likely won't even see the player up for bid in time to bid on them. But it could be possible to have maybe a 1 or 2 minute timer, especially if everyone has a league chat session and the commish announces when a new player is going on the clock.

My league is discussing matters and I think we'll probably go with a slow auction, 12 hour timer for our veteran auction, and get through the top few veteran free agents one at a time for a week or two, and then after that we'll maybe allow 1 player per position to be up for bid at the same time. And if we don't finish up in time we'll just finish things off with a blind bidding waiver.

 

[KellysHeroes]

I took this from another thread, but it seems like it might be a nice option for Auctions: www.couchmanagers.com

It looks like this is free as well.

(yeah that was my post) try: couchmanagers.com

couchmanagers.com looks promising, but doesn't appear to be a finished product, yet (e.g. no way to pause an auction, unless you extend the time limit for bidding). I chatted to the support person briefly and they admitted the product is still being developed (which I appreciate knowing). Net, this is still very much "use at your own risk".

this looked like its the best option this yr..

 

[brewerjoe]

I took this from another thread, but it seems like it might be a nice option for Auctions: www.couchmanagers.com

It looks like this is free as well.

(yeah that was my post) try: couchmanagers.com

couchmanagers.com looks promising, but doesn't appear to be a finished product, yet (e.g. no way to pause an auction, unless you extend the time limit for bidding). I chatted to the support person briefly and they admitted the product is still being developed (which I appreciate knowing). Net, this is still very much "use at your own risk".

this looked like its the best option this yr..

It doesn't look like this site allows you to put in current rosters. Only redraft auctions.

 

[sinatravolta]

When you guys are talking about $150 for CBS - I take it you are talking about the standard league cost (it's the same for a non-auction league)? This is discounted to $130 if you buy early (obviously too late for that now- but relevant for next year) - like before June 30 or something.

Or are you saying there's an extra charge for holding an auction? Am curious because would like to try an auction league and am fine with CBS' fee in general - but not if that's $150 on top of the normal league fee.

 

[scientist]

When you guys are talking about $150 for CBS - I take it you are talking about the standard league cost (it's the same for a non-auction league)? This is discounted to $130 if you buy early (obviously too late for that now- but relevant for next year) - like before June 30 or something. Or are you saying there's an extra charge for holding an auction? Am curious because would like to try an auction league and am fine with CBS' fee in general - but not if that's $150 on top of the normal league fee.

Yep, standard league cost, regardless of draft type. I think they are still offering the discount, I get emails from them every other day trying to get me to buy my league because the discount has been extended.

 

[leland_jr]

Does anyone know if you can export ESPN league lists to Excel? The $200 price and whole numbers is fine for my league.

What I'm thinking of doing is holding the draft in ESPN then dumping that out to MFL. Just don't want to type it all by hand.

If ESPN had one or two other features (blind waiver bidding, scoring to add'l decimals, few other options) then I would switch. Heck I'd pay for it.

Right now if anything had that plus an auction draft at $100 or less I'd switch. Seems like many other sites (ESPN, CBS, Fanball, Fanstar, et al.) have auction drafts.

 

[Balance]

Does anyone know if you can export ESPN league lists to Excel? The $200 price and whole numbers is fine for my league.What I'm thinking of doing is holding the draft in ESPN then dumping that out to MFL. Just don't want to type it all by hand. If ESPN had one or two other features (blind waiver bidding, scoring to add'l decimals, few other options) then I would switch. Heck I'd pay for it.Right now if anything had that plus an auction draft at $100 or less I'd switch. Seems like many other sites (ESPN, CBS, Fanball, Fanstar, et al.) have auction drafts.

We used a free mock ESPN draft last year and entered it into Yahoo.It won't come in Excel format, but you will get an email with the results of the draft sorted by Team Name.Worked perfect for us, just understand there are no breaks like this.

 

[GregR_2]

Does anyone know if you can export ESPN league lists to Excel? The $200 price and whole numbers is fine for my league.What I'm thinking of doing is holding the draft in ESPN then dumping that out to MFL. Just don't want to type it all by hand. If ESPN had one or two other features (blind waiver bidding, scoring to add'l decimals, few other options) then I would switch. Heck I'd pay for it.Right now if anything had that plus an auction draft at $100 or less I'd switch. Seems like many other sites (ESPN, CBS, Fanball, Fanstar, et al.) have auction drafts.

If you can get an email or a screen in your browser with the results, it shouldn't be hard to put into Excel. Depending on the format sometimes you need to cut and paste it into Word first and then into Excel as Excel doesn't handle linebreaks well in some formats.Once you get it in there, if it doesn't put things in the right columns then you use Data->Text to Columns to have it break up a single string into multiple columns.

 

[leland_jr]

Perfect. As long as I can get a report in text with player name and dollar paid, that's all I need. I can convert formats myself. Don't mind a bit of legwork, just don't want a huge PITA.

 

[GregR_2]

Ok, a little bit of new information. Maybe useful to some.The MFL setup window for auctions shows the time increment in terms of days. I realized I'd never actually tested if you could put a decimal in there to have something less than 24 hours on the timer.Just tested it and you can. I set it to .5 and got a 12 hour timer, set it to .25 and got a 6 hour timer. Set it to .0007 and basically got a 1 minute timer. Now still on the bad side, there isn't a live auction window that auto-updates to show each new bid. So having a 10 or 15 second timer like we used on FA probably isn't doable as people likely won't even see the player up for bid in time to bid on them. But it could be possible to have maybe a 1 or 2 minute timer, especially if everyone has a league chat session and the commish announces when a new player is going on the clock.My league is discussing matters and I think we'll probably go with a slow auction, 12 hour timer for our veteran auction, and get through the top few veteran free agents one at a time for a week or two, and then after that we'll maybe allow 1 player per position to be up for bid at the same time. And if we don't finish up in time we'll just finish things off with a blind bidding waiver.

Just thought I'd give an update for those who might be thinking about using the MFL code like we did. We've been at it for a week and a half and I'm sort of "eh" about it. We're doing proxy (ebay-style) bidding where you can submit a "high" bid and you don't pay extra beyond what the next highest bid was. We started out with the high profile vet free agents being auctioned off 2 per day for the first week, which made it through most of the expensive guys.Now we have owners post who they want to nominate the next day on the board, and have 1 player nominated by each team going at the same time. Then each evening after the previous auction ends, I submit $1 bids on those players for those teams, and then adjust the timer to end X days after the auction started, and I set it to something that will make the first players nominated end around 10 pm.The biggest downside to it for me is that everyone waits until the last few seconds of the auction to put their bid in, so the guy they may pass doesn't have time to see it and bid again. Of course there is also the risk then that their bid wasn't high enough because of a proxy and then they don't have time to bid again.I'm ok with the "it's your choice whether you put in an early proxy bid or take your chances aspect". But what I don't like is the waiting to the last second to do all the bidding. I'm really not sure that this is any preferable to just doing it with blind bidding.Looking forward to FA being back next year, hopefully with an improved product.

 

[GregR_2]

Got an email from FantasyAuctioneer's owner that they are officially going out of business for good. Figured I should update here, though already a thread on it so I'd suggest referring discussion over to http://forums.footballguys.com/forum/index...howtopic=483704

 

[Dragons]

Ok, a little bit of new information. Maybe useful to some.The MFL setup window for auctions shows the time increment in terms of days. I realized I'd never actually tested if you could put a decimal in there to have something less than 24 hours on the timer.Just tested it and you can. I set it to .5 and got a 12 hour timer, set it to .25 and got a 6 hour timer. Set it to .0007 and basically got a 1 minute timer. Now still on the bad side, there isn't a live auction window that auto-updates to show each new bid. So having a 10 or 15 second timer like we used on FA probably isn't doable as people likely won't even see the player up for bid in time to bid on them. But it could be possible to have maybe a 1 or 2 minute timer, especially if everyone has a league chat session and the commish announces when a new player is going on the clock.My league is discussing matters and I think we'll probably go with a slow auction, 12 hour timer for our veteran auction, and get through the top few veteran free agents one at a time for a week or two, and then after that we'll maybe allow 1 player per position to be up for bid at the same time. And if we don't finish up in time we'll just finish things off with a blind bidding waiver.

Just thought I'd give an update for those who might be thinking about using the MFL code like we did. We've been at it for a week and a half and I'm sort of "eh" about it. We're doing proxy (ebay-style) bidding where you can submit a "high" bid and you don't pay extra beyond what the next highest bid was. We started out with the high profile vet free agents being auctioned off 2 per day for the first week, which made it through most of the expensive guys.Now we have owners post who they want to nominate the next day on the board, and have 1 player nominated by each team going at the same time. Then each evening after the previous auction ends, I submit $1 bids on those players for those teams, and then adjust the timer to end X days after the auction started, and I set it to something that will make the first players nominated end around 10 pm.The biggest downside to it for me is that everyone waits until the last few seconds of the auction to put their bid in, so the guy they may pass doesn't have time to see it and bid again. Of course there is also the risk then that their bid wasn't high enough because of a proxy and then they don't have time to bid again.I'm ok with the "it's your choice whether you put in an early proxy bid or take your chances aspect". But what I don't like is the waiting to the last second to do all the bidding. I'm really not sure that this is any preferable to just doing it with blind bidding.Looking forward to FA being back next year, hopefully with an improved product. <_<

We have always had the same issue, until Fantasy Auctioneer. Never found a way around it.