auction draft - day of set-up (1 Viewer)

[zcher]

gentlemen, i'm commish'ing an auction draft/league this year. it will be our inaugural year trying an auction draft. i did a quick search and couldn't really find anything about the actual hosting of an auction draft. found a lot about strategy, but i'm looking more for info on what it's like on the actual draft day.

for those of you who've been a part of a live auction draft, i have a couple of questions, and am looking for suggestions on running it.

-how long will it actually take? i allotted 5 hours, but our normal snake drafts took 5+ hours, so i doubt we can finish an auction draft in 5 hours. on average, how long do your drafts last? should i expect this to be an all day thing?

-what's your set-up? do teams just keep bidding until someone quits? do you guys implement any sort of timer with the bidding/drafting process at any point during bidding? (ex: my brother suggested 2 minute limit on each player. if there is still a bidding war in the last 10 seconds, it goes to blind bid. winner of blind bid takes it.)

-how do you guys track the amount of money spent by each team? is there particular software you use? i want this to be accurate and relatively pain-free so that the guys will have fun and want do an auction again.

-do you guys use some sort of host to run the auction? someone who isn't participating in the league?

-how do you guys deal with in season bidding for free agents? just flat $100 for the year?

that's all i have for now. any help, pointers, advice is extremely welcomed. thanks.

 

[Winning IS Everything]

First off, expect a TON of fun. I completely enjoy my auction draft. Now to answer some questions..........

Our auction generally runs around 4 to 4 1/2 hours for a 10 team 16 player roster. For the first time, I would make it about 6 hours. The key is to not have much lag time. If there is a couple of second pause between a bid start calling going once, going twice...... That keeps it moving along. Yes, we bid until it stops, no timer. We go "Going once, going twice, sold". It seems to work.

Our league commish uses an excel spreadsheet to keep track of team money and we take regular breaks to update teams on where they stand. Most owners use pencil and paper (and poor math skills LOL) to keep track of their own. I use an excel sheet broken down to position allotment and totals and it has never done me wrong.

Our commish hosts our auction. It can be hectic though, so I would see if there is a bystander that can just keep track of things.

Our league is a salary cap league, $200. Whatever you have under cap is what you can use to bid FA. Let's say I am at $195. I want to bid on say Lance Dunbar, if I am dropping a guy with a $5 salary I would then have $10 to bid.

You guys will have a blast and never go back to drafting. I am in both auction and regular draft leagues, but I just love the auction. Most fair way to do it.

 

[SelenaCat]

We do both a 10-team redraft and 12-team keep-5 with 18-player rosters in about 4-5 hours each (usually depending on technical issues), but we've also been running those leagues for 10+ years, so we have a pretty good rhythm. I'd budget for 6 and if you have extra time, use that for an immediate post-auction analysis or something. Rushing the end of the auction isn't fun for anyone, plus you want to be able to have a couple of 5-10 minute breaks to let people use the bathroom and such since there isn't the built-in downtime between your own picks.

I wouldn't put an artificial time limit on the bidding, it won't really be necessary. Yes, there will be the occasional player where bidders are squeaking bids in before the "sold" multiple times in a row, but for the most part, bids will flow well enough, especially in the middle rounds where teams have either blown a lot of money already or are saving for their favorite sleepers towards the end. We also allow a starting bid rather than defaulting to $1, which can lead to some interesting strategy at the end of the draft when no one has the funds to overbid, but saves a lot of time on the marquee players.

We go around the room taking turns nominating players for the draft. We've toyed with letting the winner nominate the next player, but we've found that it helps for everyone to know they have to come up with a name to nominate soon (sadly, that sometimes takes more time than the bidding itself, especially towards the end).

To help keep things flowing smoothly, one person nominates a player. The auctioneer then repeats the nomination, along with position, team and starting bid. Only after the auctioneer has announced the player can bids be made. It just helps keep the flow going and gives everyone that bit of time to find the player on their draft list. Towards the end of the auction, we also pause after every round or two of nominations just to review the maximum bids for each team.

If two or more identical bids come in at once, we usually have the room decide who said it first, though the auctioneer has final say. We've never had any problems with this, and most of the time one of the simultaneous bidders will just bid up without prompting.

Ideally, you want a third-party to be the auctioneer. If you're both auctioneering and bidding, make sure you do your own ranking homework well in advance. I would also say something up front about possibly dragging out the "going, going" part for players you're considering. Doing both is actually a huge disadvantage and it's only fair that you're given a little leeway there. If anyone has a problem with that, let them auctioneer instead (and I say this as a person who doesn't auctioneer for our league). Also, if you wind up with someone having to call in, we usually have a one-time shot after the "sold" part where we ask if they're okay with the bid, just to make sure there're no communication issues (phone dropped, we didn't hear them). They have to have an immediate reply, though, it's meant as a confirmation, not additional time to consider a bid.

More importantly, you want a non-bidder to run whatever spreadsheet/draft software you use, if at all possible. That's actually the part that slows us down the most in our auctions, so having someone else pull down the names makes a huge difference in the overall length of time. Though if that's not an option, definitely give that job to someone other than the auctioneer, and possibly give them the same leeway with the confirmation after-bid since it pulls you away from your draft board even more than auctioneering.

As for whatever you use to keep track of the players/money left, we've been using Fandraft (www.fandraft.com) for the last few years. It's $30 the first time, and $15 for repeat users, and we've been very happy with it. Previously, we'd been using an Excel file to keep track of everything, and that also worked reasonably well, it just wasn't as visually pretty and Fandraft has an easy way to export an html file of the final results. The important pieces of information are the prices of the players, the position (if you can have your data entry color-code it, it makes it more visually obvious to everyone -- and I'd HIGHLY recommend that you display it on a wall with a projector), and the maximum bid for each player. As a reminder, the maximum bid formula is: (Money left) - (roster spots left - 1).

In our fully redraft league, we ignore the salaries post-auction and just use the standard waiver wire process. In our keep-5 league (which has a complicated salary increase from year to year based on performance), we have a separate $100 FA budget that's not tied to your salary cap. As a note, if this is any sort of a keeper league, I would absolutely recommend you NOT allow FA pickups to be kept as the salary structure is completely different and can often give huge advantages.

I love both forms of drafting, but auctions are definitely a lot of fun. Expect a few bumps the first time you try it, but unless you have massive technical difficulties with the tracking software, I'm sure your league will love it.

 

[wodahSShadow]

If a long run time (6 hours, as mentioned above) may pose issue, I would suggest using a website to host the draft- as automation will certainly cut down on lag. Been using ESPN's auction draft interface for the past 2 years for a 10 teamer, and, to be honest, I wouldnt do it any other way (the fact that it is free is just icing on the cake). Keep in mind, this doesnt mean you cannot draft live- people just need to bring laptops/ipads whatever. As long as you have wi-fi set up, it is a breeze and just as fun as using a live auctioneer - without having the tedius work of keeping tabs on budgets, etc.

 

[Winning IS Everything]

If a long run time (6 hours, as mentioned above) may pose issue, I would suggest using a website to host the draft- as automation will certainly cut down on lag. Been using ESPN's auction draft interface for the past 2 years for a 10 teamer, and, to be honest, I wouldnt do it any other way (the fact that it is free is just icing on the cake). Keep in mind, this doesnt mean you cannot draft live- people just need to bring laptops/ipads whatever. As long as you have wi-fi set up, it is a breeze and just as fun as using a live auctioneer - without having the tedius work of keeping tabs on budgets, etc.

This is good info. Thank you! I will keep this in mind for my auction league...... Still do live, but have the software run it.

 

[Pastor]

We have one of the guys wives run the auction and try to get another one to put the players and cost on the board.

We use draftkit and get the auction labels. They get put up on the board under the owners name with the cost and the running total. This makes it easy and everyone can see what each other has spent and what players they have. Also, we do a 12 team, 20 player roster auction in about 6 hours with breaks and food.

We draw for nominations and then that makes the divisions. 1-4, 5-8, 9-12 are the divisions and we start nominations at 1 and do not snake. Hope this helps.

 

[zcher]

thanks for all the advice men. some good stuff in here and gives me a much clear picture of what to expect. i'm excited for this

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