Auction Drafts (1 Viewer)

[Raylove]

I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum, but I am starting an Auction league this year and am looking for the best site to host the actual draft, not the league. All the teams are spread throughout the States, so we will not be in person and need a website with a timer that can be adjusted.

A few years back I toyed with a site that allowed a pretty good customization of options. The site allowed for all owners to nominate 1 player at a time and used an (set #) hour timer which would reset after every bid. Sounds long, but it had a feature that if an owner was definitely not going to bid in a player, you could click a (for the lack of a better word) "no bid" button. This would eliminate the owner from bidding. If every team used this feature, the time limit would be foregone and the player would be awarded. It was the best way that I have found to do an auction yet because it eliminates having to be online at the end of a bid time frame and hope that you are the lucky last person to get his bid in before time expires.

The problem is, I lost my bookmarks and don't know which site it was. Any help on auction sites is greatly appreciated. thanks.

 

[pizzatyme]

I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum, but I am starting an Auction league this year and am looking for the best site to host the actual draft, not the league. All the teams are spread throughout the States, so we will not be in person and need a website with a timer that can be adjusted.A few years back I toyed with a site that allowed a pretty good customization of options. The site allowed for all owners to nominate 1 player at a time and used an (set #) hour timer which would reset after every bid. Sounds long, but it had a feature that if an owner was definitely not going to bid in a player, you could click a (for the lack of a better word) "no bid" button. This would eliminate the owner from bidding. If every team used this feature, the time limit would be foregone and the player would be awarded. It was the best way that I have found to do an auction yet because it eliminates having to be online at the end of a bid time frame and hope that you are the lucky last person to get his bid in before time expires.The problem is, I lost my bookmarks and don't know which site it was. Any help on auction sites is greatly appreciated. thanks.

The "best" one I'm aware of (which also happens to be the only one) is fantasyauctioneer.com. It is live auctions only though, I believe.Lots of problems with it in the past. Good luck.

 

[JoeSteeler]

what site do you use to host the league?

 

[gangles]

what site do you use to host the league?

Used fantasyauctioneer last year for our draft. I worked well enough. You can customize the bidding time and the time between picks and the commissioner has a stop and rewind function that comes in really handy when you lose connection with a player. We only had connection problems with one player (international) and I cant verify if it was a site issue or his connection issue. I also remember it getting really slow towards the end of the draft as players exhausted their funds and just set their computers to autonominate players ... i think there were a lot of players nominated that no one bid on and ended up on the nominating teams roster for $0 and then had to be removed later. And the remaining teams who wanted to bid on players had to wait for 5-6-or more players to be nominated and go through the bidding process before they could nominate and bid on people they wanted.In the end it works well if you have a good group of guys who pay attention to the bidding and nomination process. I good commissioner at the controls is a must. We are going to continue to use fantasyauctioneer for our yearly free agent draft.

 

[Jeff Pasquino]

I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum, but I am starting an Auction league this year and am looking for the best site to host the actual draft, not the league. All the teams are spread throughout the States, so we will not be in person and need a website with a timer that can be adjusted.A few years back I toyed with a site that allowed a pretty good customization of options. The site allowed for all owners to nominate 1 player at a time and used an (set #) hour timer which would reset after every bid. Sounds long, but it had a feature that if an owner was definitely not going to bid in a player, you could click a (for the lack of a better word) "no bid" button. This would eliminate the owner from bidding. If every team used this feature, the time limit would be foregone and the player would be awarded. It was the best way that I have found to do an auction yet because it eliminates having to be online at the end of a bid time frame and hope that you are the lucky last person to get his bid in before time expires.The problem is, I lost my bookmarks and don't know which site it was. Any help on auction sites is greatly appreciated. thanks.

Pretty sure MFL can do this for you (MyFantasyLeague.com)

 

[Raylove]

thanks for the responses guys. I googled everything I could think of and could not come up with that website I used a few years back. I'm guessing it is no longer a functional site. Its a shame because it was much better than fantasyauctioneer.com.

Its the first year of this league, so we are not tied to a site. My other leagues are on fanball, so I would prefer to use them but it's not a must.

Has anyone used MFL's auction? Good, bad? Does it have customizable time limits? Does it reset the clock with every bid to prevent the lucky owner who bids last before the buzzer? Does it have the "not draft" feature if you know you are not going to bid on a particular player?

 

[dwaynecherokee]

The best one is fantasyauctioneer.com - They will even import your draft data to your MFL site. They also did some visual upgrades this year as well.

 

[by_the_sea_wannabe]

I preferred the MFL auction to FA.

 

[BigRed]

Pretty sure MFL can do this for you (MyFantasyLeague.com)

We have MFL - where is this option

 

[Jello_Biafra]

thanks for the responses guys. I googled everything I could think of and could not come up with that website I used a few years back. I'm guessing it is no longer a functional site. Its a shame because it was much better than fantasyauctioneer.com.Its the first year of this league, so we are not tied to a site. My other leagues are on fanball, so I would prefer to use them but it's not a must.Has anyone used MFL's auction? Good, bad? Does it have customizable time limits? Does it reset the clock with every bid to prevent the lucky owner who bids last before the buzzer? Does it have the "not draft" feature if you know you are not going to bid on a particular player?

If anyone has any answers to these questions, I'd also be curious. I'm looking for a site that has a "pass" or "not draft" feature, as well.

 

[JoeSteeler]

thanks for the responses guys. I googled everything I could think of and could not come up with that website I used a few years back. I'm guessing it is no longer a functional site. Its a shame because it was much better than fantasyauctioneer.com.

Its the first year of this league, so we are not tied to a site. My other leagues are on fanball, so I would prefer to use them but it's not a must.

Has anyone used MFL's auction? Good, bad? Does it have customizable time limits? Does it reset the clock with every bid to prevent the lucky owner who bids last before the buzzer? Does it have the "not draft" feature if you know you are not going to bid on a particular player?

http://www.myfantasyleague.com/help/index....options_42.htmlI am in a salary cap league and loved the initial auction draft. It also worked great for out FA period. Hope that link helps.

 

[Captain Hook]

FROM - the MFL info page linked above -

"NOTE: This site was not designed for "live auctions" whereby each player auction gets over in a matter of minutes, and we strongly suggest you do not attempt to use the site for this type of auction. Instead, you might want to see if Fantasy Auctioneer might better suit your needs."

FA.com is the only one I know of right now......BUT there are several problems with the site (in fairness I haven't used it since last year - maybe they fixed them all)

1) connectivity - including people getting hung (or frozen) - should tell everyone to use Mozilla Fire Fox if you are going to have the auction there (their recommendation as well)

2) ask for a trial - and when you do, ask them if they can fix the feature that extends the clock on final bids

Frankly if you have a decent group of owners, get someone not in the league to volunteer as auctioneer and just have your auction in a chat room (of course someone will have to input all the data, but likely some of your teams use a computer during the draft anyway).

 

[Chaos Commish]

I

A few years back I toyed with a site that allowed a pretty good customization of options. The site allowed for all owners to nominate 1 player at a time and used an (set #) hour timer which would reset after every bid. Sounds long, but...

Pretty sure you're describing the auction format at Xperts. MFL will do the exact same thing I think. These are slow auctions sped up by having 10-16 players on the board at once (depending on league size). I used to join as many mock auctions there as I could in order to be comfortable with auction values since that information isn't as solid as ADP data. I would enjoy setting up a few of these mock auctions at MFL this year. They are usually hard to fill. If 12 or more of you want to give it a go, let me know here or in PM. Maybe we can do a June mock followed by a July mock. I thought the practice I had at Xperts helped me significantly when it came time for the real thing. These mock auctions would not require much daily effort, but they run for a couple weeks. I always thought they were fun to have out there this time of year when Xperts was busy.

I've never tried MFL for this, so what say you? MFL Mock Auction Anyone?

eta: To avoid a complete hijack I started a thread in the mock draft forum for anyone interested.

 

[BigRed]

An email auction draft makes about as much sense to me as non-alcoholic beer, but to each their own I guess.

 

[KellysHeroes]

FantasyAuctioneer is now $45... thats becoming a lot of coin.

ESPN is opening up its own Auction format...

 

[Jello_Biafra]

FantasyAuctioneer is now $45... thats becoming a lot of coin.ESPN is opening up its own Auction format...

That's what it says for baseball. When you click on football, then "Create An Auction or Draft", there are different prices listed. One says "Not included - $23.99 per league"; the other choice is "Included- $74.99 for Private leagues - $9.99 per team for Public leagues". Not sure what the difference is in "included" and "not included", but I like the price for "not included".Antone know for sure what the price is? I sent them a message, but haven't heard back from them.

 

[KellysHeroes]

FantasyAuctioneer is now $45... thats becoming a lot of coin.ESPN is opening up its own Auction format...

That's what it says for baseball. When you click on football, then "Create An Auction or Draft", there are different prices listed. One says "Not included - $23.99 per league"; the other choice is "Included- $74.99 for Private leagues - $9.99 per team for Public leagues". Not sure what the difference is in "included" and "not included", but I like the price for "not included".Antone know for sure what the price is? I sent them a message, but haven't heard back from them.

Notice when u click on Football, it takes u too Football Playoff Auction.Their $$ should be the same for Baseball and Football

 

[Jello_Biafra]

FantasyAuctioneer is now $45... thats becoming a lot of coin.ESPN is opening up its own Auction format...

That's what it says for baseball. When you click on football, then "Create An Auction or Draft", there are different prices listed. One says "Not included - $23.99 per league"; the other choice is "Included- $74.99 for Private leagues - $9.99 per team for Public leagues". Not sure what the difference is in "included" and "not included", but I like the price for "not included".Antone know for sure what the price is? I sent them a message, but haven't heard back from them.

Notice when u click on Football, it takes u too Football Playoff Auction.Their $$ should be the same for Baseball and Football

Yeah, I noticed that. Have no idea what they are talking about, and they haven't responded to my inquiry in over a week. Anyone know how much it cost last year, and if the price was/is different for baseball and football?

 

[Chaos Commish]

I've never tried MFL for this, so what say you? MFL Mock Auction Anyone?

eta: To avoid a complete hijack I started a thread in the mock draft forum for anyone interested.

There's six spots available in "MFL Trial Auction". It's just a mock to see how it goes. I expect it to fill since we got halfway there on Father's Day. Click on the link in the quote to claim a spot or PM me.

 

[Rattle and Hum]

The site was Xpertleagues.com (already mentioned) which was purchased by Bodog.

MFL does not offer an option for owners to click if they will not be bidding on a player.

The biggest issue I have with MFL on auctions is that you can not limit the number of nominations that a team makes.

If your owners can check at least once in the morning and once in the evening setting the amount of time for a player to be won at 9 hours "Without a new bidder" really is not that bad at MFL. Factor in about two-weeks for a 20-player, 12-team league allowing one nomination per team for first few days and two nominations there after. This is about the same as an email draft with 12-hours picks in my experience. You will have to penalize teams for submitting too many nominations in a day or someone will break the rule.

GL

 

[Chaos Commish]

The site was Xpertleagues.com (already mentioned) which was purchased by Bodog.

MFL does not offer an option for owners to click if they will not be bidding on a player.

The biggest issue I have with MFL on auctions is that you can not limit the number of nominations that a team makes.

If your owners can check at least once in the morning and once in the evening setting the amount of time for a player to be won at 9 hours "Without a new bidder" really is not that bad at MFL. Factor in about two-weeks for a 20-player, 12-team league allowing one nomination per team for first few days and two nominations there after. This is about the same as an email draft with 12-hours picks in my experience. You will have to penalize teams for submitting too many nominations in a day or someone will break the rule.

GL

Thanks. I'm pretty interested in seeing how this goes. Not having the pass option is a bad idea as that could really move things along with an active group. Allowing owners to nominate as many as they want just seems bizarre, but a simple rule can be enforced to make it reasonable. I have a redraft that I would love to turn into an auction, but there's no way to get everyone together live and we've all experienced bad issues with Fantasy Auctioneer. I hope MFL is an answer, so I'm trying to find out.

I need three more for the mock, if anyone is interested.

 

[jagerbomb]

I signed up at fantasyauctioneer.com for my redraft league again this year. I'll answer some questions from the other posts.

The cost is $23.99 to host your league's auction, I think this is pretty reasonable, it would cost more in gas for the 14 guys in my league to drive to a central location.

It's 74.99 to do an auction AND have fantasyauctioneer.com host your league. I use a different site to host so I can't comment on that option. I'm only paying $23.99.

Last year our auction went fairly smooth. One guy had a problem because he hadn't tested out his system, which they recommend to do at some point before the auction. The system didn't work well with Internet Explorer so we put it on hold for about 15 minutes while he installed firefox and then we were fine. From my experience, 99% of the problems with fantasyauctioneer.com are related to people using Internet Explorer, I'm not sure if they've fixed that this year.

The auction is fairly customizable, you can set up time limits for nominating players, time limits for bids, input dynasty players, customize roster and bench positions as well as some other stuff. I set my auction with a 30 second time limit to nominate a player (which is plenty) and a 15 second time limit to bid. The 15 second clock gets reset everytime a higher bid comes in, there's no "getting your bid in at the last second" as was suggested in previous posts. If the high bid is $23 and I bid $24, you have 15 seconds to decide if you want to bid $25 or let me have the player. Last year we had 12 managers and 18 roster spots and our draft took about 2-3 hours.

I tried out a mock auction last week and it looks like they have made quite a few changes to the auction software, it looks good but they have a couple things to iron out.

After a lot of searching, fantasyauctioneer seems to be the place to go for online auctions, if anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know.

 

[BigRed]

Mock auctions on ESPN's site suck, frankly, because they are not at all customizable and there seems to be a lot of mindless kiddies who think it's cute to purposely screw up drafts with dumb bids/etc.......but the interface itself looks pretty good overall if you're interested for your league. Don't know how reliable connectivity is, just saying it might be a worthwhile alternative to check out.