the LOGISTICS of Auction Drafts (1 Viewer)

[CalBear]

- Finally, we have done serpentine, online auction and now a live auction and every owner without exception thought this year went better than any other year. I highly recommend auction and can say it is less difficult to do than you would think AND makes it far more strategic/fair IMHO. We have definately found our preferred method.

Glad it went well! The main thing about auction is that it keeps you engaged for the whole process; with a draft you can go a long time between picks, and other people's picks don't matter much to you (unless they take the guy who's on top of your list). With an auction, even players you aren't interested in wind up important, because they change the amount of money available and people's perception of value for the players you are interested in.10 more days to my in-person auction--looking forward to it!

 

[butcher boy]

We're having strippers at our auction this year for its 15th anniversary.

This looks to be an important part of the auction draft process.

 

[Maniac_Matt]

Great topic. I'm sorry I didn't see sooner. I have been doing auction drafts as the Commissioner for 10 years and we tried a variety of things to address the very same issues. Eventually I put together an Excel sheet that work pretty well but I switched over to the Drsft Dominator software when it came out. It easily handles the draft and my draft preparation all in one place. It only takes a little bit of set up.

In the past we would recap at the end of each draft round what money was left. This year we'll project on a screen my laptop screen. I'll hide my projections. Now we also have a draft board that we post for the old school folks. We use CBS Sportsline so there is a draft board that comes with the package that works fine for what we do.

1) DD handles

2) DD handles - we go until the bidding slows down and then the auctioneer calls it. In the late rounds when money is low we call it closed fairly quick.

3) I serve as actioneer. We have had outsiders come in and do it but not in recent years. What happens is if I'm bidding on a player and the bidding starts to slow where you need the auctioneer to keep things moving, either the Assistant Commish steps in our another owner not in the bidding. It sounds crazy but it has worked very well for us over the years.

4) How do you have ties? The highest bidder wins period. A bidder should be required to up a bid not bid the same. Since it is an auction bids continue until there is only one. There can be only one! If bidding slows the auctioneer needs to wrap it up. If you want to spend the cash you should get the player.

5) DD can handles this. Pre DD I simple had a formula set up in Excel and if a bid was illegal big red warning labels popped up. This is important because if you let someone bid more than they have and don't catch it immediately then you have a mess. Basically you have to go back and restart from the point of the screw-up. Ugly. This isn't hard for the auctioneer to track with DD or some time spent setting up an Excel sheet.

6) We set the player nomination order based on the reverse of the previous years standins so the worst team nominates the first player. It is stright line not serpintine. We draft 15 players per teams so there are 15 nominating rounds. Once an owner fills a team they can no longer nominate so we simply skip ther place in the order.

I love auction and would never go back to a draft. This adds so much more to the fun and strategy. Managing the auction is very important so you are smart to get things clear ahead of time. Again I recommend DD and if not that Excel. It works very well in my experience.

Quickly, I agree with several other things I heard. Avoid bars! I had the worst time drafting the one time we met at a bar. No fun because everyone had to shout to be heard. Also Everyone gettng together in one location is important. We had a couple of years we an owner drafted via phone. Not very smooth. If an owner can't make it have them send a proxy.

 

[Kai's Hero]

1. As to keeping track of it, the non-scientific way is a big board, just listing the players, position, final bid price, and the team they went to. The Commish, and preferably a co-commish, keeping track of everyone's running total. I think the idfeal is an overhead, maybe attached to a laptop, using auction software. i am sure someone can recommend one, there are several.2. Keeping time, yeah, I'd have a 30 second timer, only to be used if someone is dragging.3. it is tough for the Commish to be the auctioneer as well. Ideal situation is someone else to do it. 4. This is the important part. The auction I have run, each player pulls a "position" out of a hat (1-12), then everyone sits in that position, and one at a time, players are thrown into the auction by an owner, and the teams can bid, one at a time, in order. I didn't really care for it, as it is a bit too similar to a draft, but the other option of people yelling out bids seemed like a nightmare. I hope someone offers up a better option. 5. That's part of the commish's job (or the auctioneer), to spot that kind of stuff.6. I have seen auctions where names are pulled randomly, that sucks. Part of auction strategy is who you offer up for bid, and why. Leave it up to the owners to toss out names.can you discuss the problems with the online auction?

1) We use a big dry erase board and two owners tracking everyones cap money on an excel spreadsheet with the formula's built in so it automatically subtracts the winning bids from everyone's cap. Works great. Overhead prjector would be optimal. We are moving this direction in 2009.2) No need for a timer in Auction drafts. Owners should have an idea of the nominations going in. If you have an owner that takes more than 20 seconds throwing out a name, then fine him or have a rule that you move to the next owner. 3) We hire an auctioneer each year (usually same one) Each owner gives him $5.00 and we pay for his lunch and cocktails throughout the draft.4) Our rule is that we sit in the order that we finished the previous year. The Champion gets the first nomination and we move from there. This works great. It is important to have an order to nominate players. No way you can have owners just randomly throw names out.I would only do an online auction draft if there was NO other option. There is so much lost when your not doing it "Live".