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Best Auction Draft Hosting Platform/Software? (1 Viewer)

dkp993

dkp993

Footballguy
So for the first time in my main leagues 20 year history we will not be doing a in person draft.  (Damn COVID).  We host our league in Fantrax currently but have never used their draft program before. So I wanted to get the opinion of the SP on what is the best hosting platform for an auction draft? Any and all thoughts are welcome, thanks sharks!

 
Our league has been hosted by MFL for the last six years.  We have tried using their live auction draft engine and have found it subpar.  Both times we used MFL we had to jump over to CBS to finish out the auction.  I cannot tell you what a pain this is.  I am unaware if MFL has made improvements this season, but we will be auctioning again on CBS.

 
I am in the same boat with auction draft keeper league hosted on MFL for 16 years. I have participated in two online long drafts through MFL (non-auction) and hey went very smooth but not to sure of their online live auction draft.  They encourage you to duplicate the league and run mock drafts to test it out.  We are scheduled a week before hand on a Sunday to run a two round mock draft on MFL live auction and one on https://fandraft.com/.  I really like what Fan Draft offers and seem to be my favorite at this time but I am letting the league members decide.  Fan Draft is $25 and MFL is included in our hosting cost already.

I will share what I learn but my mock drafts are not until August 23rd.  

 
dkp993 said:
So for the first time in my main leagues 20 year history we will not be doing a in person draft.  (Damn COVID). 
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same boat. we're on CBS which actually has a decent auction room, but the catch is there is a (max) 60 second clock on nominating players. i can live with 60 second limit on bids, but not on nominations. so we'll be drafting on a live chatroom without an actual auction software while talking smack on Zoom. bids will go onto the chat room only so that there is a very clear record of who got in first, while the inevitable unnecessary noise on Zoom won't interfere with the bidding.

 
Pigskin Fanatic said:
same boat. we're on CBS which actually has a decent auction room, but the catch is there is a (max) 60 second clock on nominating players. i can live with 60 second limit on bids, but not on nominations. so we'll be drafting on a live chatroom without an actual auction software while talking smack on Zoom. bids will go onto the chat room only so that there is a very clear record of who got in first, while the inevitable unnecessary noise on Zoom won't interfere with the bidding.
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Thanks.  That’s an interesting idea, I’ll float that to some of my league mates.  👍

 
Thinking through this right now. We've used FanSoft to run our in-person auction for years now, and the new online version is a lot better than it used to be, but it's still not awesome. In particular there doesn't seem to be a way to display money left/bid remaining for each player, which is kind of the most important part of the auction software.

I would not go anywhere near MFL's software. It sucked back when my league was hosted on MFL years ago and it's frankly shocking that it still looks exactly the same. That company has been totally mailing it in for years.

In my search I found one I hadn't seen before, Drafty (https://draftysports.com/), which looks like it's pretty well put together but limited in functionality. If it covers your needs it might be a good option.

The major hosting sites all have limitations that don't work for our league because we use decimal prices. (Which is kind of silly but it's a 20+ year history and there's no way it will change now). We could get around it if they would allow the auction budget to be $10,000 (just multiply everything by 100) but they're limited to $1,000 for some silly reason. We also have no interest in having to manage timers.

We're probably going to wind up going with FanDraft, using the in-person version with a human auctioneer and sharing the screen. 

 
CalBear said:
Thinking through this right now. We've used FanSoft to run our in-person auction for years now, and the new online version is a lot better than it used to be, but it's still not awesome. In particular there doesn't seem to be a way to display money left/bid remaining for each player, which is kind of the most important part of the auction software.

I would not go anywhere near MFL's software. It sucked back when my league was hosted on MFL years ago and it's frankly shocking that it still looks exactly the same. That company has been totally mailing it in for years.

In my search I found one I hadn't seen before, Drafty (https://draftysports.com/), which looks like it's pretty well put together but limited in functionality. If it covers your needs it might be a good option.

The major hosting sites all have limitations that don't work for our league because we use decimal prices. (Which is kind of silly but it's a 20+ year history and there's no way it will change now). We could get around it if they would allow the auction budget to be $10,000 (just multiply everything by 100) but they're limited to $1,000 for some silly reason. We also have no interest in having to manage timers.

We're probably going to wind up going with FanDraft, using the in-person version with a human auctioneer and sharing the screen. 
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Thanks brother, great info.  

 
streamkeeper said:
Our league has been hosted by MFL for the last six years.  We have tried using their live auction draft engine and have found it subpar.  Both times we used MFL we had to jump over to CBS to finish out the auction.  I cannot tell you what a pain this is.  I am unaware if MFL has made improvements this season, but we will be auctioning again on CBS.
Click to expand...
Can you explain what was subpar about MFL? We're in the same boat and usually do our auction draft in person, but not this year with COVID. Our league is hosted on MFL and a few weeks ago we tested out the auction engine for about an hour and it seemed fine. Curious to hear from anyone who has details about what they don't like about doing an auction draft on MFL.

 
CalBear said:
Thinking through this right now. We've used FanSoft to run our in-person auction for years now, and the new online version is a lot better than it used to be, but it's still not awesome. In particular there doesn't seem to be a way to display money left/bid remaining for each player, which is kind of the most important part of the auction software.

I would not go anywhere near MFL's software. It sucked back when my league was hosted on MFL years ago and it's frankly shocking that it still looks exactly the same. That company has been totally mailing it in for years.

In my search I found one I hadn't seen before, Drafty (https://draftysports.com/), which looks like it's pretty well put together but limited in functionality. If it covers your needs it might be a good option.

The major hosting sites all have limitations that don't work for our league because we use decimal prices. (Which is kind of silly but it's a 20+ year history and there's no way it will change now). We could get around it if they would allow the auction budget to be $10,000 (just multiply everything by 100) but they're limited to $1,000 for some silly reason. We also have no interest in having to manage timers.

We're probably going to wind up going with FanDraft, using the in-person version with a human auctioneer and sharing the screen. 
Click to expand...


roarlions said:
Can you explain what was subpar about MFL? We're in the same boat and usually do our auction draft in person, but not this year with COVID. Our league is hosted on MFL and a few weeks ago we tested out the auction engine for about an hour and it seemed fine. Curious to hear from anyone who has details about what they don't like about doing an auction draft on MFL.
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Have been playing around with fandraft and it seems like a legit option.  Very easy to set up and user friendly.  
 

 
roarlions said:
Can you explain what was subpar about MFL? We're in the same boat and usually do our auction draft in person, but not this year with COVID. Our league is hosted on MFL and a few weeks ago we tested out the auction engine for about an hour and it seemed fine. Curious to hear from anyone who has details about what they don't like about doing an auction draft on MFL.
Click to expand...
I sure can because I'd love to know if it is something we are doing??

First.  We run an online auction with 15 second bid windows.  I have never attempted a "Slow" auction on MFL.

In both instances the engine was not capable of handling the speed of bidding.  Coaches were complaining of their bids not being registered.  I don't think we even got through the first round before we bailed.

I want to be very clear here that I think MFL is top notch with absolutely every other aspect of their hosting.

 
dkp993 said:
Have been playing around with fandraft and it seems like a legit option.  Very easy to set up and user friendly.  
 
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I’ve used fan draft before and it’s very easy to figure out. That’s the problem with a new draft host, the learning curve can be hard if it’s not user friendly. You’ll end up with unhappy owners. This is very very easy to use

 
streamkeeper said:
I sure can because I'd love to know if it is something we are doing??

First.  We run an online auction with 15 second bid windows.  I have never attempted a "Slow" auction on MFL.

In both instances the engine was not capable of handling the speed of bidding.  Coaches were complaining of their bids not being registered.  I don't think we even got through the first round before we bailed.

I want to be very clear here that I think MFL is top notch with absolutely every other aspect of their hosting.
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Thanks for the feedback. In the testing we did no one complained about bids not registering, at least not any differently than the system we usually use. The only thing we noticed was that bids placed in the last second or so before the bid window ended did not always register. With the usual system we use owners sometimes like to wait until the last second to place bids but I think we learned that may not be a good tactic with the MFL auction engine.

Other than that situation it seemed to operate the same as our usual auction system. If owners are trying to bid at the same time only 1 bid is recognized. If someone is trying to increment the high bid by only $1 while another owner is raising the high bid by a greater amount then the incremental bid wasn't recognized.

We were thinking about drafting as late as possible before the start of the season but we might want to try holding the draft a week earlier just in case there are any problems and we want to switch to a different site.

 
Follow up on FanDraft. Apparently their 2020 product, which is all online, doesn't display the max bid for all teams, which is kind of an important piece of information (and which the desktop application did show).

FanDraft support:

The top of the screen shows in the Auction Draft will show all of the bid dollars each team has left. There is no view of "Max Bid$" for all of the teams, however, each team will see their max bid on their own screen when making bids.

Adding the ability to show a MAX BID for all teams is something on our radar, however, we can't give a concrete date right now when that will be implemented
Click to expand...

 
CalBear said:
Follow up on FanDraft. Apparently their 2020 product, which is all online, doesn't display the max bid for all teams, which is kind of an important piece of information (and which the desktop application did show).

FanDraft support:
Click to expand...
After playing around with fandraft I’ve chosen it to do our draft this year.  It’s ease of use and intuitive design made the most sense. Thank you for the suggestion, shark pool for the win again!   

 
I've decided rather than mess with MFL or anything new, that we will be doing a ZOOM (or equiv.) Auction. Best way to avoid any hassles

 
Great news from FanDraft:

Hi there,

As you emailed us wondering about this feature, we wanted to let you know that we just pushed an update that includes the MAX BID feature now.

You can simply click on the button (as per the image below), and now swap between showing MAX BID and BID $ LEFT.
Click to expand...

 
Does anyone have any actual experience with www.Draftysports.com ? I read what y'all have read... Looking for someones actual experince?

 
So we decided the ZOom thing would be a pain and decided to try MFL's auction room since I wouldn't have to transfer the rosters from a different site saving me some time.

What a freaking cluster-  :tfp:  that site is.

We finally abandon the auction and finished  the last hour on Zoom. FOUR and a half hours later we finally effing done. What an absolute joke. Guys couldn't bid, it would tell them they were over the cap when they had plenty of cash left. Then some of us couldn't even bring a player up for bid. Just an absolute joke that site was.

We were supposed to do another one yesterday on MFL but quickly moved  it to ESPN what has a very solid platform and took us around 2-1/2 hours.

Brutal, and their "Help" was no use either. "I'm watching the auction and it's going good" Bahahaa, watch for more than 30 seconds #######.

Never. Again.

 
We used auction draft software from RTSPORTS.COM this year. Seemed to work very well. We had no issues. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
We had a very successful auction on MFL.  I duplicated our league as recommended by MFL and we did a test auction the Sunday before our actual draft.  We did have to work out bugs during the test auction with changing settings and such. I duplicated the auction settings for our live auction.  We did have to  click on reload page to keep syncing with the draft but overall everyone was satisfied.  Not as happy as doing our live auction but it worked.

So MFL auction and Zoom was a success for us this year.  Still hoping that we will be live in 2021!

 
Ended up using fandraft.  First 6 or 7 nominations went great, then it all went sideways.  The site froze and wouldn’t accept any bids mid Player nomination.  Tried everything to no luck.  Reached out to the help center via email (the only way) they reset it (they said their server needed to be reset) and asked we all be on Chrome (which would have been helpful info for them to put on the site so we’d know).  After a 45min delay we were back up and running.  Rest of the draft went great.  When it worked it was great but the delay almost cost us the draft.  In reading their forum the issue seems to be common which isn’t cool that they aren’t addressing it ahead of time.  

 
We used FanDraft and it was solid, but we were running in Commish mode the whole time, not taking bids remotely. So we did the auction via Zoom and I just entered the price of each player after each auction was done. That worked fine, a couple of glitches due to FanDraft not really being designed that way (for example, it still assumes that each player is being nominated by some team according to the nomination order, and if a different team buys the player for the minimum, you have to assign the player to the wrong team and then change it). But overall pretty good.

 
Completed two online auctions over the weekend. Saturday's, using ESPN, was gold. Sunday's, using MFL, was a golden turd. Never going near that site again for an auction.

 
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