Commisioner NEED's HELP - Live Auction draft

[kenzle1r]

Hey guys, I'm creating a new Auction draft with my friends and I need help to hash out a couple details as I've personally never done one live.

I have 10 teams (each team has 16 players to draft) and all live in the same area as me so I want this to be a live Auction draft. The league will be set up in Yahoo (yes I know Fantrax, CBS, etc are all great as well but the guys are keen on using Yahoo).

My question is this...what's the best way to conduct a live auction draft so that it's fun and won't take forever to complete. With 160 players being auctioned I'm concerned it will take a long time.

My thoughts are:

1. Set this up as a "trial" in ESPN and get everyone to come over with laptops and we run the draft "online" using ESPN's auction set up. We still get the live chatter but it's also automated which helps with organization. I then take the results at the end and put them into Yahoo and track all $$$ value on players in Excel (which I have to do anyways using Yahoo).

2. Just do a live auction draft and give guys a time limit on their bids. My concern is that we have have heated exchanges on bids between 2 guys...one will clearly win and then out of nowhere another GM will come in at the end and spark a whole new round of bidding...while this is great and fun my concern is it will be very time consuming.

3. Do a live draft and have give guys a stick/paddle (a sign) and they live the sign until they deem the player too rich...once they have done so they can not "re-enter the bidding. I see this being beneficial for time purposes but limiting in terms of "action" on players.

I'm open to all ideas here guys...particularly from those who have participated in live auction drafts

Rep will be rewarded. thanks!

[LawMan]

I've only done a few auction drafts here's how they went.
1. League paramaters are set out i.e. # of players, scoring categories etc. (obviously need the rules upfront)
2. Players draw #s and are seated in a circle around a table (circle is important later on)
3. Every team gets $100 or $500 or $1million (acutal amount is immaterial as money is relative personally I like $1000)
4. 1st manager nominates a player and must bid $1 on that player, going around the circle each manager when its their turn can either up the bid or pass, once you pass you can't re-enter bidding on that player. Bidding continues until everyone passes and the highest bid wins the player.
5. Move to the next manager who nominates a new player.
6. Every 5 rounds or so reverse the direction of the bidding circle to mix it up.

The circle keeps some structure and order, no one debates who called a bid first and the "once you pass you're out rule" moves the draft along at a steady pace.

The first couple of rounds take the longest as the hot commodities are up for grabs and lots of bidding occurs. By the last 5 rounds it's usually $1-2 max per player.

If you can sucker some buddy into recording the teams that makes life good. I have a buddy whose not in my league, I record his draft and he records mine it lets all the managers focus on drafting and it's fun to see how other leagues draft.

#1 could be good if everyone has a laptop and there are not technology issues but if anything goes wrong you're screwed. # 2 could be fun but I almost think you need a dedicated auctioneer to control the action. I'm always interested to hear new draft ideas so let us know how it goes.

[Pengwin7]

Originally Posted by kenzle1r

My question is this...what's the best way to conduct a live auction draft so that it's fun and won't take forever to complete. With 160 players being auctioned I'm concerned it will take a long time.

I hear this. My very first live auction was a baseball pool and there were 12 teams x 20 man rosters. 240 players. Took almost 6 hours I think. We broke for lunch at midway.

There's not much you can do to speed it up.
I'd suggest the following:
1. ESTABLISH AN UNDERSTOOD VALUE OF TOP PLAYERS.
Educate your owners on the approximate amount that players will go for. See if you can research similar leagues. Simply informing people that "In similar leagues, Crosby will go for $40, Eberle will go for $20, and Mikael Samuelsson will be a $1 roster filler", will help. When people say Crosby $1, then $2... that's slow. Suggest that the first round of players tabled-for-bid should all be All-Stars and have a starting bid of $____ by the nominating team. After one round of bidding on all-stars, everybody will have a better "feel" for values.

2. [EXPLAIN THIS NEXT PART TO YOUR LEAGUE, PRIOR TO THE AUCTION:] After a declared-bid has 3 seconds of silence ("one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand"), the league commissioner shall follow with "Going once, going twice, sold." Do it in regular pace of speaking. If somebody bids at the same time as "SOLD", allow the bid. Restart the count "Going once...". STATE THIS INTENTION UP FRONT, I CAN'T STRESS HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS. You do not want to have this argument during the draft, it will disrupt your entire draft. If somebody does call out a bid during the word "SOLD"... you SHALL allow the bid & continue bidding. Also though... give them a smack and tell them to knock it off. That's just impolite. If you are going to bid on a guy, tell them to bid during the "going once, going twice" declarations.


That's it.
Live auctions are sooo much fun... I've never felt "draft jitters" as much as when I did those live auctions. They are the absolute best!

[kenzle1r]

Originally Posted by LawMan

1st manager nominates a player and must bid $1 on that player, going around the circle each manager when its their turn can either up the bid or pass, once you pass you can't re-enter bidding on that player. Bidding continues until everyone passes and the highest bid wins the player.

I love this idea and it's one I'm going to pitch to the guys. I think it makes it very simple and everyone gets there chance to put in a bid...once you're out, you're out and it's easy to track as a commissioner. Like poker I guess.

Thanks!

[fulcrum]

I have been commish of a live auction draft for 6 years. Lawman lays it our real nice.

I am going to recommend thjat you use CBS and try pitching it again. It allows the auction values to be posted with the players at all times.

It will keep track of salary cap so deals can't be made that will put you over the cap etc.

Maybe Yahoo does this as well, but if not, its definately worth it to use CBS. I would send you our entire rule set if you think it will help you. We have been tweaking our rules for 6 years.

PM me if you are interested.

And Pengwin is right. There is no better draft than an auction draft. They take time, but they are awesome.

[LawMan]

Also a few other things to consider:
1. Does auction money mean anything after the draft? Do you have a salary cap in your league related to a player's auction value or is it business as usual? In my league draft dollars are only good at the draft once the teams were set it was a standard league with no cap restrictions and waiver wire pickups being free.
2. Do you have to fill your roster at the draft? (I would say yes) In my draft you had to fill your roster and since you had to pay at least $1 per player you always had to have at least as many $ as players. i.e. if you had 4 spots left you needed at least $4 left and couldn't ever raise a nomination. The reason you had to fill your roster was to create certainty on how a manager could act at the end. Because draft dollars were only useful at the draft if you could spend your money on only 16 of 20 players and get 4 free waiver wire picks you'd have an advantage. Ironically if you decide that you don't need to draft a full roster I'd encourage you to do just this.

EDIT: Also declare if you can nominate a player for more than $1. Again I'd say you can 2 reasons:
1) It speeds up early rounds to say "Crosby for $25" instead of $1 cuts out the nonsense.
2) It changes strategy later on, if another manager has $2 left for 1 player you know nominating him for $2 knocks that manager out of the running.

[kenzle1r]

To answer your questions. We are each "buying in" for $40 and that will be our team's salary cap for the year. Min bid/salary for any player is $0.25. You can start the bidding on any player for any amount.

Waiver wire players can be picked up for $1.00. I want guys to think before they go ahead and add/drop players. So that's 4x league min salary.

We roster 16 players so technically each team will have $2.50 for every position.