Through the years, he has given me some ideas that were already out there in the industry and through some conversations about them we've created some new contests or rules in baseball and football.One of those examples involves the Draft Champions contests we run. He told me about Ant Sports about 12 years ago and how Draft 'n Hold leagues were becoming more popular even with inferior software. That led to us improving the format and creating the NFBC and NFFC Draft Champions leagues, which are now industry stalwarts.
KJ and Todd Zola also helped us develop the scoring for Cutline Best Ball Baseball, the industry's first optimal scoring baseball format. That eventually led to Cutline football as KJ liked that "cutline" survivor format.
He also posted late last year about adding Side Challenge games to the NFBC and NFFC, allowing owners with existing teams the chance to win more prize money among friends in similar contests. I always liked this idea as other contests have it as well, but I wanted us to control the software rather than hire a third party partner to do it. I took the idea to our IT department in the Fall and we began to explore the possibilities of offering this.
And I'm happy to report that I think we have the system ready to go now, but we still need your help with this. So here's the general idea:
** With any of our national contests (and even individual leagues), any owner could create a Side Challenge contest and create a separate set of national rankings. This Side Challenge Contest would include separate prize money that will be awarded to the top teams. So for instance, if KJ created an NFFC Primetime Side Challenge, anyone with an existing team could put in whatever the price determined in advance was. Let's say it was $100 or $200, anyone would see the Side Challenge symbol on their My Teams page and enter before or after they have drafted to be part of this additional national game.
** The NFBC will pay 90 percent of entry fees to the top players. We will have a sliding scale for how deep we pay down, such as Top 3 for 10 teams or less, Top 4 for 20 teams or less, etc. Those parameters haven't been finalized yet, but you get my point. Since a customer is creating this game, the payout will be based on the final number of entrants based on a pre-described percentage for 1st place, 2nd place, etc. If we got 200 teams at $200 each, we'd have $36,000 in prizes (90% of $40,000) to give out to the top teams. First place would likely be in the $18,000 range and then secondary prizes would account for the remaining $18,000.
** This Side Challenge can be for the Primetime, but someone could also create one for the Online Championship, Draft Champions, Solo Shot, Classic, Online Auction Championship or any other national contest. Again, that person would determine the entry fee for the Side Challenge and people would have to join from their My Teams page before Opening Day.
** There's no additional FAAB work, drafting or starting lineup work to be done. And while you might think the same people would win the Side Challenge who win the national contest, that's not necessarily true. The top teams in the national contest may not have entered, or one owner may have chosen one of his multiple teams to compete in the Side Challenge Contest and that team didn't turn out to be his best team. We might have some surprising winners in these Side Challenge games as the stat categories will have different leaders.
Anyway, it was a good idea when KJ suggested it on the Message Boards and our IT team liked the challenge of putting this together. We're not the first company to do this, but we think we can make this very easy to jump into and at an affordable price. And it might be worth the price of admission to watch your teams in a second set of national standings for that same team. Oh, and there's more prize money you could win, too.
Once we have this completely finalized we can post a step-by-step process in how this works and how you can enter a Side Challenge Contest. We also will discuss how someone can first set one of these up. It's still a work in progress, but we're so close we thought we'd solicit some feedback and advice.
Okay, thanks again to KJ and thanks to anyone who can give us feedback. We look forward to adding this soon and getting things rolling. Thanks all and good luck.