How Can We Make Draft Champions Better & Faster?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Okay, I know you folks are knee deep in this year's football drafting season using the STATS draft software, but there's already been discussion on these Message Boards about making the Draft Champions format better and faster. I agree, we can accomplish both. Unfortunately, you won't see those changes this year, but we are preparing for our first season under SportsHub Technologies' software and working in advance of the 2018 season to make sure it's the best it can be.

Believe it or not, we're just three months away from starting the baseball Draft Champions season with our new draft software that will be used for the next football season. We hope to launch these shortly after the World Series in early November and continue strong through the end of March. Football Draft Champions Leagues will also start in late March, much earlier than we've ever done these. Now the key is to find the right fixes to make these multi-day drafts more enjoyable and better for everyone.

Tom and I went to St. Louis last month to talk with the IT team and I think we've come up with some good solutions. These will be implemented in the upcoming season and hopefully they will make the drafting experience better and better. We had over 5,000 NFBC and NFFC Draft Champions teams this year with better technology, a more user-friendly online draft room and the chance to make picks off multiple devices we believe the numbers can go even higher.

Here are some of the items we cleared with IT today regarding the Draft Champions Leagues to make this all possible:

1. We will have a Pause overnight on the clock, likely from midnight CT to 7 am CT.
2. Owners will still be able to make picks while the clock is Paused.
3. The clock will pick up where it left off at 7 am CT. So if you had 1 hour and 15 minutes left at midnight, it will start with 1:15 on the clock at 7 am.
4. We will have an Average Time Per Pick per Participant for each league on the site.

5. We are also going to change the way we launch these drafts. The idea is to start them 1 hour after they fill, rather than at 1 pm ET the next day. We will do them 1 hour later as long as they don't fill during the Pause period. If that happens, they will start after 7 am CT. This will allow us to start quicker and keep things rolling. The way the setup is now, drafts can fill up at 8 am and you won't start for another 28 hours at 1 pm ET the next day. That's not ideal.

6. When we first launch the Draft Room, we likely won't have Multiple Ques available. We have so many items that need to get finished first with the launch of football, basketball and baseball that this will come later. It's definitely on the docket to get done in 2018 and that will help speed up drafts as well, but it won't be ready right away. But multiple round Ques where you can put players you want in say Rounds 11 and 12 separately will be coming at some point. We think this is an important part of having owners learn to put players in their Que and to trust the 1 Round Auto Pick feature.

7. One last item of note: Is there interest in making these 4 hour drafts rather than 8 hours since we are turning off the clock each night? Do we really need anyone to take 8 hours during the day to make their pick? Again, the 8 hours was always there to allow folks to sleep at night, but now that the clock is turned off at night I wonder if we really need that long of a clock from 7 am CT to midnight CT. What do you think?

8. The new software will also allow you to easily make picks on a smartphone, an iPad/tablet, desktop or laptop. Making picks on a phone should make it easier to make picks in this format.

The new HTML draft room will be fully tested as part of CDM's football launch and the new Fanball daily football contest. You'll see the layout of that room soon. It will be very similar for baseball.

We will again have different price points for the NFBC and NFFC Draft Champions Leagues and we can designate different pick times (maybe it's 4 hours and 2 hours, or maybe we keep that 8 hour contest intact). I'd love to hear feedback on that now that you know we'll have the Pause feature at night.

If I'm missing anything post here. We have plenty of time to get these right and make the 2018 Draft Champions season the best one ever. Thanks all.

[Don Draper]

Greg - this all sounds fantastic!!!! The biggest one is having the clock paused overnight. If you can get that you can reduce to 4 hours between picks instead of 8. That would be a game changer for me. I would be signing up for more of the $150 leagues and less of the $25. That is good for business!!

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg - this all sounds fantastic!!!! The biggest one is having the clock paused overnight. If you can get that you can reduce to 4 hours between picks instead of 8. That would be a game changer for me. I would be signing up for more of the $150 leagues and less of the $25. That is good for business!!

The Pause button is already done. That's being added for sure starting with baseball. I agree that we can then go down to 4 hours per pick during the day since everyone will still have a full 7 hours plus their 4 hours to pick late at night. Maybe it forces people to learn how to use their Que as well. But this along with an average pick clock should help.

Technology can make Draft Champions better and we plan to do everything we can to have the best "best ball" software in the industry. This is a BIG part of our business and we're going to continue to expand it more and more. Thanks.

[BigBlueNation]

I tend to agree with Mark, reduce the drafts to 4 hours, pause the draft during the night for 6 hours, maybe 12 to 6 ET (although you can still pick if you please). I think that's a good start.

[Coltsfan]

Multiple rounds ques would be my hot button for doing more drafts. I have times during the day when I just can't be at a computer and I hate holding up drafts. But I would gladly set up ques early and late.

[COZ]

Greg - this all sounds fantastic!!!! The biggest one is having the clock paused overnight. If you can get that you can reduce to 4 hours between picks instead of 8. That would be a game changer for me. I would be signing up for more of the $150 leagues and less of the $25. That is good for business!!

Bingo. My sentiments exactly: 4 hour pick limit but paused overnight for sleep.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg - this all sounds fantastic!!!! The biggest one is having the clock paused overnight. If you can get that you can reduce to 4 hours between picks instead of 8. That would be a game changer for me. I would be signing up for more of the $150 leagues and less of the $25. That is good for business!!

Bingo. My sentiments exactly: 4 hour pick limit but paused overnight for sleep.

Agreed. Now we need to determine the pause time to satisfy both Coasts. Again, you can still pick during the Pause, but what is the right time? We are thinking 1-8 ET. Or 1-9 ET. Thoughts?

[COZ]

Greg - this all sounds fantastic!!!! The biggest one is having the clock paused overnight. If you can get that you can reduce to 4 hours between picks instead of 8. That would be a game changer for me. I would be signing up for more of the $150 leagues and less of the $25. That is good for business!!

Bingo. My sentiments exactly: 4 hour pick limit but paused overnight for sleep.

Agreed. Now we need to determine the pause time to satisfy both Coasts. Again, you can still pick during the Pause, but what is the right time? We are thinking 1-8 ET. Or 1-9 ET. Thoughts?

I'm a late-night drafter-guy but based on my experience there are more early morning guys so I would say start up again at 8:00 AM rather than 9:00 and my gut says to pause it from 12-8 or 1-8 but I really don't think it matters either way so long as there is an 8-hour pause for sleep, but with the ability to still draft while paused overnight.

[eliasond]

I don't think just an indicator of avg time per pick for each owner will solve anything. The problem owners are going to use up all their time regardless. A better solution is for IT to figure out how to run a draft with a 24-hr cumulative clock for each owner. When your 24 hrs are up your remaining picks would run at 15 minutes each or whatever is decided in the rules. The clock would be paused overnight so 1 owner wouldn't get screwed by coming on the clock multiple nights.