Food for thought regarding online championship

[Cocktails and Dreams]

Lot of talk about possible change recently so was thinking of ways to possibly improve different contests.

In the ridiculously large fields like the online championship especially. Would it be a bad idea to divide it into multiple different contests. For instance lets say it grows to 3k teams next year. Is it better to have everyone playing in one huge pool together or would people like a better shot to win a smaller prize. For instance if 3k teams, would it be better to have one pool and play for lets say 150k grand prize. Or would it be better to have online championship 1, 2 an 3. Each would be 1k teams and the grand prize of 50K.

Pros of current way.
1. Prestige of winning the contest. Only one winner per year and they can bask in the glory all by themselves.
2. Much bigger prize for the winner. Possibly easier to market with an eye popping number for people to look at.
3. Easier to set up. Not sure if you would just take first thousand and then start a new one or make it known what drafts are in what grouping ahead of time so people can make sure to spread their teams out in the groupings if they want
Pros of splitting
1. Much better shot to win
2. More people will win and likely reinvest their money back in bigger leagues etc
3. with legal issues involved for operators with progressive payouts and needing to list the number of teams in the rules, it would make it easier on them as they can more easily fill more of them. If somehow it got out of whack on the balancing of signups it could be a problem though.

Probably not a great idea, and not sure I would even want it. Was just curious what people think.

[ForLoveOfTheGame]

I wish I could vote 1,000,000,000 times for this!

This is originally what Greg was thinking about doing (or at least that's what he told me, think it was 2 years ago) and I'm all for it but I'm all for anything that doesn't make it a complete lottery in the playoffs (this is why I'm probably the biggest fan of the Classic in the world, 1 in 54 chance at the grand prize, sooooooo realistic )

I'm afraid though that all people see is the carrot at the end of the stick. I even saw a post this week about a guy who didn't want to do the Classic because the other grand prizes were larger... like he was just going to show up one night, draft, beat a trillion teams and get sent a check for $100,000. I don't think people realize how extremely hard (or you could say how much luck it takes) to win the grand prize in a gigantic field. You don't even double your money for second in an Online Championship league anymore either, I imagine most people lose money pretty easily in the Online Championship now, but hey, that's worth a 1 in 1900 chance at $100,000 to people it appears (or 1 in 4000 for $200,000 or whatever first place is across the street)

[CALI CARTEL]

If the Online Championship get significantly larger (500+ Playoff Qualifiers in a few years), maybe some sort of Cutline setup could be implemented in the Playoffs (using a larger starting point than current, probably the twice the Week 1-13 Avg). Would make it easier for the top point scorers to survive the early weeks, but not making it impossible for the worst teams to advance (the worst team in the Online Playoffs would only be 28 points back of the average going into the first week -- even a 50% weekly cut would be doable for the worst team).

I loved the FFOC Playoff Format, but always thought they should've included the Week 1-11 average in the Playoff Cutline, instead of making it a standalone weekly cut, but it was an interesting and incredibly fun format.

[kjduke]

If the Online Championship get significantly larger (500+ Playoff Qualifiers in a few years), maybe some sort of Cutline setup could be implemented in the Playoffs (using a larger starting point than current, probably the twice the Week 1-13 Avg). Would make it easier for the top point scorers to survive the early weeks, but not making it impossible for the worst teams to advance (the worst team in the Online Playoffs would only be 28 points back of the average going into the first week -- even a 50% weekly cut would be doable for the worst team).

I loved the FFOC Playoff Format, but always thought they should've included the Week 1-11 average in the Playoff Cutline, instead of making it a standalone weekly cut, but it was an interesting and incredibly fun format.

Like the cutline idea. FFOC was a fun alternate game concept for a big mass market game, I'd prefer this to either splitting it into pieces or just letting it run to unlimited numbers.

[ForLoveOfTheGame]

Put me on board with Cali and KJ as liking the cutline that FFOC had, sure was exciting to say the least!

[Sabretooth]

I kind of see your point Chad. I don't like the 1 in 4'000 that they have across the street. But I think I'd like more to divide ours in half rather than thirds. So maybe you have two $75,000 prizes instead of 3 $50k for example.

[chriseibl]

I wish I could vote 1,000,000,000 times for this!

This is originally what Greg was thinking about doing (or at least that's what he told me, think it was 2 years ago) and I'm all for it but I'm all for anything that doesn't make it a complete lottery in the playoffs (this is why I'm probably the biggest fan of the Classic in the world, 1 in 54 chance at the grand prize, sooooooo realistic )

I'm afraid though that all people see is the carrot at the end of the stick. I even saw a post this week about a guy who didn't want to do the Classic because the other grand prizes were larger... like he was just going to show up one night, draft, beat a trillion teams and get sent a check for $100,000. I don't think people realize how extremely hard (or you could say how much luck it takes) to win the grand prize in a gigantic field. You don't even double your money for second in an Online Championship league anymore either, I imagine most people lose money pretty easily in the Online Championship now, but hey, that's worth a 1 in 1900 chance at $100,000 to people it appears (or 1 in 4000 for $200,000 or whatever first place is across the street)

+1. Completely agree with this post. And that's a huge draw in the classic for me. That 1 in 54 chance makes you feel like you have a real chance as opposed to feeling like you're relying on an absurd chain of events and competing against an infinite number of teams.

[Sandman62]

Wed Dec 07, 2011 10:50 am

Originally posted by Sandman62:
What about instead of doubling the entries and prize fund, just have TWO contests, each for $100k? If you can afford to do both, feel free. But at least for those who only want to do one, the odds of winning aren't doubled.

We have two contests now at $100,000 each!!! The fact that we want to grow one of those contests beyond our current level shouldn't be seen as a negative folks. It should be seen as a positive. Let's stay on the right course together. BIG PRIZES BRING BIG INTEREST, no matter what has been said before on these boards!! We're not going to splice up our contests into smaller pieces. We're going to GROW!!

[Greg Ambrosius]

I think this is a worthy discussion Chad, but I'm surprised that nobody is posting the same thing on the FFPC boards, where they have 840+ teams IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND!! And they are hoping for 10,000 teams soon and talking about it. So do we really stay small when competition is setting a bigger carrot each year?

I'll admit, I NEVER thought we'd get to 1,872 teams when I introduced the Online Championship in 2009. We began the $350 model in baseball with a goal of 300 teams and followed up that summer in football with a goal of 300 teams. I remember asking Ryan in August for some autographed items as incentives because I was concerned that we wouldn't reach our goal of 300 teams. At the end the signups poured in and by 2010 the competition copied our format and even told us they were copying it. Now between our two contests there are almost 6,000 teams competing at the $350 price point.

We currently have 320+ teams competing in the Championship Round for a shot at $100,000. As Jared said in another thread, the real value is in the NFFC Classic, where we have 54 teams competing for $75,000. And yes, I do think we can make the Online Championship better with more teams (better league payouts).

I'm happy to have this discussion here about the future's format, but I'd love to see those same people competing in both Online Championships have that discussion on BOTH boards. Telling us to not get bigger or to not offer bigger grand prizes because this is big enough puts us at an unfair advantage in a VERY competitive area of the HSFF marketplace.

[got heeem]

greg what is the cut line for the online .