A Few Changes Are Coming For The NFFC In 2025

[Greg Ambrosius]

With the NFFC Post-Season Contests now off and running, it's time to kick off the 2025 NFFC season. This will be our 22nd season of the National Fantasy Football Championship and we're proud to say that we've awarded over $104 million in prize money for all of our sports since 2004.

ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR MILLION DOLLARS!!! We're pretty proud of that.

This week we will kick off the 2025 NFFC season by opening the draft room for our NFFC $25, $50, $150 and $400 Best Ball Championship leagues. You can jump into a draft this week and start competing for league prizes and the guaranteed $30,000 grand prize in the NFFC Best Ball National Championship. Enjoy and good luck.

The NFFC site will officially turn over the week after the Super Bowl. The NFFC Post-Season Contests are part of our 2024 season and we won't pay prizes for that contest until Elias scoring changes are complete the Wednesday after the Super Bowl. We can then pay prizes and roll the site over to our 2025 contests. Should be fun and we can't wait to announce all of our contests for 2025. Also remember that when we roll over the site, we lose draft boards from 2024 and other data like Free Agent pickups, Start/Sit decisions and more. Take screen shots of anything you want from 2024 before the site rolls over in mid-February. Thanks.

Okay, we won't give all of the details of our 2025 NFFC contests right now, but we will discuss some of the changes we have planned for 2025. Here they are and the reasons for each change:

* Slight Price Increases: We are increasing the entry fee for the NFFC Primetime from $1,750 to $1,800 and putting all of that extra money into the league prizes. We've concentrated on growing the grand prize in the NFFC Primetime to $250,000 over the last five years and we're happy to have that big carrot with other good overall prizes. But it's time to get the league prizes up a little, so that extra $50 per team will allow us to now pay:

1st Place in Each Primetime League - $7,400
2nd Place in Each Primetime League - $3,600
3rd Place in Each Primetime League - $1,200

Also, we will continue to give you $100 off per Primetime signup through May 31st as we again unveil our Early Bird Special. You can get each Primetime team for $1,700 if you sign up by May 31st and we don't even need any payment until August 1st. Take advantage of the Early Bird Special through May 31st.

We also are raising the price in the private auction leagues from $1,500 to $1,600 per team. Again, this extra money will really put a bounce in the league prizes as they are now:

1st Place in Each $1,600 Auction League - $7,000
2nd Place in Each $1,600 Auction League - $3,200
3rd Place in Each $1,600 Auction League - $1,600
Consolation Prize - $350
Regular Season H2H Champion - $1,600
Regular Season Points Champion - $1,600

Welcome to the NFFC Gladiator Championship: Are you not Entertained? We introduced the NFBC Gladiator Championship in 2023 and we have now sold that contest out three years in a row. It seemed like that format might just work in baseball, but I think we've created a nice format for football and I think it will catch on quickly.

Here's the basic premise: These are 12-Team, 14-Round drafts at $50 per team and we'll pay league and overall prizes. We'll also use KDS and Third Round Reversal and cost of entry is $50 per team. Drafts will be held from February until the last week in April right before the NFL Draft. We expect to sell all 2,100 spots before the NFL Draft and will provide Extended drafts and nightly drafts of the Gladiator.

Here's the kicker: All 14 players score for your team every week for 17 weeks. There are no Set Lineup decisions. No Free Agent pickups. You draft and you're done. This is a straight points league and teams with the most points win the league prizes and the overall prizes. Draft and be done. All 14 players score EVERY WEEK for 17 weeks. Pick players that will stay healthy in the Gladiator ring. Again, are you not entertained?

These should be quick Extended drafts that are done in 3-4 days and our nightly drafts could be done in less than an hour. 12 Teams, 14 Rounds = 168 players. SuperFlex lineups with everyone scoring includes:

1 - QB
2 - RBs
3 - WRs
1 - TE
1 - Team Kicker
1 - Team Defense/Special Teams
1 - SuperFlex (QB, RB, WR, TE)
4 - Flex (RB, WR, TE)

I'll create a separate story shortly, but we think this will fill up the space in February, March and April with quick drafts and a nice prize pool. At $50, this contest has the chance to really grow in the future, but we'll shoot for 2,100 teams this year and stop at 2,100 teams. Fill it up and be done.

Best Ball National Championship: We've made the executive decision to reduce the number of rounds for our NFFC Best Ball National Championship from 34 to 30 starting in 2025. I know our veterans love deeper drafts and picking 408 players is definitely the deepest draft in the industry, but as we look over the last few years, very few contributors are coming out of those last four rounds. They are just extending the drafts longer and not producing for our players. We are now going 12 teams, 30 rounds for a total of 360 players, allowing drafts to get done sooner and hopefully allowing you to jump into more $150 and $400 Best Ball drafts.

Last year, Kareen Hunt at pick 364 was the best contributor after Round 30. For a few games, you got Drew Lock at 369, Marquez Valdes-Scantling at 385 and maybe Olamide Zaccheaus at 389. But nobody after that and all of the Team Kickers and Team Defenses are gone by Round 26. The year before produced even fewer contributors after Round 30. It's time to make this executive decision and get these drafts done a little more efficiently.

NFFC Cutline Championship: The number of participants in the NFFC Cutline Championship has fallen each of the last three years and the Cutline is on life support. We paid over 100 percent in prizes last year and I asked for suggestions to help us improve this contest. I got so many different suggestions that any change wouldn't sit right with a majority of the players. So I decided to keep the format as is, with some slight variations for 2025 and if this doesn't work then we will move on from the Cutline Championship.

First of all, we are going back to its original intent, which is to make this a lottery game. We are reducing the price of entry to $150 and just paying the first place team in each league $300. The goal is to get into the Championship Round, or the Wild Card Tier, survive each cutline and try to get to the final table of 12 where almost all of the prize money is distributed. This is a tough ROI game, but it's fun to survive the cutline each week and if you can make it to the final table in Week 17 there's nothing better in the world.

Instead of paying over 100 percent this year, our goal is to sell it out at a set number and try to grow this contest each year. So that being said, this year we are offering a $50,000 grand prize but limiting this contest to 1,200 teams. We will fill 120 leagues and move on. If we sell out this contest, we can increase the number of teams next year and add to the grand prize, and then do that again and keep growing it each year after that. We had 1,390 teams last year, so trying to guarantee prizes based on 1,750 or higher no longer makes sense. We are going to sell out all 1,200 teams, reward one person $50,000 and grow this contest year to year. I hope that works.

The format of the Cutline is fun, but again we always envisioned this as a lottery-style game. If this doesn't work, then we'll concede that the concept doesn't work anymore and move on. But with fewer teams, there's a greater chance of winning and we didn't want to mess with the format. Let's see if this works or not and thanks for supporting this great game through the years.

Okay, those are the major changes for 2025. No other entry fees or grand prizes are affected in the NFFC and we'll roll out the contests once the site is live. We are still working hard to return to New York City over Labor Day weekend and feel we have one good option worth pursuing. And we already have our contract with Park MGM in Las Vegas for both weekends, so we're good there. Let's make 2025 our biggest and best season yet in the NFFC and grow these contests together. Thanks all and any feedback is always welcome. Enjoy.

[Coltsfan]

I've always been a big proponent of more rounds in best ball but I think 30 rounds will be great. It gets a bit taxing waiting on picks in the 31st - 34 rounds, knowing that they are pretty much wasted energy. For consistency, it would be nice if all 12 team best ball leagues were 30 rounds and all 14 team leagues were 26 rounds. Even backup QB's typically go in rounds 26-29 unless they are premium, high upside backup. I think this is a good decision.

[Coltsfan]

We just finished our first Best Ball draft of 2025 using the new 30-round rules. One very interesting observation is that there was only one backup QB taken the entire draft. The Joe Burrow owner backed him up with Jake Browning. Nobody else backed up a QB, which is very different than what has happened in previous years. It may be because it's early and we don't know who the backups will be but I found this interesting.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I've always been a big proponent of more rounds in best ball but I think 30 rounds will be great. It gets a bit taxing waiting on picks in the 31st - 34 rounds, knowing that they are pretty much wasted energy. For consistency, it would be nice if all 12 team best ball leagues were 30 rounds and all 14 team leagues were 26 rounds. Even backup QB's typically go in rounds 26-29 unless they are premium, high upside backup. I think this is a good decision.

Thanks Wayne. It's not a bad suggestion. As you know, we had 30 rounds I believe in the early year(s) of the NFFC Kickoff Gridiron and I remember people feeling that was too long, at least it was for the 14-Team Kickoff Gridiron. I don't think we ever went more than 26 rounds for the 12-Team Kickoff Gridiron League, which started a few years after the 14-Teamer.

We increased the Best Ball Live leagues from 26 to 28 rounds last year and some people didn't like that move. It's worth a discussion this year to see if we should standardize all three formats at 30 rounds or not. We likely won't implement it this year, but let's have that discussion with KJ on the Gridiron leagues and even with those Best Ball Live owners in Las Vegas. Again, not a bad idea.

I do think these DCs will go faster with 4 fewer rounds and yes it might present a few more strategies for you guys. Good luck and let's rev up the drafting season once the Super Bowl is done. Thanks all.

[eliasond]

I would have preferred to stay with 34 rounds, but I can deal with it for 30. I am just curious, how many times was Puka drafted in Rounds 31-34 of DC's 2 years ago? I'm guessing quite a few, because there had to have been an awful lot of DC's where he wasn't drafted at all, especially earlier in the summer. Even if his overall ADP ended up inside the Top 30 rounds by the start of the season, that doesn't mean that he was never drafted in Rounds 31-34. I guess there are just 4 less rounds now to throw darts at the next potential "Puka". But as Melissa Ethridge sang on GMFB the other day, we can all just "deal with it"....