Free Agent Auction
There is a reason the draft is one of the most anticipated events of every season, NFL and Fantasy Football alike. There is heartbreak and surprise and it is a place where dreams come true. It is also a place where you get to berate your buddy as he places a $40 starting bid on that player who just suffered a season-ending injury 6 hours prior to your draft. With all that fun and excitement it is hard to pack it into just one night. And now we have a way to fix that. Introducing the Free Agent Auction, the weekly mini-auction draft for your waiver-wire pickups.
How It Works
Hopefully by now you’ve checked out our Auction Draft Rule for a complete rundown on our auction specs and details. The beauty of an auction draft for waiver pickups is that, unlike most formats, everybody gets a shot at every available player, week to week. Obviously, we’re not living in some fantasy world (at least not until the season starts) where we think you can gather 10-12 league owners in a room each week in order to hold a live auction draft for waiver pickups (although if you are, please look around at the next meeting and think about how lucky you are). But even if your leaguemates are not close geographically, it doesn’t you can’t hold an auction each week!
This should be relatively easy to keep track of, even if just within a group chat. Just as in an auction draft, allow the lowest ranked team to start the nomination process and pick a player at a price point that s/he chooses. Similar to the FAAB Waiver Rule, every team will have a budget they can use to bid from, likely anywhere from $100-$200 for the season (to be clear, this is fake money for the purposes of keeping track of transactions). Keep the start time of the draft consistent week to week so there are no surprises or funny business. Set a standard of 3-5 minutes per nomination, Owners can place their bets by texting or messaging. Owners can forgo their nomination if they so choose and you can also limit the number of rounds to save time.
What will likely happen is you’ll only have a few owners who show up for the auction each week as they look to fill sudden roster holes. This is definitely a rule for the more involved leagues with a lot of interaction. As Commish, you do not necessarily need to monitor each auction, you can simply review the results afterwards to manually add players and deduct budgets accordingly.
Nuts and Bolts
- Decide on a budget for each team to use for weekly waiver auctions prior to the season. We suggest something like 200 FAAB dollars.
- Determine the day and time each auction will be held and explain to owners the format for the auction, i.e. Group Chat > 3 rounds > 3 minutes per player nomination
- After the auction has ended, update each roster through manual add/drops and budget deductions.
Change Ups
The freedom of this rule comes with how you decide to format when it comes to specifics on how the auction will take place. Many leagues have the option of a FAAB waiver system already in place, which means you could choose implement a hybrid approach and have just a few auctions throughout the year if you want to try and slowly ease into this rule. The remaining non-auction weeks would work the same way as explained over at FAAB.
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