We're developing a deep-format fantasy sports platform, please give us some feedback/advice

[Curll]

Heyo.
 
I wanted to solicit some feedback/advice from this group. I'm a fantasy baseball guy, so I'd love to get a football perspective on the  concepts.
 
We're (Jaylach and I, and a dude in OH) developing a platform called Shado Sports (http://shadosports.com/) that's focused on dynasty, franchise, and multi-sport leagues. I know I've been involved in some super, super deep leagues with full contract systems, minor/dev/practice squad systems (500+ per team), and rules that tried to emulate real-world rules as closely as possible. But, we had to track everything in Excel and it is a nightmare.
 
We also found that a lot of the commissioner tools lack in allowing some of the more complex transactions, like multi-team trades, tracking salaries/contracts, or including things like option years, bonuses, PTBNLs, or conditional picks.
 
What're the biggest hurdles for your leagues? Are you looking for owners because they don't have the time commitment, or just bad owners? Are you looking for a super-duper specific type of league to join?
 
Thanks in advance

 

[ifmanis5]

The bug in the system is always The Human Element. Flaky owners who don't show up for the draft or just give up after two weeks. Good luck, though it looks awesome.

 

[Curll]

The bug in the system is always The Human Element. Flaky owners who don't show up for the draft or just give up after two weeks. Good luck, though it looks awesome.

Yeah, we're wanting to implement some sort of rating or badge system. Like, "Super Trader" if you've made over 30 trades or some such. That'll let you distinguish owners a bit more and find good fits. Maybe not a feature at launch, though.
 
Another suggestion we've heard is allow Commishes to view a list of potential owners rather than just seeking them out via referral, or letting the person who "owns" the franchise "hire" a manager to run the team if they don't have time (not unlike co-owners, but a little more hierarchy) 

 

[Morgan's Magic Snowplow]

Btw mods, I told Curll he was welcome to solicit feedback here in the RFP subforum.

I've never played fantasy football beyond standard formats but from our experiences here I'd say that the biggest hurdle involves finding a scoring system that could work for non-skill-player positions and still pass the smell test. I know some leagues integrate defensive players but standard defensive statistics (tackles/sacks/INTs) are pretty poor measures of ability. Measuring offensive line output is even harder.

If you could find a way to really convincingly allow owners to build entire teams and have them play head to head (maybe using a scoring system that combines regular stats with PFF scores, which might need to be licensed from them) then I think you could grab a substantial market niche. PFF scores have serious limitations, as has been discussed repeatedly in this forum, but they're probably the best alternative out there. I'm sure there's real demand for that but I don't know of any site that really pulls it off.

 

[riboflav]

NM

 

[Grin&MartyBarret]

I'm in a very deep (18 teams), salary-cap, minor league roster baseball league, as well as a salary cap, 12 team football league.
 
In the baseball league, the one element we can't quite seem to get right is how to handle free agency. Currently, we just use a standard auction format, but what ends up happening is teams that are out of the race clear a ton of cap space and are able to outbid everybody for several of the top free agents each year. We've been kicking around the idea of developing a blind bidding system for free agents which gives owners the ability to name their price on a given free agent. If you all offered something similar, I have a feeling our commissioner would move over to your platform as soon as he could (provided the mobile app, etc. are up to snuff).
 
As you mentioned, multi-team trades would also be really nice. As would the ability to back/front load contracts, though that's more relevant in my football league as our baseball league prohibits it. The football league's contract system basically mimics a simplified version of the NBA's. All contracts are guaranteed and they decline by 5 dollars per year. We talked about having the ability to back/front load contracts--i.e. sign Julio Jones to a 4 year deal (which in our system would be 20 in year 1, 15 in year 2, etc.) but allowing owners with the cap space to accommodate it to pay him, say, 35 in year 1, and 5 in the remaining years. Ultimately it became too much of a headache for our commissioner, so we scrapped it. But that's one outside the box feature that we definitely would appreciate that nobody currently offers.

 

[Curll]

I'm in a very deep (18 teams), salary-cap, minor league roster baseball league, as well as a salary cap, 12 team football league.
 
In the baseball league, the one element we can't quite seem to get right is how to handle free agency. Currently, we just use a standard auction format, but what ends up happening is teams that are out of the race clear a ton of cap space and are able to outbid everybody for several of the top free agents each year. We've been kicking around the idea of developing a blind bidding system for free agents which gives owners the ability to name their price on a given free agent. If you all offered something similar, I have a feeling our commissioner would move over to your platform as soon as he could (provided the mobile app, etc. are up to snuff).
 
As you mentioned, multi-team trades would also be really nice. As would the ability to back/front load contracts, though that's more relevant in my football league as our baseball league prohibits it. The football league's contract system basically mimics a simplified version of the NBA's. All contracts are guaranteed and they decline by 5 dollars per year. We talked about having the ability to back/front load contracts--i.e. sign Julio Jones to a 4 year deal (which in our system would be 20 in year 1, 15 in year 2, etc.) but allowing owners with the cap space to accommodate it to pay him, say, 35 in year 1, and 5 in the remaining years. Ultimately it became too much of a headache for our commissioner, so we scrapped it. But that's one outside the box feature that we definitely would appreciate that nobody currently offers.

So, the one thing we're trying to do that may alleviate some of the absurd contract stuff is allowing leagues to associate the contracts with real money. So, if a player is signed to a $15M contract, that team owner would pay $15 or $1.5, whatever the league's setting would be. But, that's just one option and doesn't really solve the issue.
 
Another pseudo-solution is to tie some sort of tax/penalty to the real-world contract. If a team signs a player for more than their real-world AAV, apply a tax or cap hit. 
 
There's always going to be assholes who exploit the system, unfortunately.
 
And of course you run into the issues of if a player would really just take more money, or trying to formulate a hometown discount. FA is always a headache, haha. 

 

[DJnVa]

I come at this as a commissioner. We have the owners we want.
 
Just spitballing...as we get closer to football season I should have more...
 
We run a baseball and football league, each with 16 teams, and a lot of ownership overlap and it would be cool if there was a system/site where those are somehow tied together--not even really sure how that would work, but it seems cool and we've discussed it but really can't iron it out.
 
But, as always, the more customization there is the better. We think our scoring system works best, that's why we use it. Allow us to use that system, but then grant us functionality that cbssports.com or yahoo.com or espn.com doesn't--understand how we run our holdovers in football (15 over 3 years, then resetting, but with a "predraft" system that is too weird to explain here but works for us) and track that. Allow everyone to see very easily that I traded a 2016 3rd rounder last year and therefore may be in the market for one. That facilitates discussion.
 
Also, is there a way to build an AI in--if there's an owner asleep at the switch for whatever reason (which will eventually be rectified, but within that game cycle, it may not be), allow the commissioner to turn on that AI so that, if possible, that team don't start someone on a bye week or on the DL in baseball. Allow the system to recognize that Colin Kaepernick's team is not playing this week and the AI needs to activate Andy Dalton.

 

[Reverend]

I've never played fantasy football beyond standard formats but from our experiences here I'd say that the biggest hurdle involves finding a scoring system that could work for non-skill-player positions and still pass the smell test. I know some leagues integrate defensive players but standard defensive statistics (tackles/sacks/INTs) are pretty poor measures of ability. Measuring offensive line output is even harder.

 
I remember when Andy Schatz was in a fantasy football league that drafted defensive players and he took middle linebackers on teams with shitty defensive lines to rack up the tackles. I still think that's my favorite example of the mismatch between the subtlety of what makes a good football team and fantasy scoring--perhaps there is something instructive there.

 

[ElcaballitoMVP]

Allow everyone to see very easily that I traded a 2016 3rd rounder last year and therefore may be in the market for one. That facilitates discussion.
 

 
I think this is something that would be great and probably not all that difficult to build out. If your league allows you to trade draft picks, having an easy place to see who owns each pick would go a long way towards keeping track of picks come draft day and you'll probably get more teams to deal picks during the year if there was a place they could easily look to see who an excess or lack of picks in an upcoming draft. 
 
I'd also love to be able to join a draft room and be able to trade picks while the draft is happening. Say I have the 10th pick and I want AP, and he drops to #4 in the draft. I'd love to be able to throw an offer at the owner picking #4 and be able to update in real-time, just like in real life, that I traded #10 and a 3rd round pick for #4 and a 6th round pick. That would be pretty cool. 

 

[Curll]

 
I think this is something that would be great and probably not all that difficult to build out. If your league allows you to trade draft picks, having an easy place to see who owns each pick would go a long way towards keeping track of picks come draft day and you'll probably get more teams to deal picks during the year if there was a place they could easily look to see who an excess or lack of picks in an upcoming draft. 
 
I'd also love to be able to join a draft room and be able to trade picks while the draft is happening. Say I have the 10th pick and I want AP, and he drops to #4 in the draft. I'd love to be able to throw an offer at the owner picking #4 and be able to update in real-time, just like in real life, that I traded #10 and a 3rd round pick for #4 and a 6th round pick. That would be pretty cool. 

 
Some good ideas. I like the idea of live-trading draft picks, that's something we'll have to look into when we get to the War Room phase.
 
The longview draft board is something we're planning on. Basically just having TM1 (from TM4) and a draftboard for 3 or so years ahead. One thing about trading years-ahead picks, I think any more than 3 years is absurd, even 2, and throws off competitive balance. 

 

[SeoulSoxFan]

Fine with getting feedcack here. If you want me to move it to main BbtL let me know.

 

[Curll]

Fine with getting feedcack here. If you want me to move it to main BbtL let me know.

Um, maybe that would be better. I was thinking here has a lot of deep format folk, but the forum may be too specific towards RFP. But, don't want to clutter real football discussions

 

[Eck'sSneakyCheese]

Don't really have much to add except why not move this to the Fantasy Sports forum? The guys looking at other threads in there might have a little more information or better viewpoints. Just a thought.

 

[PBDWake]

One of the big things in my fantasy baseball cap league is "arbitration". Basically, every team is given a certain dollar figure that they can assign out, with a maximum of $3 that can be assigned per player. Then, each player distributes their cut out among everyone else's team, raising abnormally low salaries. Each team is also allowed to protect two players from arbitration, but it still stops people from building juggernauts off the back of a handful of criminally low salaries (I had protected Trout on $2, and Posey on $5, but lost out on my cheap salaries to players like Manny Machado and Edwin Encarnacion)

 

[CaptainLaddie]

 
I remember when Andy Schatz was in a fantasy football league that drafted defensive players and he took middle linebackers on teams with shitty defensive lines to rack up the tackles. I still think that's my favorite example of the mismatch between the subtlety of what makes a good football team and fantasy scoring--perhaps there is something instructive there.

 

Aaron Schatz?

 

[SeoulSoxFan]

Don't really have much to add except why not move this to the Fantasy Sports forum? The guys looking at other threads in there might have a little more information or better viewpoints. Just a thought.

That may make sense after being on the main BbtL forum (where I've moved the thread too). Just would be nice to help out Curll and get more exposure/feedback.

 

[SeoulSoxFan]

One bit of note (coming from someone who runs a web design company) -- you may want to not have an incomplete site at shadosports.com.

Rather, put up a nice but simple "coming soon" page that's complete with good copy & images, and make getting emails from potential customers a priority.

If that's what you meant for the current site, having actual images and making the "Sign up" be a lot more prominent would help.

 

[Curll]

One bit of note (coming from someone who runs a web design company) -- you may want to not have an incomplete site at shadosports.com.

Rather, put up a nice but simple "coming soon" page that's complete with good copy & images, and make getting emails from potential customers a priority.

If that's what you meant for the current site, having actual images and making the "Sign up" be a lot more prominent would help.

Yeah, that was a quicky I tossed together with a WP theme.
 
The focus isn't quite on customer acquisition right now, we're (clearly) still doing some market research and just putting the idea out there and measuring response. As we develop the system more, we'll have a more SasS-like landing page/marketing site. Thanks for offering to design and code it for FREE. I'll take you up on that
 
I mean, shit, the logo is a default shape in Photoshop, so I won't be claiming any design awards. 

 

[Curll]

One of the big things in my fantasy baseball cap league is "arbitration". Basically, every team is given a certain dollar figure that they can assign out, with a maximum of $3 that can be assigned per player. Then, each player distributes their cut out among everyone else's team, raising abnormally low salaries. Each team is also allowed to protect two players from arbitration, but it still stops people from building juggernauts off the back of a handful of criminally low salaries (I had protected Trout on $2, and Posey on $5, but lost out on my cheap salaries to players like Manny Machado and Edwin Encarnacion)

Yeah, I've seen Arb handled a few ways.
 
1) Set escalators. MLB, for example, the first three years are MLB-equivilant, next three are arb based on real-life numbers, and there's an extension you can give one player. And a franchise tag for one FA to be.
 
2) NBA-style (I think) where contracts depreciate over a few years, then a franchise tag can be applied
 
3) If player finished above X ranking, they get more money or hit the FA market
 
We're not going to try to solve these issues, in reality. We're going to make the tools so leagues can choose their own route. That's why we like to say D&D of fantasy sports, because leagues love to tinker and do their own thing and we don't want to limit that.

 

[Hendu for Kutch]

I'm in a very deep (18 teams), salary-cap, minor league roster baseball league, as well as a salary cap, 12 team football league.
 
In the baseball league, the one element we can't quite seem to get right is how to handle free agency. Currently, we just use a standard auction format, but what ends up happening is teams that are out of the race clear a ton of cap space and are able to outbid everybody for several of the top free agents each year. We've been kicking around the idea of developing a blind bidding system for free agents which gives owners the ability to name their price on a given free agent. If you all offered something similar, I have a feeling our commissioner would move over to your platform as soon as he could (provided the mobile app, etc. are up to snuff).
 
As you mentioned, multi-team trades would also be really nice. As would the ability to back/front load contracts, though that's more relevant in my football league as our baseball league prohibits it. The football league's contract system basically mimics a simplified version of the NBA's. All contracts are guaranteed and they decline by 5 dollars per year. We talked about having the ability to back/front load contracts--i.e. sign Julio Jones to a 4 year deal (which in our system would be 20 in year 1, 15 in year 2, etc.) but allowing owners with the cap space to accommodate it to pay him, say, 35 in year 1, and 5 in the remaining years. Ultimately it became too much of a headache for our commissioner, so we scrapped it. But that's one outside the box feature that we definitely would appreciate that nobody currently offers.

 
To both G&MB and Curll, I would suggest taking a look at gamedayritual.com.  G&MB, it has an absolutely amazing free agency period that is a blast to go through, and utilizes semi-blind bidding with a series of twists.  My favorite time of the year is GDR's Free Agency Blitz, it's like my Christmas.  It also deals with dumping multi-year contracts by penalizing the dumping team 50% of the contract for whatever length it was signed for, so it sounds like it would address your contract dumping problem.  They also have easy multi-team trade functionality.  I managed to orchestrate a 4-team deadline deal several years back.
 
Honestly, GDR has ruined other forms of fantasy baseball for me, I enjoy it that much.  So it's worth checking out for sure and I'd be happy to answer any questions you had on it.  One drawback though is that it's basically owned/run by 4 guys who also have full-time jobs.  So support can be slow and I'm guessing they won't be adding too many features each year.  But if it never changed at all I'd be happy playing it forever, so there's that.
 
Curll, it might be worth taking a look over there for ideas and inspiration.  They do things very differently than anywhere else I've ever played, so there's probably a lot to chew over that you can build on for your own site.

 

[Curll]

 
Curll, it might be worth taking a look over there for ideas and inspiration.  They do things very differently than anywhere else I've ever played, so there's probably a lot to chew over that you can build on for your own site.

I have checked them out a bit, perhaps with your suggestion actually, and think they're pretty neat.
 
The problem is that they aren't really a "fantasy" platform, right? The stadiums and attendance thing is just for show. The lineups, strategies, etc. disregard (or alter) the real-world results. Feel free to correct me, I haven't played on there and there's no option for a free trial.
 
Oh! And that's the other thing. Shado is a real business, not a hobbyist project. Unlike Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, or GDR, we're focusing on fantasy sports only. We also want to engage the community, so they can mod/hack the platform to create juuuuust the league they want. 

 

[Hendu for Kutch]

I have checked them out a bit, perhaps with your suggestion actually, and think they're pretty neat.
 
The problem is that they aren't really a "fantasy" platform, right? The stadiums and attendance thing is just for show. The lineups, strategies, etc. disregard (or alter) the real-world results. Feel free to correct me, I haven't played on there and there's no option for a free trial.
 
Oh! And that's the other thing. Shado is a real business, not a hobbyist project. Unlike Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, or GDR, we're focusing on fantasy sports only. We also want to engage the community, so they can mod/hack the platform to create juuuuust the league they want. 

 
Oh sure, I wasn't comparing you to them in any way, just thought that it was fertile area to mine for potential ideas.  Particularly the Free Agency Blitz concept they use, it's fantastic.  I shouldn't be surprised I've mentioned them to you in the past, I'm a bit of a preacher for the site.
 
You're partially right on GDR.  The attendance is just a cross-league ranking tool for fun (it is cool to be the "overall" champion though, which I pulled off 2 years ago).  The other features, like lineup construction, lefty-righty balance, ballparks, and pitching around opponents don't disregard the real-world results, it just allows them to be slightly "bent" and give the fantasy player a way to goose their team results. 
 
It's one way to reward active management, but it does veer slightly off the strictly fantasy path.  While the implementation might not be what you're looking for, the concept of subtly rewarding activity and, inversely, punishing inattentiveness while upping the strategy level is something that could be attractive to certain leagues as an option.

 

[Reverend]

 
Aaron Schatz?

 
No, his evil twin. 

 

[Curll]

 
Oh sure, I wasn't comparing you to them in any way, just thought that it was fertile area to mine for potential ideas.  Particularly the Free Agency Blitz concept they use, it's fantastic.  I shouldn't be surprised I've mentioned them to you in the past, I'm a bit of a preacher for the site.
 
You're partially right on GDR.  The attendance is just a cross-league ranking tool for fun (it is cool to be the "overall" champion though, which I pulled off 2 years ago).  The other features, like lineup construction, lefty-righty balance, ballparks, and pitching around opponents don't disregard the real-world results, it just allows them to be slightly "bent" and give the fantasy player a way to goose their team results. 
 
It's one way to reward active management, but it does veer slightly off the strictly fantasy path.  While the implementation might not be what you're looking for, the concept of subtly rewarding activity and, inversely, punishing inattentiveness while upping the strategy level is something that could be attractive to certain leagues as an option.

Awesome, thanks for the insight.
 
We are working on Global Rankings for scoring and large-scale leagues (There's one football league I found that is EPL style with 244 teams, all move up and down year to year); we want players to be able to compete against similar owners to maximize fun/value for them. And, of course, being able to see how you rank against the entire site is fun for its own reasons.
 
Beyond that, things like Badges or Trophies, will certainly be included so you can track your progress or earn a reputation as a Trader/Waiver Wire Wiz/Back2Back Champ whatever else. Since we have such a strong focus on leagues with budgets, we'll probably reward teams with Budget Points (our funny money) for earning those. We also want to implement a type of Revenue Sharing system were ad revenue is pumped back into the teams' budgets. 
 
These things get pretty damn far from the fantasy path, lol. I'll have to check out GDR a bit more, see if I can't find a few screen caps/walkthroughs.