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8 Ways Avoid Teams Quitting Your Fantasy League
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's someone quitting on a fantasy league midseason. If you can't put in 5-10 minutes a day for it, don't sign up in the first place. Nonetheless, quitters are inevitable.
I am in all kinds of leagues - one with my old coworkers, one for this site with $100 buy-in, an experts head to head league, a keeper league with friends. In all of them, at least one team has completely stopped trying. The guy won't set his lineup, doesn't replace injured players, and generally doesn't check on the league at all. How can this travesty be prevented? I've devised eight tactics.
1. Make it a keeper league. This is a pretty obvious way to ensure everyone maintains interest in the league all year long. Just like in real baseball, the lousy out-of-contention teams can trade off expensive stars for affordable youngsters. This is more easily done if the draft is auction rather than snake draft style. The more keepers you allow, the more flexibility for poor teams to stockpile prospects. My league allows a healthy ten keepers.
2. Require a decent cash buy-in, and give prizes for the first three or four finishers. I suggest at least a $60 buy-in. Then you've got $720 to work with. $460 for first place, $200 for second, third gets their money back. Even if the first place team runs away with it, you might have a gaggle of teams fighting for second and third.
3. Give cash prizes to monthly winners. If your provider tracks leaders by month, you can dole out small cash prizes ($20 maybe) based on that. The previous incarnation of Fanball used to accomodate monthly stats; I'm not sure if any services do now. Monthly prizes can provide a little extra incentive.
4. Choose head-to-head over rotisserie style. I am not a fan of H2H leagues. A standard roto league already has plenty of luck involved, but with H2H you are slicing up the season 26 times into weekly matchups. I acknowledge that H2H has its own strategies, and it can certainly keep a person invested just for bragging rights over another team.
5. Kick out the worst four teams each year. If you've got enough people vying to be in the league, you can give the boot to x number of teams at the bottom of the standings while keeping the rest for next year. If it's the bottom four, this might create a battle to stay out of 9th place. We are trying this in the RotoAuthority league this year.
6. Periodically publicize the league results, with trash talk. This has worked well in one of my H2H leagues. Weekly matchup results are analyzed on a blog, and losers are good-naturedly insulted. Plus, it's always good to randomly mock a league member for a bad drop or trade. They'll remember that, and strive to prevent future embarrassments. Public shaming is useful, but be aware that trash talk can very easily cross the line and create animosity.
7. Don't play in a league with strangers. For your league, try to recruit friends, family members, coworkers, or other acquaintances. If you see league members in person regularly, they might feel ashamed about quitting on the league. If you join a random Yahoo league, people will have no such qualms.
8. Seek out league members who aren't always busy. The number one reason people give for quitting on a fantasy league is that they just didn't have time to manage their roster. Some people are truly busy, while others just pretend to be. It's a lot easier to say this than to admit they drafted a lousy team and lost interest. When possible, opt for people with a little time on their hands - college students, freelancers, coworkers at a laid-back job, retirees. If a prospective owner never has time to hang out because of work/family/whatever, they probably won't have time for a fantasy league either.
Anyone have any other ways to keep all teams in the league invested until the very end?
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Tim...
In my other money league (not the RotoAuthority league), we instituted second half "biggest gainer" prizes. In our 12-team league, we award money to the first, second, and third place teams, but to keep the lesser teams interested, are offering smaller payouts to the three teams who gain the most post-ASB roto points. We'll see how it works out, but so far, so good.
--Daniel
Posted by: copusd | July 18, 2008 at 08:47 AM
Regarding H2H Luck, we instituted a 3 games per week schedule which tends to smooth that out quite a bit. Luck is part of it, and why it is fun, because you never know what will happen. But playing 3 teams each week and each team 3 weeks in a row adds some "series" flavor to it and helps minimize some of the injustices.
Also, it keeps you interested through Sunday more - as you have 3 chances to win - giving a reason to stay involved in those weeks when you would otherwise be blown out by Tuesday in your single match up versus a hot team.
At least one team goes 0-3 each week, and at least one goes 3-0, so sweeping or being swept can add to the trash talk.
Posted by: m3marko | July 18, 2008 at 08:50 AM
In my 13 team NL Only keeper, we require a $70 buy in and a $70 deposit. The deposit is there to charge people for each transaction, but also to penalize the bottom two teams in the league.
If teams come in 12th and 13th, they are charged $50. It makes for an interesting battle for 11th place.
Posted by: IowaCubs | July 18, 2008 at 09:19 AM
We give a prize for a second tier. 4 teams can enter the 2nd tier at any point in the season (first come, first served). Winner of the 2nd tier gets same prize as overall 3rd place winner (and cannot win any of the real money even if they finish in the overall top 3). Usually the bottom teams jump into the 2nd tier after the ASB.
Posted by: eitanbanks | July 18, 2008 at 11:07 AM
In my keeper league, we have a slightly different problem, so perhaps you all (especially Tim) can help. We have been running a auction/keeper league for almost a decade-it is rotis style but with points counted on a per-two-week session basis. We charge a relatively high yearly fee and give money prizes to the top 4.
The "problem" is that within the first two months of the season, generally 4 owners sell over EVERYTHING, and I mean everything, for future value. Sometimes this even happens before the season even starts (we had one guy traded Manny Ramirez in the preseason, even though he he had just paid Manny 1/12th of his entire budget for Justin Smoak, who had just been given a 5 year contract at the minimum 2 weeks earlier).
This number of teams who sell everything goes up to 6 or 7 (out of 12) by the the allstar break. In practice, this means that more than half of the league is starting terrible players or injured guys and couldn't care less where they finish session to session. It is not that these owners don't care about the league- just the opposite, they care about winning the whole thing so much in some year, that they stop caring about where they finish this year.
Any suggestions would be appriciated.
Posted by: Mishafp | July 18, 2008 at 12:07 PM
I can't really give any suggestions other than to find people like myself. I'm in 8th place out of 10 with no chance of ever breaking out... but I still play on a daily basis. I've got no one else to blame but myself for my poor draft strategy, why make the rest of the league pay for it.
Side note: IowaCubs, do you run the Bleacher Bums league on Yahoo?
Posted by: Anrkist | July 18, 2008 at 12:19 PM
1. Do not have transaction fees. Never understood this at all.
2. If it's a draft league, base next year's draft order on the final standings. Or better yet, let people choose their draft position in the order they finished. Maybe you don't want the 1st place team with the first choice, but you can come up with some order that makes sense. Like 4,5,6,3,7,2,8,1,9,10,11,12 - something like that.
3. I like fining the teams that come in last.
4. If it's a keeper league, none of these apply (except #1). Teams that are out of it should SOLELY be focused on improving their teams for the following year, and there should be no incentives for them to keep any good players without future value.
Posted by: bobo | July 18, 2008 at 01:00 PM
We've set up a "losers bracket" playoff system.
First, its a 12-team league, top 6 make the playoffs, 2 teams get first round byes.
Of the remaining 6 teams, the bottom 4 go to a play-off as well. The winner of the "losers bracket" get their entrance fee back.
So the first overall draft pick the next season goes to team #7, then team #8 then the "losers bracket" winner, then the rest of the losers, then reverse order of finish.
I know complicated, but it seems fair and has worked well for a couple years.
Posted by: afdaddy | July 18, 2008 at 01:07 PM
allow for draft picks to be traded if it is a keeper league. in my main league we allow for this and it lets the teams that have no shot get rid of contributors for a number of draft picks and allows them to compete for next season.
Posted by: revans37 | July 18, 2008 at 03:39 PM
AVOIDING SELLOUTS & QUITTERS:
1) The price of every traded player increases to the median price of all players.
2) Last place (and first place) get fewest keepers. In fact, 5-6-7-8 get the most keepers.
Posted by: bbgun | July 19, 2008 at 05:57 AM
Here is an idea. How about instead of whoring yourself by playing in 10 different leagues you just play in one like a real life GM does. That way nobody will be abandoning the leagues they are not doing well in and using their "free spins" in the ones they are enjoying success.
Posted by: Kevin W. | July 20, 2008 at 11:10 AM
"Teams that are out of it should SOLELY be focused on improving their teams for the following year, and there should be no incentives for them to keep any good players without future value."
This strikes me as wrong. If say only 4 out of 12 teams have a shot at the title, is it really good for a year to have the other 7 teams trade ALL their good players to the 5 good teams, so there are basically 5 allstar teams and everyone else sucks/is starting injured guys or minor leaguers?
Posted by: Mishafp | July 21, 2008 at 01:38 PM
Tim,
I am a commish for a 16 team league in yahoo H2H private league. I picked the 16 teams from Facebook in baseball fan and it has worked out tremendously. Granted I dont have cash prizes but we still have a LOT of trash talk (atleast 2500 msgs so far) and the teams that arent active I have redrafted there teams. So 4 of the teams in our league who dont pay attention I have taken their best players and then put a draft during the middle of the season for the other 12 teams and we have 8 teams over .500 who are trying to get into 6 playoff spots. It makes it MORE competitive than anything, also I increased roster sizes to 27 and then minimum IP with 27 (like real baseball) and we have 21 catergories.
Posted by: Razi | July 27, 2008 at 12:01 PM