Live Auction Draft Room
RotoWire MLB Commissioner services come with a Live Auction Draft Room where teams can bid on players in real time for no additional charge.
Our service is built in conjunction with FantasyAuctioneer.com.
Before you use our auction room, please make sure you run our browser tests to ensure system compatibility. Please click here to test your browser. (IE 5.0+ or Netscape 6.0+ required).
To set up the Live Auction Draft Room for your league, follow these steps:
- First add all of the teams which will participate in the auction using the "Add Teams" link in the admin area.
- Then go to the Admin Tools area and click on the "League Auction Setup" link.
- Schedule a time and date for your auction.
- Set the parameters of your league draft.
- Each auction must have a team which will act as commissioner. The commissioner will have the ability to start and pause the auction, rollback mistakes and change the bid and selection time limits during the auction .
- Once your auction is set up, you will be able to access the auction and pre-rank values from your league home page.
- You will be able to enter your auction starting 30 minutes before the auction start time. A link to your auction will be at the top of your league home page.
- At the end of the auction the rosters will automatically be imported into your league at midnight that night.
Here are some FAQs that address other major issues/questions. Email us at support@rotowire.com if you have more quesitons.
1. How exactly does the Live Auction Draft Room work?
The Live Auction Draft Room allows owners to bid on players in real time.
We will have the following three products that feature the live auction room for Baseball 2007:
$69.99 per league - The Live Auction Draft Room comes at no additional charge with RotoWire.com's baseball commissioner. You can auction-draft and the results are automatically posted on your leauge's website. Our league manager is renowned for being commissioner-friendly and very customizable. Our customer service is also top-notch.
$26.99 per league - A stand-alone auction-draft with no commissioner service. If you prefer this option, please visit http://www.fantasyauctioneer.com
$39.99 per team - This is our auction-draft money league, click here to join. We are providing the league manager software as well as acting as the commissioner - resolving disputes, handling pay-outs, and running the league in general. First place wins $200 and second place gets a free team in 2008.
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2. How do I assign keepers to their teams?
There are two ways the Live Auction Draft Room can handle keepers.
The first is to just have team owners bid and win players at their keeper amounts.
The second is to use the link provided on the "League Auction Setup" page after your auction has been setup.
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3. I can't make it to my auction. How do I input my value list for the computer player to follow?
You can enter values for players ahead of the draft that the computer player will follow if you cannot make the auction or need to arrive early or leave late. After the auction is set up, you can access a link to pre-rank your players from your league's homepage.
This will launch our value list tool that will help you put together your value list by allowing you to generate mock auctions easily. The idea is that if your value list is accurate, a mock auction will result in teams that are relatively equal in strength. The value list tool will allow you to see these teams side-by-side for easy comparison. If you see that some teams are noticeably stronger and/or weaker than others, that means that players on stronger teams are underpriced and those on weaker teams are overpriced. Adjust accordingly and generate another mock auction, compare again, and adjust as needed. Iterating on this process a few times should help you put together a solid price list which you can save. Saving it will then tie the Artificial Intelligence to this list as the computer player will follow it during your auction. If you must show up late to your auction, save your price list for the A.I. to follow. When you log in late, the A.I. will relinquish control and you can participate from then on.
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4. How do I reschedule my auction or change any of my auction settings?
To change the start time of your auction or any other league setting, the commissioner must go to the Admin Tools area and click on the "League Auction Setup" link. From there, the commissioner can change any of the settings and save it.
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5. If auction drafting is so great, why do less than 20% of fantasy sports fans currently use it?
Auction drafting has not hit the mainstream simply because there is no software available that facilitates auction drafting the way it should be - nothing, that is, until now. Current systems either utilize an email format that could take weeks to complete or an eBay-like format that, although much better, still doesn't capture auction drafting the way it should be. The biggest problem with the eBay-like format, where a time limit is given and 10-20 players are placed on the auction block at the same time, is that it allows users to enter last-second bids that others will not be able to counter. Another problem is that with so many players on the block at the same time, it makes it very difficult to keep track of what positions have been filled by what teams. The Fantasy Auctioneer stays true to the traditional auction draft process, exactly how it should be run - one player at a time, managers entering their bids, and the player getting sold when nobody outbids the highest bidder after a certain amount of time ("Going once:going twice:.SOLD!"). It allows people to keep track of other teams' rosters and bid accordingly, which is a significant part of auction strategy.
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6. Are there any drawbacks to auction drafting?
Two of the biggest knocks on auctioning is that 1) it takes too long and 2) beginners wouldn't have any idea how much to
pay for any particular player. The reason it takes too long is that you have to have a very disciplined auctioneer to keep
the auction's pace going. This is where the Live Auction Draft Room comes in. It paces the auction perfectly, forcing managers to
decide within a given timeframe (which the commissioner can adjust before and during the auction) what players to place on the auction
block or the system will choose for them. It also strictly enforces the predetermined idle bidding time limit (which the commissioner
can also adjust before and during the auction) before the player on the block is sold. Auctioning with the Live Auction Draft Room,
for the most part, takes about the same amount of time as snake drafting.
As for first-timers and casual fans not knowing what to bid on whom, the system provides "Suggested Retail Prices" (SRP)
for each fantasy player to give them an idea of how much players should go for. Also, we have a Value List Tool that will
help first-timers and auction veterans alike prepare their own list. Finally, it can actually be argued that those new to
fantasy sports will be able to field a much better team in an auction rather than a snake draft. Consider the rookie diehard
Giants fan who selects five Giants in the first five rounds - a recipe for disaster. In an auction, he or she will only have
to pay the "going market price" for these players. Of course, if other league members take advantage of this affinity for
the Giants and bid their prices up, the prices will be a bit inflated. Even if this happens, the Giants fan will still
have enough money to pay for high-caliber players.
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