Fantasy Auctions During A Pandemic

Lessons Learned And How To Apply Them Going Forward

2020 was a lost year in many respects. Fantasy auctions were no different
The pandemic definitely disrupted my fantasy football experience in 2020. I didn’t attend any live events last year. I’m suffering serious withdrawal from missing out on the live action. The primary high-stakes fantasy sites attempted to offer live action with masks and social distancing but typically did not offer auctions due to the difficulty of pulling in enough live players that play auctions. The social distancing aspect made it even more difficult to referee who shouted first.

This resulted in me having to adapt and find an online auction format to scratch my itch for fantasy auctions. I discovered that the NFFC offered a mature format where other high stakes auction players had been auctioning for a number of years. I did OK in my debut effort for online auctions, but there was a learning curve. Things were a little different. I had to get used to these subtle differences and then figure out how to take advantage of them. I’ll try to explain these items in this article.

• Average Auction Value immediately available during the auction for this specific site
• Bidding methodology (opening and max bid, etc.)
• Tools I typically used that needed to change for online auctions

Average Auction Values (AAV) are displayed for each player
I work hard each year to have site-specific ADP information and to translate that into average auction value for those sites where site-specific auction values aren’t available.

I feel this preparation work gives me some advantage when I sit down at an auction table and my custom tool displays this information to me. The NFFC, however, already has the AAV displayed for each player, and the bidding rarely differed significantly from that value. (You can actually find the min and max values that players have gone for on their site as well.)

Does the low variance from the AAV indicate the AAV is very predictive? Yes, probably. But, nobody wants to overpay either so it also informs the people enforcing value that they can probably safely bid that player up to within a couple of dollars, and it makes players wanting him to become hesitant to want to overpay more than a dollar or two. Those same players are also confident that spending up to (or slightly above) the AAV is acceptable. They’re not bullied by a player who’s trying to bid them up if the AAV is staring right at them.

How did I use this to my advantage? Well, after a couple of auctions I knew there was some variance (auction to auction) but I also knew if I strongly believed in a player’s value above his AAV I could plan on having him in a draft if I wanted him.

Live auctions have more variance and also seem to have price fluctuations more dependent on when a player is nominated during the process. This is due in part to the live action-element but also because of no site-specific auction values being available. Everyone has to adapt to the format from the auction data they’ve prepared.

So if I’m building my auction on being able to obtain that $7 running back, it ranges from being highly risky in a draft to somewhat risky depending on when he appears in an auction. But with the AAV posted on the player in online auctions, the strategy seems to be different. I’ve lost out on these theoretically $7 running backs in live auctions where they went for $15. In my five online actions last year, I didn’t notice that kind of extreme variance. I was able to successfully target a player like J.K. Dobbins and be fairly assured of getting him, unless I overspent my budget on other values I found early.

Quarterbacks were pretty consistent in their pricing. I could reliably choose the QB in advance of the auction and pretty much be assured of getting him. Unfortunately, I didn’t choose Josh Allen in any of these five auctions!

Bidding methodology (opening and max bid, etc.)
As with live auctions, you take turns nominating players and can nominate any available player. When making a nomination bid you enter your bid amount and a maximum bid for the player (up to your max remaining bid). This took a little experimenting, but here’s how this works in combination with nominating a player.

Let’s say I’m interested in a quarterback and I’m willing to spend up to $3 and it’s my nomination. I can nominate that quarterback for a $1 bid and simultaneously enter a max bid of $3. This is very different from a live auction. Sometimes, the online league will let me walk with that player for $1. Great, I just saved $2 from what I was willing to pay for him. Sometimes, however, an opposing bidder will bid $2. That $2 attempt will be trumped by my willingness to also bid $2. The system increments the leading bid to $2 -- but it will still indicate I’m the owner of that bid. If that opposing bidder or another tries the same thing at $3, then I will still be the leading bidder but now at $3. Someone would have to be willing to go to $4 to take the player from me.

This is extremely useful information, especially paired with your nomination since you’d be the first person to employ the strategy for lower dollar acquisitions -- quarterbacks are a perfect example here.

In a live auction, you always have to bid at least $2 higher than your last bid if someone jumps in to bid. This causes a struggle on where to set your bid for the low dollar players when you’re trying to conserve money, but it also is a factor when you’re bid-ding for any player approaching his valuation. For example: I’m willing to go to $22 for a player, but my opponent just bid $18. The typical live auction would have us exchanging bids where’d I’d have the odd values and him the even. Say I bid $21 -- if he goes $22 then I’m forced to go to $23. Online, if I bid $18 and also indicate I’m willing to go to $22, then I own all the bids inbetween. I’ll only lose the player if an opposing bidder offers up at least a $23 bid.

Also, if I have a max remaining bid of $8 and opposing bidders know this, in a live auction if a player starts in a bidding war, they can always try to freeze me out instead of waiting until I get to $8 and force them to $9. Instead, they simply bid $8 and I can’t bid $9. In the online auction, if I know I’m willing to go to my max bid, I just set that in my bid and I get the player for the lowest possible price up to $8 assuming nobody is willing to go to $9.

This was a very helpful discovery once I learned how the tool worked. It takes some pre-planning (and even more awareness of what you’re doing than a live auction) to optimize the price points you’re securing players for. But, as all auction participants know, an extra $5 going into the final five rounds of an auction can let you dominate the endgame of auctions. If you can have those few extra dollars without sacrificing any talent from your starting core, you can really put together a dominant team.

Tools I typically used that I had to change up for online auctions
The budget tracking tools I’ve used weren’t as necessary in an online auction since the online tool is pretty adept at tracking everyone’s team and current budget.

The site posts each team’s starting lineup as they are acquired. When a surplus occurs above the starting requirement of RBs, WRs, or TEs they are pushed into the flex position. After the flex is filled they are put onto your bench. It’s not as convenient to quickly observe the depth of each position compared to how I typically track where starting lineups and bench assets are displayed. But, I was able to quickly adapt to the different way team rosters were tracked.

I still needed to use my tool, however, to keep track of the dynamic value in my system of players. The online tool showed the average auction value, but my tool moves the relative value of each player up or down depending on the remaining budgets and the player pool available at each position. This typically adjusts players’ values (depending how aggressive players are) for the first 24-36 ranked players. If a league is super-aggressive securing these players, value drops accordingly for the next 24-36 players until equilibrium is reached.

For example, if a league typically bids a combined $600 for first round players and $400 for second round players, that’s $1,000. Say that league bids roughly 10 percent more for those first 24 players. That’s an extra $100 which needs to be accounted for. So, that $100 comes off of third and fourth round players. Typically those 24 players command $564 combined at an auction. If that value is reduced by $100, then the average player in that group could get discounted by as much as 17 percent. It’s not always that concentrated, but when you’re tracking an auction and it feels like the top talent is going for high prices, discounts will come. Be ready. The online tool will continue to show you the average price point of players, but, all of a sudden players might be going for a couple dollars less and the unique situation of a player going for $3-$4 less might present itself. Some people are very good at working through this in an intuitive way. Others feel more comfortable with computer guidance.

Summary
In conclusion, I continue to believe site-specific ADP and/or auction information is critical to successfully navigating a draft or auction. If you play in a lot of leagues, variance will hit you so trying to choose best value among high-conviction picks allows you to continue to finish in the black each year.

The online auction tools have greatly improved since I last tried one, and I hope to add a few more this year even with my anticipated return to live events as the pandemic gets put into the rearview mirror of our lives.

One additional fallout from the pandemic (unrelated to online activity) was the QB position. Typically in 1QB leagues, we would tend to roster one, maybe two QBs. But going into last season, we knew this was going to be more of a crapshoot and rostering your QB’s backup may not do you any good. For example, if your QB had Covid-19, the entire QB room could be quarantined. And if a team had a Covid-19 outbreak the game could be cancelled, not only impacting your QB but also the opposing QB. Because of this, we found ourselves rostering three quarterbacks in many leagues. Others in the league were doing the same. A normally extremely deep position became pretty thin which drove up demand from the teams who were lacking at the position. It was just another adaptation required last year.

Hope to see you at an auction table in Vegas!