Why Your Next Dynasty Startup Auction Should Use Blind Bidding

It’s probably no surprise to anyone who has read most of my articles, been in leagues with me or had conversation with me that I’ve had a lot of issues with the auction format and how it allows some owners to negatively impact the experience of their fellow owners.

Additionally, as a secondary issue, it is my belief that the format artificially allows some owners to appear more competent and better players than they are in actuality. There is, I believe, a commonly-held misconception that the format, as it is, allows owners to build the team they want to build, and that any owner has the ability to obtain any player they desire.

Unfortunately, these myths have continued to proliferate through the dynasty community to the point where anyone even attempting to question the format is hit with that mantra almost immediately after the conversation begins. Perhaps what upsets me the most is that the format itself is fine, it’s how the format has been applied that makes it increasingly unappealing for many owners.

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That said, this article hasn’t been developed to whine and complain without providing a solution. There is a better way to institute this highly-competitive format that brings so much of the good aspects while fixing the negative side effects.

Before outlining the solution, allow me to provide some background.

The concept of an auction is roughly 2,500 years old, tracing its roots back to 500 B.C. and originating in Greece. Modern, organized auctions which were held in auction house began in mid-18th century England with Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the two most recognizable auction houses in the world, being created in this time period.

The next obvious behemoth to come about after that was eBay, created in 1995 during the “Dot Com Boom” and which has now grown to in excess of two million auctions occurring on any given day.

In terms of fantasy usage and acceptance, the auction format started slow with a handful of auction leagues spawning and developing from the 1980s through the early 2000s. The auction format has seen significant growth in the 2010s with just shy of 200 MyFantasyLeague results appearing in 2010 with the word “auction” in the league name and 318 results appearing in those same results in 2018.

There also a significant number of leagues that implement the format without putting the word “auction” in the league name, and countless other leagues on different websites that also utilize the format. The example here is to show that the format is growing by leaps and bounds in popularity.

The obvious question then is: “So why change anything?”

Let me preface this by stating that I’m not looking to change anything but rather I’m proposing an alternative. I’m fully aware that some owners are perfectly content with how auction leagues operate, and I’m happy about that as fantasy football, in general, is all about having fun.

However, it is my opinion that the auction format has collided with modern day life and a hobby in the form of fantasy football, to create a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster in terms of how auctions should operate versus the free time owners have to commit to their hobby.

This has led many leagues to institute what is called a long auction draft, usually consisting of a 24-hour window to make bids. In many of this subset, owners can reset the auction timer by submitting a bid and becoming the high bidder. This aberration in how auctions have traditionally been conducted creates a problem, a significant one I’d argue.

Imagine if auctions occurred like this in real life. Picture this scenario:

A farmer goes to his local auction at 9:00 AM to bid on some pig feed as he’s getting low and has about enough for the next week. He places a bid and is in the lead for the for food. This, however, is no normal auction, it’s a slow one.

The farmer has to go back and tend to farm. His neighbor, upon hearing that the farmer placed the bid, decides that he will go into town at 8:45 AM and increase the price because the neighbor has always been jealous of the farmer’s fancy Levi’s jeans.

The farmer, thinking he is about to win the auction, heads into town to collect the feed he believes he has won since no telegraph has arrived at his house letting him know he has been outbid. Then, just as he puts on those fancy Levi’s, a telegraph arrives letting him know his neighbor outbid him.

The farmer, a bit annoyed that he got all dressed up for nothing, goes back into town to immediately increase the bid. This occurs for several days before the pigs finally starve. When the farmer heads over to his neighbor to ask why he was doing this, he notices that his neighbor doesn’t even have pigs. “What gives?!”, he demands.

The neighbor, content in what he has wrought, give several answers ranging from he did it to prevent the farmer from also bidding on the goat feed he needed all the way to he was busy all day, every day, and that 15 minute window was the only time he could squeeze into his day to make the bids.

Of course, the excuses, much like the imaginary scenario, is ridiculous. However, ridiculous excuses are acceptable because the format itself lends itself to these bizarre outcomes.

Owners feel empowered in this format to, quite frankly, mess with each other simply because they can. Live auctions take this out of the equation by putting one player up for bid at a time, other owners can’t freeze the bankrolls of each other as they can in long auctions where several players are concurrently up for bid.

Some owners will point to the precedent that eBay set by conducting long auctions, only this isn’t the same thing either as there aren’t set funds or items, and each item has a set end date which doesn’t reset with a new high bid.

What fantasy football has done, amazingly enough, is taken the worst aspects of auctions and built everything around those flaws. Owners can now freeze each other out of a free market or emulate the strategy of a superior owner by simply increasing the bid on any player that owner bids on.

Thankfully, history has provided us a solution to this frustration. If live bidding for players simply isn’t a solution and owners are on differing schedules, I would encourage leagues to try blind bidding auctions. The idea is as familiar to many as it mind-blowingly simple.

Many leagues currently conduct their waivers using blind bidding because, it just works. I, myself, have helped others develop two leagues using just such a format for the initial auction draft and it is shaping up to be, quite possibly, some of the most fun I’ve had in fantasy football. It requires each owner to create their own values for each player as no one can see the bid any other owner may or may not have on a specific player.

Owners input their bids at some point within the 24-hour bid window and at the conclusion of that period a winner is determined, just as it is at the conclusion of a waiver period. Owners then nominate a new set of players and begin the process again. The results are instant and the stud owners who are able to correctly value players stand out immediately from the duds who don’t.

Owners who are involved in these leagues will tell you, from the simulations we have run, the fun is unlike anything they’ve experienced, and it requires owners to have a clear, well-thought out game plan with defined player values as it isn’t possible to simply bid up others. This is a format for the informed and hardcore while also allowing strategies to pivot and be reassessed midstream.

I’ve had multiple owners tell me that it is the most stressful format they’ve experienced as they don’t know if they’ve bid enough or if they’ve significantly overbid either.

I’d heavily encourage any auction fans to give blind auctions a try. I’ve become very bitter in recent years with how the auction format has been progressing, but this tweak has rejuvenated my interest in the format by a factor of ten.

I have both been told by others, and believe it in my own heart, that this format is the truest test of an owner’s ability to draft talent and build a team.

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