No Longer Blind to Blind Bid Auctions

Nearly three months ago I wrote an article entitled “Why Your Next Dynasty Startup Auction Should Use Blind Bidding” which coincided with me joining two blind bid dynasty leagues.

The leagues are Wild West Waivers and Fog of War and both ran almost in parallel despite having different commissioners and very little crossover in ownership. Both leagues have now completed their initial drafts and I wanted to follow up with our readers to share my experiences.

What Was The Same?

First, despite some initial skepticism from those who heard the idea, blind bid auctions produce very similar results to those of normal auction leagues. For instance, Saquon Barkley, the top-ranked running back in terms of ADP, commanded 2.0 and 2.4 percent of the league’s waiver budget, respectively, whereas FantasyPros has his value pegged at 2.7 percent of a league’s budget.

DeAndre Hopkins was pegged by both leagues at 1.7 percent of the league’s budget while FantasyPros has him at 2.3 percent of the budget. Travis Kelce was valued by FantasyPros at 1.8 percent of the league’s budget whereas the leagues valued him at 1.3 and 1.5 percent of the budget.

Finally, George Kittle was valued by FantasyPros at 1.3 percent of the league’s budget while the leagues both pegged him at 1.5 percent. Overall, everything is very close to widely accepted values.

Second, the top players accounted for an inordinate amount of most team’s budget, as tends to happen in standard auction leagues. The top two players on each team averaged 30 percent on an owner’s budget in Wild West Waivers and 41 percent of an owner’s budget in Fog of War.

While that sounds extraordinarily high, if an owner stuck to FantasyPros’ values and bid as directed on the top two players in their value chart, that owner would be on the hook for 63.5 percent of their budget in order to win Saquon Barkley (32.5 percent) and Christian McCaffrey (31 percent).

However, when the top 24 player prices are averaged, amounting to two per team on average, that budget allocation is driven down to 46 percent.

What Was Different?

In my experience with auction leagues, these were – by far – the most civil, entertaining and generally least frustrating auction leagues I have ever been a part of. If I overbid on a player, I had no one to blame for that value than me. I wasn’t forced to allocate a single dollar more than I felt a player was worth. If I got outbid, I wasn’t paying the market value for that player.

Blind bid auctions force every owner to do their homework on how they value each player, to make bold decisions on how to execute their bidding strategy and to adjust that strategy on the fly to account for values and opportunities.

Conversely, my experience with slow auctions has been well-documented as being subpar. Often, owners can come into a slow auction unprepared and with the sole strategy of making the experience miserable for others. Those owners can choose simply to emulate the strategy of one or more owners who are better prepared, bidding them up whenever they make a bid, or attempting to price enforce owners that they deem may be getting too good of a deal.

While many often point to slow auctions as an opportunity for owners to get any player they desire, it often devolves rapidly into owners seeking ways to prevent others from getting the players that they desire, a complete reversal of the oft-mentioned intent of the format.

Blind bid auctions also introduced more comradery than I’ve found in slow auction leagues. In slow auction leagues, you are often pitted against one or more owners in a fight to the death on one or more players. In blind bid auctions, you are all bidding on the same players, it just comes down to who values him higher.

I regularly heard owners congratulate each other on winning a bid, whereas in slow auctions, the winning bid often resulted in name-calling, arguments or derision-filled comments towards each other.

Blind bid auctions also, with the elimination of price enforcement as a tactic, presented synchronized shifts in strategies, which coincided with each bid processing run. These shifts were subdued at times and dramatic at others but were always compelling to watch and would then induce further changes in strategy leaguewide.

This forced owners to be much more engaged and aware of how their bids impact their strategy while simultaneously giving them time to develop, transform or evolve that strategy with each successive bid processing run.

Upon the completion of the auction, the tapestry woven by the changes in strategy presented a rich example of how owners can work together to create a dynamic league while simultaneously competing against one another.

Without bashing slow auctions too heavily in this regard, I simply don’t believe that the same can be said for this format.

Looking Forward

When I first told an individual who I respect very much about my excitement for the blind bid format, he shared with me that he felt the format wasn’t a true auction. While I respect his opinion, I fervently disagree with this view. Blind auctions are widely used to award government contracts and in charity auctions.

Beyond that detracting viewpoint, the owners involved in each of the leagues I mentioned were highly entertained and many wanted to participate in future leagues that used the format. I have even been approached about joining a few more blind auction leagues by owners that enjoyed the experience so much that they took the even larger step of creating leagues.

I have been highly impressed with how the blind auction format works with an actual league. I can honestly say that I don’t hate auctions any longer, I just have a heavy preference towards this style of auction. I can’t encourage all of you enough to seek out a blind bid auction league, I’m convinced that you will have an incredible time while trying out something both fresh and innovative.