Fantasy Football Auction Draft
Fantasy Football
“Auction drafts are the fantasy football version of shows like The Wire or Breaking Bad.” -‐ http://www.sbnation.com/fantasy/2013/8/26/4659994/fantasy-‐football-‐ draft-‐strategy-‐auction-‐draft-‐strategy-‐2013
Fantasy football serves an important function in society. Besides allowing millions to spend Sunday afternoons hyperventilating about how many increments of ten yards a wide receiver will gain, fantasy football provides us a platform for making hilariously bad bets. Without fantasy football, thousands of embarrassing tattoos and nights of dramatic overconsumption of alcohol would never have existed.
Beyond this crucial civic duty, however, fantasy football also provides an intriguing look into First-‐Price Ascending-‐Bid auctions. In leagues typically averaging 12 members, team owners start with roughly $200 each and compete against each other to win NFL players in auction, in order to field the greatest possible roster for the season.
The setup of the draft creates many interesting factors to take into consideration. First, every buyer starts with an equal amount of cash, which will also disappear at the end of the auction, so they’re incentivized to spend everything they have. Second, with so many items for sales (players), the buyers can be selective.
Given the strategy involved, resources abound on the Internet for winning your draft. The link at the top of the page, for instance, advocates putting in time pre-‐draft to determine your bid value for each and every player. In draft, to account for all the variability that can occur with 12 people who have total disparate bid values, the writer encourages fantasy players to be willing to offer a “fair price” for players they want. Never go far above your bid value, but be willing to spend an extra couple dollars.
In essence, the blog writer agrees with the principles of Ascending-‐Bid auctions (also called English auctions) described in chapter 9 of the textbook, with one important distinction. Whereas buyers are better off in most cases taking only deals where they can win items for at or below their bid value, this is not always the case in Fantasy Football auctions. A bidder can draft an entire of second-‐tier players at each position for far less than they are worth. However, this team won’t be able to compete in the season, and thus the bidder will be employing a poor auction strategy. With the requirement to not only get the best value for the items you purchase, but also to maximize the output of those items, a buyer is required to balance his interests and to in some cases change all of his bid values in reaction to outcomes that occur during the draft.
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