CommishRx: Keep Things Interesting, Add Payout for the League Top Scorer

You know the drill, as your fantasy league season progresses folks begin to see that their chances of winning aren’t that good anymore, so they participate less and less. Unfortunately, some stop playing altogether. What can you do? A bonus payout might be a solution.

I’m going to share the proposal I made to my fantasy league this year. I am not suggesting that what I chose to do, is the only way to do it. This is just one option of many but hopefully it will provide some insight to help fantasy players and commissioners with this common league issue.

Start Me Up

There are a number of ways to liven things up so league members will keep playing until the very end of the season. Some leagues, for example, will award a weekly bonus (or prize) to the team who won by the widest point margin.

When you are thinking about making a rule change, or modifying a feature in your league, there are three things you should consider:

• Don’t Force It: Avoid making changes just because you can.

• Look to Raise the Level of Competition/Interest: You’re doing it to make the league better.

• Keep it Simple: Don’t make your league unrecognizable with “the craziest idea ever.”

Time is on My Side

We’re a non-playoff league that plays through Week 17, and still, we don’t have issues where folks drop off and disappear. Everyone competes until the very end. Players who have no chance of winning it all or placing, take the role of spoiler seriously.

It’s taken 21 years for me to get around to it, but this off-season, I proposed a bonus payout for the team that scores the most points overall at the end of the season. A number of leagues do this. Often in playoff leagues the team with the “most points for” will get the playoff last spot if they don’t make it in based on their win-loss record.

In our league (Cair Paravel), our champion is the one with the best win-loss record. However, sometimes they are not always the overall top points producer. First, I wanted the owner who outscored everyone – no matter where they finished – to be rewarded for building a team that produced for them in that way.

Additionally, a player might pay less attention to managing their team if they see they can’t be the season champ. Now, the odds are better that they’ll keep playing – to maintain their point lead over the rest of their league mates.

Let it Loose

When our league started, back in 1998, we didn’t play for money. Eventually that changed. I’ll save the story of why for another day. However, once I made that decision, I wanted the amount that each of us paid to be enough to have attractive prize payouts. On the other hand, I didn’t want to ask for so much that I’d risk losing people from year to year because their financial situation might change.

More from FanSided

Our payout structure for last season was:

$60 per owner.

Prize slots: (1) $420 (2) $200 (3) $100

Once more, when I decided that I’d propose a total points payout, I didn’t want to ask for a lot of money. I decided that five additional dollars would work. It wasn’t too much, but it was enough that if everyone put in an extra five, that would give us 60 dollars to work with.

The makeup of fantasy leagues are so varied. There are a multitude of combinations of friends, family members and coworkers. When you introduce money into your fantasy league, keep in mind that everyone’s financial situation might not be the same.

If you keep this thought prominent in your planning, you’ll more likely come up with options that will work for everyone. With that thinking in mind, I came up with five options for the league to consider:

• one increased the fee to $65, the additional five dollars making up the $60 points bonus,

• three were different combinations of the payouts and points bonus, and

• one where nothing changed at all – no total-points payout

Can’t Always Get What You Want

Using our final results from last season as an example, this is what I proposed:

(1) Additional $5

S/2039 (ζ2 Ret IV) 2 – $420

Runs Like A Gurley – $200

Gashouse Gorillas – $100

Runs Like A Gurley – $60 “Points For” Bonus

(2) Pay the Same $60 each

2A: (1) $400 (2) $180 (3) $80 (TP) $60

2B: (1) $405 (2) $185 (3) $85 (TP) $45

2C: (1) $410 (2) $190 (3) $90 (TP) $30

I gave everyone a week to discuss the proposal and to get their vote in. There were some stragglers as there tends to be, but eventually everyone voted. The results:

No change: 0

$60 Bonus: 6

2A: 3

2B: 0

2C: 3

Satisfaction

I didn’t ask for suggestions before I made the proposal. I knew exactly what I wanted. At the same time, no one in my league had asked for a payout change, or a change in anything else. I just thought it was a good idea. However, because of this, I made sure that one of the options was to vote for keeping what we already had.

It turns out that folks liked the idea. I thought it was important to give members the three options where they got to hold on to their money, and yet, the majority wanted the chance to win the additional bonus at its highest level.

Send me your ideas and stories, tell me what you are doing in your fantasy league so we can share with the rest of the readers out there. As fantasy football commissioners, we all want to run happy leagues, and as players we all want to be in those happy leagues. I’m here to help.