ottoneu Has Revamped Prizes
While we have been really happy with the launch of ottoneu Fantasy Baseball, the launch of the prize leagues definitely left something to be desired. So having taken your comments into consideration, we’ve taken our industry leading prizes and improved them.
First, we’re changing the prizes to all cash, both for simplicity and to give our winners a bit more scratch in their pockets for the off-season. Second, we’re introducing a $49.99 tier, available immediately. First place at the end of the season will receive $300, second place will receive $100, and third will receive $50. We’re also increasing the first place prize at the $99.99 tier. First place will now receive $650, with second place receiving $200, and third place receiving $100 in cash.
Finally, we’re dropping the $249.99 and $499.99 tiers to interest-only lists. If you’re interested in playing at a higher tier for higher prizes, let us know. We will work with you on a league by league basis to optimize the prize structure for what you and your league wants!
Of course the $9.99 tier is still available, with multiple public leagues looking for members today and drafts happening all the time.
Between a game we think is excellent and prizes that are better than any other prize league out there, I believe we have a really strong offering for all levels of fantasy players. We hope that these revamped prizes will be more to your liking. Please let us know what you think in the comments or by contacting us. Of course, there is still plenty of time before the season, so you can start a league or join one today!
For those of you thinking about joining an Ottoneu league, I can tell you first hand it will be better than just about anything out there. We held our draft last week (best draft experience I’ve ever had) and have already been making trades, auctioning free agents, etc. In fact, we’ve even had a few bumps and bruises with the site but Niv and his team have been on every single one with great communication and have been quick to implement changes for our league and others. I highly recommend Ottoneu.
That’s a nice endorsement. My only hesitancy is joining a league of complete strangers. This is the type of thing I typically do with friends rather than public leagues. How has that aspect been for you?
All my strangers have been great. One guy was AWOL from the message board and missed the first part of our auction (48 players). We finally got in touch with him and he didn’t complain or pout, but apologized for not realizing we were starting and expressing his excitement to begin playing immediately. Only problem with strangers has been the 2 or 3 west coasters, who obviously have quite different times available. It would be great to be able to set a time zone when creating a league, so that people can find the right one to join.
I joined a public league and so far it’s awesome. We set up list serv, and the communication has been great and everyone seems be as interested in their teams as I am in mine. I did it because I think I am a little more metric based than my friends and wanted to see how I fared against like ppl, if you are in the same boat you should def. so it.
Thanks so much for saying that. I really do appreciate it.
Good to see that this change was implemented. I still would be hesitant to pay money into a keeper league with strangers, but it’s a good change nonetheless.
Thinking about playing in a prize league.
I don’t understand how the keeper part of it works. The people with bad teams will probably not return the next year? So they get filled with new people?
How would you justify charging someone equally to take over a really bad keeper situation? Obviously that team has to be filled.
Sexy idea-
Charge for the season in advance up front. So then if a guy walks the replacement owner could play for free the first year.
So those joining a new league would have to pay two seasons. Or at least a deposit toward the next season of half the money or something.
I like this idea – something like a 50% deposit on the next season that will decrease the cost for someone to take it over, if you bail.
As much as we’d hope that people will stick with it (and I imagine that the demographic that would participate in a league like this would be more likely to stick with their team), this is inevitably going to become a problem at some point. The people that bail are probably going to have bad teams, and I don’t see why anyone would take over a bad team rather than draft their own new one. However, if you’re looking at $10 for a new team or $5 to take over someone else’s (or $100 vs. $50, $50 vs. $25 in the prize leagues), there’s a real incentive to help fill existing leagues.
This is a reasonable question, and I should address it here.
First, there are a lot of checks and balances in ottoneu that allow teams, even if they don’t do well, to be well-positioned for the next season. The trade deadline is very late, you can plan for keepers for next season early on, and since superstars tend to go for high prices at auction, they are rarely kept, which means they can flow between teams often. Of course, arbitration helps with this as well.
Additionally, we have some interesting ideas on how to get teams that are abandoned filled, and we’re always interested in hearing your ideas on this. I am saving these details for a future post.
To sum up – I absolutely understand the concern, but between having played this game for 6 years with people I only now can consider friends with no one quitting, and the various competitive balance measures built into the game, I feel confident that attrition will be lower than a typical fantasy league, and we will be able to fill that attrition with new owners at a high rate.
I should also mention that while it does take effectively 3/4 of the league, trades can be vetoed. They are not reviewed by the commissioner, but by the entire league
I can’t find how many teams are in a league. 12? I’m just determining the money paid out vs the money coming in to decide if the prizes are worth it. Obviously I know the two will not be equal.
Yep, all ottoneu leagues are 12 team leagues!
Awesome. I’m signing up for the $50 league right now!!!
I really just want to try out a $10 league at first… can m $10 turn into a $50 the following year?
We will keep this on a case-by-case basis for now, but as long as the entire league is on board, I definitely can do this for you.
When I click on Join a League, there aren’t any league options available. What am I doing wrong?
Hit up help at ottoneu dot com so we can talk about this in detail, happy to look into any issues you’re having!
Re: fee structure…am I thinking about this correctly?
$50 League:
$50 entry fee – $10 standard league cost = $40 into prize pool
$40 * 12 teams = $480 prize pool
$480 – $300 to 1st – $100 to 2nd – $50 to 3rd = $30 FG “rake”
$30 rake / $480 prize pool = 6.3%
$100 League:
$100 entry fee – $10 standard league cost = $90 into prize pool
$90 * 12 teams = $1080 prize pool
$1080 – $650 to 1st – $200 to 2nd – $100 to 3rd = $130 FG “rake”
$130 rake / $1080 prize pool = 12.0%
I’m on, like, 90 minutes of sleep right now, so this may not be the right way to think about things, but it appears as though you’re taking roughly double out of the prize pool in $100 leagues on a percentage basis. Is there any rationale for this? It would seem like it should go the other way, given that you can make more money on the same/lower percentage basis if someone joins the higher tier. You could argue that you’re making the cheaper league a better deal.
If you don’t adjust for the $10 baseline fee it makes more sense, (20.8% rake for $100 leagues and 25.0% rake for $50 leagues) but this improvement is due to the fact that we’re putting more money into the prize pool. Plus, I can’t imagine that this is how you’re thinking about the structure on your end (i.e., you aren’t going to compromise your $120 per league baseline revenue to provide the prize service, or put another way, you’d view the revenues you get from pay leagues as incremental to your base league fees).
What I can say on this is that we looked at other fantasy baseball products that are out there – most of which we don’t think come close to offering the game we have – and we looked at how they structured their prizes. We effectively doubled our prizes, so we are paying out significantly more than any other major or minor provider out there. You really won’t find anyone else out there paying first, second, and third place and paying as high as we are at each tier. We think this combined with our product and FanGraphs integration results in an unparalleled fantasy baseball prize game.
If you see a prize structure out there that is better, please let us know, and we’d be happy to discuss further! The combination of the ottoneu game and the prize structure we have is going to be really hard to beat, though.
Mr. Shah, I’m a very satisfied customer, but your answers don’t make sense. He’s not telling you your prizes or game are inferior to some other site’s, he’s asking you why there’s a significant difference in the “rake” at the different prize levels that goes against the pattern usually demonstrated in products of increasing size (the more you buy the bigger the discount). So please either answer that question, explain that you are not able to answer that question, or ignore it entirely. It drives me crazy when people answer a question that wasn’t asked.
to ottoneau people…. I signed up but our commish never responded now our league is scrapped but I have to pay to join another league, I already payed so I am wondering what the deal is?
Email me at help at ottoneu dot com and let me know what league you were in that has fallen through, and we’ll make sure you get a refund for that league.