Last night we drafted and two teams didn’t show up, we finished the draft and those teams will essentially be BYE weeks. Will the commissioner be able to adjust the playoff seeding at the end of the season in the event these unequal BYE weeks show up? Also of concern with payments are teams that may get off to a bad 2-3 week start and just decide not to pay- will leagues continue if there are teams that drop out once they see a bad start?
Yes, there is custom seeding for fantasy football. You can search the forums to learn about it.
I have no idea. This is completely unprecedented territory for us. Maybe talk it out with your league members and ask them?
You also should feel free to try and get replacement managers for any teams that need them, using the forums and other methods.
I guess my question is more about if leagues end up having less than 12 teams paying out- what will that do to the league and/or prize money?
Whenever a team is not paid for before the renewal deadline, they are put into an abandoned teams list that you can easily access from the user dashboard. Generally, those teams are picked up - leagues try to find new managers using the forums, players who want to try out Ottoneu but didn’t get around to looking during draft season come by looking to get in on a league, etc.
If your league has an expired team that was not paid for this season, we do a check that will result in your league being bumped down to a non-prize league and prize portion of the league fees returned to everyone who paid. This is exceedingly rare, but it is up to your league to put the effort in to find replacement managers to avoid this scenario. The Managers Wanted forums are generally quite good at finding replacement managers. I would strongly recommend posting to that forum and trying to find some people up for the rebuild challenge.
Managers can quit for all kinds of reasons before paying for their teams. In a more ‘normal’ year this would be sorted out earlier, but obviously we are in a unique situation this year and I’m hoping that leagues will put the effort in to keep things going while we get everything up and running with our new payment provider. It might honestly be easier to find someone interested in a football challenge in September than in July or August like a more ‘normal’ year would require.
There has to be a better answer than this. A lot of leagues are about to get screwed over because of a payment issue completely out of their control. Who is going to pay for a team with no talent and no way to upgrade?
On alternative would be to ask Niv to switch the league to a $20 league now and collect prize money via League Safe or whatever. Although if a guy is going to flake out because he had a shitty draft or bad luck early in the season, then they’re probably no more likely to contribute to League Safe now than they will to pay up into Paydala in a few weeks or whatever.
It’s a crappy situation for everyone, but obviously Niv can’t stake every team that flake. So not sure what the better solution you’re looking for could be.
Hey, I agree this stinks. If I had a time machine or the ability to make another company magically release software faster I would use them both to change this situation. However, it is what it is.
If you have someone in your league that you think won’t pay for their dynasty league because of 2-3 weeks of the NFL season, maybe its good to replace them proactively. The Ottoneu site / game can’t help you with that beyond giving you tools to communicate with your league and tools to help you find potential replacement managers.
This deeply misunderstands the Ottoneu format - every team is about half a season away from being in very good position to compete. We have a lot of podcast episodes about this on the baseball side, I would recommend checking them out, as the economic system is basically identical, though turning a football team around is much easier than turning a baseball team around.
Anyway, I really hope this drawn out nightmare starts winding down next week. You may think your league is getting screwed, but this affects my entire livelihood and a company I’ve worked on by myself for now 12 years. I’m taking this very seriously and am navigating a number of trade-offs to get things back to ‘normal’ as soon as possible while reducing the chance of something like this happening again.
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Hi Niv,
Fantasy football player here. Question:
How will payouts be handled for leagues where some members balk at providing SSNs and therefore do not pay, and a replacement is not able to be found?
This thread covers this question. As I’ve stated here
I’m continuing to work with Paydala to ease the KYC and AML requirements for Ottoneu’s customers and they are working to meet our needs
Please just wait for the Paydala final announcement. I tried to be transparent, but at this point I recommend everyone just wait and see how our new payment system works before making any further judgments or assumptions.
Cool, missed that one. Thank you!
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There are two teams in my league that did not pay by the deadline but are not listed in the abandoned teams area:
Should I be abandoning the teams through commissioner tools?
If your league has an expired team that was not paid for this season, we do a check that will result in your league being bumped down to a non-prize league and prize portion of the league fees returned to everyone who paid.
When does this happen? I want to try to fill any abandoned teams so the teams doing well don’t get screwed on prize money.
I gave everyone an extra week of leeway and will be expiring teams tonight. If you need to find new managers, you should actively seek them using the Managers Wanted area of this forum.
Niv, has the change in status for non-paid teams/leagues occurred yet? We still have 3 unpaid teams and we’re trying to figure out whether we should try to find owners or convince people to pay up, but we won’t put in the hassle if it’s a done deal.
It’s a check that’s done right when we allocate prizes - you have until basically the end of the season to get everyone to pay for this season.
Is it safe to fill the teams that were abandoned during the 2023 season now that prizes have been allocated?
Yep! Should be all set.
The two teams that got abandoned during the season were claimed but the new owners were having issues paying and now the system has removed them as managers. Is this a known issue? Any advice?
I think they both were marked as abandoned because they haven’t been paid for, but I can’t be certain. You can email me, help@ottoneu.com, with details about your league and the teams in question including links, or you can look at the Commish Tools → Current Managers and see if those teams both are past their “Expired” date.
Both teams have the November 7,2023 expiration date. If the team is claimed and paid for now, when will it need to be renewed?