13 Tips for Hosting the Best Live Draft
An old school Live Draft with a group of mates can be one of the best parts of the fantasy footy season.
In fact, for most of the people in your competition it will be the highlight. In any fantasy competition there can only be one winner, so throughout a live draft you all get to act like kings and brag about how your team is better than the rest. It’s the only time you are all on even points.
For years participants of NRLCEO have been hosting live drafts. From backyard BBQ’s, to drunken nights at the pub, there is no better excuse to get you and your mates together and have a whole bunch of fun.
So what are the sorts of things you need to consider to host the best live draft? We’ve based this on our own experiences as well as the stories from others to help you have the best day/weekend all year.
- Get a set of committed players
- Schedule a date early
- Choose your venue carefully
- Organise comfortable chairs
- If you are doing it online, make sure you test the WiFi!
- Clarify the rules before the day
- Wear your club colours
- Get creative with your draft order
- Stay hydrated
- Set your menu
- Line up your equipment
- Keep it moving
- Make a weekend of it
Get a set of committed players
Let’s be honest. If you’re playing NRLCEO, you need to be a fair bit of an addict. It takes time to play this great game of ours and if you’re playing against committed coaches it becomes a whole lot of fun! We always recommend anything from six to twelve teams at the most in a competition to have the most fun and an even number of teams avoids facing again Dexta, the NRLCEO Computer Player.
Schedule a date early
This is one of the more difficult parts of setting everyone up. It’s very difficult to lock down a weekend when all participants are available for a block of a few hours. The earlier you set the date, the less likely romantic weekends away with the Mrs, weddings and other crap get in the way. So lock down a date and make everyone commit.
Choose your venue carefully
A venue sets the tone for the entire day. There are a number of things you need to ensure. You need to have enough space for all of your competition, you need to ensure that if you have to make a booking that you have enough time and of course you need access to some form of a bar.
There are three main venues that people choose
The first is one of the CEO’s houses. This is the easiest way to do things. You know that the WiFi will work, you can use all of your own furniture and you can either cook a BBQ or order in pizza. We’ve seen some great setups in garages and decks with a drafting board setup and players stuck in their rows as they are drafted.
The second option is to head to the local pub or RSL for a night of beers, steak and drafting. Usually it will be harder to bring your own drafting boards along, but the beer is at its coldest and you can get food and drink catered for.
Thirdly, and the most exciting of them all; you could make a weekend of it. You could also head to Vegas, the Gold Coast or just a weekend away at the coast. It becomes more difficult to determine whether you’ll have everything you need, but as long as there’s golf, beer and cigars; I’m sure you’ll cope.
Comfortable chairs
Sure, we’re not athletes. If we were, we’d be in the draft ourselves, not undertaking a draft from a website. Most of us have a bit of cushion around us, but you need to make sure everyone is comfy. Chances are you will be sitting in the same spot for around 2-4 hours.
Handy tip – use an office chair to push yourself to and from the esky.
Check the WiFi
Test the WiFi to make sure it can cope with the load if everyone is going to bring their own laptop along. A home network should be able to cope with it, but if you are heading to a pub or a hotel, make sure you ask that the WiFi will be available, and not at the cost of an arm and a leg either. You need beer money.
Clarify the rules before the day
This is absolutely crucial! We all take our fantasy sport seriously. I’ve seen a lot of blowups over the years so you need to make sure that if you have a live draft weekend, that the rules are set in place well in advance.
It’s great fun to yell at your mates, but you also need to kick off the draft at some stage during the day instead of arguing about small details. It’s also a good idea to set the rules in advance so that people can prepare for their own draft selection in advance.
Lastly, never change the rules after the draft. It will only bring arguments from the player who loses out on the arrangement. You don’t need that all year.
Wear your club colours
Everyone who players NRLCEO is clearly a rugby league fanatic and we all have our own allegiances. So what better way to set the scene and get the tribal nature of the rugby league season pumping than to wear your team colours to the draft day.
A lot of people who play our game have named their teams after their junior clubs. So it can be a lot of fun to wear those colours and kits to the draft to get right into the spirit of things.
We’ve even had some instances of players who have had fantasy team names turned into logos and had their own custom jerseys developed!
Get creative with your draft order
One of the most important parts of the season is setting the draft order. Many people will say that the draft order is make or break. I would disagree with that notion, but nonetheless, creating a draft order has been the focus of many email chains between my mates and I over the years.
We love trying to create new ideas. One year we all picked Keno numbers and enjoyed a few stubbies while we waited for the numbers to come up. Another year we picked horses in the Melbourne Cup and the further back in the field our horse finished, the higher the draft number we received. This year, we will be hosting a series of Yabby races to determine who gets the pleasure of going first.
There are many other great ideas out there and we would love to hear from you what you have done.
Stay hydrated
Everyone wants to have a great fantasy year, so don’t be the guy who does too hard early, but drafting with your mates is a hell of a lot of fun. There’s banter and laughs along the way and with that, plenty of beers as well. Make sure the beer fridge or esky is close.
Set your menu
If you have a decent sizes competition, the draft will probably take you a few hours. So at some stage you will need to prepare for a break and get stuck into some food.
Whether it’s pizza, KFC or gourmet cucumber sandwiches, it’s a good ideas to know what you will be eating in advance so as Commissioner, you don’t need to worry about the small things and instead can focus on having a laugh and drafting a quality side.
Line up your equipment
If you are going to go the full-hog American style live draft then using a draft board gives your draft a sense of professionalism, importance and creates a great atmosphere.
With a draft board, comes the need to create a long list of player cards. Someone with access to the work printer should print off all the names and if you can convince the work secretary to laminate them then you are basically at the NFL draft.
Some people like to do colour coordinated draft cards, but that depends if your Mrs is a primary school teacher.
Keep it moving
The best drafts have an element of pressure and banter. If you allow people to take ten minutes per pick, not only will the draft take a long time, but it will get very boring very quickly.
To keep things moving, make sure you use a stop watch, egg timers or countdown on a phone.
Some competitions allow five minutes per selection for the early rounds and then reduce it to two minutes per pick in the later rounds to speed things up when selections are less important.
The best way to keep things on track is to implement penalties for people going over time. We implement tequila shots for going over time. Some people can handle one or two tactical slammers, but if you keep going over time, your drafting tactics might go out the window.
Get a third party to organise
If at all possible, it is a good idea to get a third party, who isn’t drafting in your competition, to be a coordinator for you. If your group is like mine, then the organisation will fall to the Commissioner (aka me) which means that my mind is not just on drafting, it’s on organising everyone else.
Getting a neutral party to keep track of time, takes the stress off the Commissioner and allows someone to be an impartial adjudicator should there be an argument.
Make a weekend of it
If you are going to do something this just once a year, then you should make the most of the weekend and turn it into a big event. Organise a few things around the draft for a great weekend.
Many competitions have turned it into a Bucks weekend without the Bucks. Golf, Go-Karts and the occasional exotic dancer are all part of creating a great occasion to kick off the NRL season.
Of course, this doesn’t cover everything, but hopefully allows you to have a belting weekend and a whole lot of laughs. Get in touch with us to let us know what you get up to for your Live Draft weekend.
JB
Latest posts by JB (see all)
- 2022 NRLCEO Position Updates - August 24, 2022
- NRLCEO HQ – No Pride in Manly (Ep #273) - July 27, 2022
- NRLCEO T-Shirt Competition - May 10, 2022
