The default bid time (“Initial Countdown Time“) is 30 seconds. Any bid made under 10 seconds (“Wrap-up Time“)  will reset the clock to 10 seconds remaining.

Both the “Initial Countdown Time” and “Wrap-up Time” can be customized PREFERENCES area of FanDraft.

This is a huge improvement, and likely going to cut your overall time of your draft significantly.

For those who preferred the longer method previously implemented, you can simply set the “Wrap-up Time” to be equally as high as the Initial Countdown Time, although we don’t foresee a whole lot of people desiring that.

A really fun new feature is the ability to “Hide Selections” before the pick is made. We did a full write-up on that one that goes into great detail, and you can check-out that post here. We also added a bunch of visual features to the draft area, such as informational pop-ups, a draft chime, and a count down introduction that leads into the draft. You can check them all out in the video below:

Here’s a full list of most of the new features in this year’s FanDraft:

New Features in 2016…

• 2016 NFL Players & Rookies
• Pre-loaded 2016 NFL Player Photos
• Improved design to the Setup area.
• Newly designed PreDraft area
• Added “League Song” for PreDraft
• “Draft Chime” when players about to be selected
• Polishing improvements to MP4 “Player Video” playback.
• Now compatible with all Mac Operating Systems and PC.
• Ability to automatically alternate “Team Song Tracks” every round.
• “Keeper on the Fly” functionality (allows users to add keepers players in the middle of the draft – useful for users who have additional picks in some rounds).
• Draft Clock turns an alert red color when under 15 seconds left.
• Added ability to change the “Draft Extension” time limit.
• “Hide Selections” from view feature.
• Added ability to “Import MFL Auto-Pick Keepers” (button available in Setup > Keeper Setup)
• Support for “Rookie Only Drafts”
• Updated “PreDraft” area graphics.
• Draft “Intro Screen”
• Enhanced “Team Notes” section
• New info pop-ups displaying owner info and team needs.
• And more enhancements to be added throughout the summer…

Once a player is added to the player queue by either clicking on the “Player Board” or from the selection drop-down, that player is ready to be selected (by clicking the “DRAFT PLAYER” button). Since the player name visible displays in the box, it gives away who that player will be. A lot of commissioners really want to maintain the drama before announcing the next selection of the draft, and this feature aides in that goal.

To turn on the feature, go to SETUP > DISPLAY PREFERENCES and then check the “Hide Selection Feature” box and that will turn this feature on.

Now during the draft, after a player is clicked, a graphic will display showing the “SELECTION IS IN” and hides the player queue. To help assist in an accidental player being taken, a faint text display of the player can still be seen in the box. Just click the DRAFT PLAYER, and the player will be taken. This is a great feature to combine with the new “Draft Chime” to maintain the drama of a real professional sports draft.

See a little of how it works in our “New FanDraft Features” video:

We are happy to announce that FanDraft has teamed up with MyFantasyLeague.com again in 2016 to help bring easy integration between the two services.  FanDraft has the capability to import league and team information from your MyFantasyLeague.com league, as well as export draft results directly into your MyFantasyLeague.com league.

Integration between FanDraft and MyFantasyLeague.com

If you use FanDraft Software to conduct your draft, and you’re looking for a place to host your league for this season, you should consider MyFantasyLeague. MFL has just what you need to extend the thrill and excitement of your draft day for the rest of the season. Save loads of time by automatically importing your league draft results. The process is as simple as a few button clicks, and results are automatically updated to your MyFantasyLeague league. If you don’t currently use MyFantasyLeague as your League Manager, this would be a great time to switch!

SPECIAL PROMOTION!

As a special offer, MyFantasyLeague has been kind enough to offer a special $20 discount to 2016 FanDraft Football users who aren’t currently using MyFantasyLeague.

To receive this discounted rate, all you have to do is order FanDraft Football 2016 and be a new user to MyFantasyLeague in 2016. Upon processing of your order, check the instructions at the bottom of your FanDraft download instructions email received after purchase.

* Purchase of FanDraft Football 2016 required. Offer is only valid for new users (non-2015 users) of MyFantasyLeague.com

We’ve been getting a lot of emails from users wondering about the best resources for finding videos that are usable within FanDraft.

This quick instructional blog post will answer:

1. How to find videos on YouTube.
2. How to use only a short section of the highlight video.
3. How to convert to MP4 format for use in FanDraft.

Key Video Resources

• YouTube: Useful search keywords “NFL player highlights”, or type specific player names.
• OnlineVideoConverter: This converts a YouTube video to a usable MP4 file.

STEP 1: Locate a Video

YouTube is going to be the best place to start. Once you navigate there, use terms like “NFL player highlights” in the search. Or type in a players specific name. In the sample below, you’ll see we used the first suggestion, and then came upon an Eddie Lacy video we liked:

Once you find a video highlight, here are 2 areas you are going to want to make note:

1. The page URL. In the sample page above it is this:
   
2. The Start & End time of the video: Find the time code, and determine where you want to start and stop the video. This area can  be found as displayed here in the sample page above:
   

STEP 2: Use an Online Video Converter

Our recommendation right now is to use the website OnlineVideoConverter.

Once you get to the site, there are 3 areas you will want to take notice of and utilize:

1. “Video Link“: You will paste the YouTube URL here.
2. “More Settings“: You will need to click this to access necessary options.
3. “Convert From/Convert To“: Uncheck the []Start of Video, and enter the begin/end time.

When all the information is set in those 3 areas, click on the orange “CONVERT” button, and it will begin creating your MP4 file. After it is complete, you will see this screen:

Now just simply click the DOWNLOAD button, save the MP4 file to a good location on your computer, and then load your player video into FanDraft .

FINAL NOTES

Both YouTube and OnlineVideoConverter are 3rd party services, and neither owned nor supported by FanDraft. We notice that occasionally that some videos don’t properly convert from the choosen start and end points in the OnlineVideoConverter. Our suggestion for this would be to open up the downloaded MP4 file in a video editor software package, and manually edit the video file, search and discover a different YouTube-to-MP4 website, attempt a different source file, or contact the support of those websites.

FREE vs PAID
or
Your time is worth more than $6

Too often people will flock immediately to the term “FREE“. The so called “free” hosting sites, be it Yahoo! or ESPN , aren’t truly free. It’s being paid for by advertising. Advertising in the form of email marketing. Advertising in the form of banner ads. Advertising in the form of commercials that you are forced to watch before accessing the content you truly want to see. All these things steal your attention, and more importantly your time, which is just as valuable as money.

People also often forget that with their league’s comes buying power. Splitting up the cost of a paid service between several people makes the total cost of a “pay site” relatively trivial. A service that cost $70 is really just a measly $6 per person (in a 12 people league). Personally, I’d happily sacrifice a Starbucks Latte one day, in place of 5 months of a quality ad-free site.

What Your League Needs

When it comes to choosing the right league management service, costs should not be a primary factor. It should come down to your league’s needs. And your needs should break down into prioritizing one of the following things:

1. Simplicity
   Will this be a league of novice owners with basic needs, without many plans for becoming a keeper league or adding a bunch of unique rules in the future.
2. Entertainment/engagement
   Will this be a league of mixed experience owners, who you need to cultivate an interest in fantasy football to helpl gel as a league.
3. Customization
   Will this be a league that is or will become a keeper or dynasty league, has a need for unique rules and scoring customization, or has plans of wanting to develop a deep history of records.

Simplicity: Yahoo! Fantasy Football or Fleaflicker

If your league is made up of a bunch of newbies to fantasy football (or football in general), and has a commissioner who isn’t all that technologically savvy, simplicity is the key, then a service like Yahoo! is probably going to be your best bet. The assumption is that this league is going to be a redraft league and your rules are going to be very basic, as are your league’s needs. Yahoo’s Fantasy Football League Manager, with it’s limited customization makes setting up and following the league fairly easy. Most importantly, it doesn’t have the giant maze of content being pushed on a user that ESPN does.

Fleaflicker win’s in the simple and clean design. There is very little distraction or confusion there.
Yahoo win’s if native mobile apps are important to you and your league. Fleaflicker has a mobile interface, but that’s it.

Strengths: Easy to setup, clean design.

Weaknesses: Lack of customization.

Similar Alternatives:  CBS Sportsline FF Commissioner

Pleasure: ESPN FF League Manager

I’m in two leagues right now, a hard core keeper league that’s been going for 20+ years, and a fun-time redraft league that’s going into it’s 3rd season. I’ll get back to the keeper league later, and explain to you how the novice league is evolving.

We started off this league, made up of 50% newbies to fantasy football (half of which was fairly new to even watching football in general). Simplicity is the key, as being the Commish I know it’s up to me to troubleshoot all of these owners problems, as well as constantly educate them on the intricacies of fantasy football. The more simple it is for a person to login and set their lineup, the less time I have to spend hand-holding. But another big obstacle with a league like this, is keeping people engaged. If they aren’t properly entertained, they’ll never “get it”. This is where ESPN gets the nod. When it comes to having the tools to engage and entertain, the experience of the FFL Toolkit just can’t be beat. I put as much effort as possible into utilizing the tools such as the Press Conference and League Invite videos. And the customizable ranking “Report Cards” make for a nice weekly emailing, which keeps people chatting/bragging about games. All these things help engaging, and increase their attention and interest in the league.

We started the league off this on NFL.com, but it wasn’t nearly as successful as our second season which was on ESPN. So if getting people interested in the game of fantasy football is important to your league’s success, ESPN is the way to go.

Strengths: Great tools for engagement. Visually appealing.

Weaknesses: Bloated design. A maze of too much information and advertising.

Similar Alternatives: NFL.com

Customization & Committed Leagues: MyFantasyLeague

Now to return to discussing my hard-core league that’s been going for over 20 years now. This league is intense. We mean it. It’s a dynasty keeper league, with a variety of odd scoring rules, double-header games, a massive history of league records, and needless to say…a need for integration with FanDraft and other 3rd party services.

We started this league knowing that is was going to continue on for many years (if not forever). The league is always evolving, adding new rules and subtleties. Before we started using MFL, every time we added some new flair to the league, we would have to change league management services to something that could serve our needs. Finally we found MyFantasyLeague, A service that offers EVERYTHING you can imagine. And this offered us the security of knowing we won’t have to change services every time we want to change/improve the league. While most (if not all) services offer support for keeper leagues, the important thing to understand that the longer your league is around, the more demanding your league will become for nuanced rules.

We at FanDraft have a deep appreciation of the MyFantasyLeague service, a knowledge of what a great and dedicated staff that runs the service, and a love for their philosophy of being technologically open. They offer a robust API to the fantasy development community that allows expandability to many other great services. Because of that, products like LeagueSafe, FootballGuys, and yes even FanDraft, can integrate with MyFantasyLeague. This is something that none of the other services offer as successfully.

Strengths: Massively customizable, great for keepers and dynasty leagues and leagues with a variety of  unique rules.

Weaknesses: Not as aesthetically pleasing as other sites (attributed to ability for massive customization).

Similar Alternatives: RealTime Fantasy Sports Commissioner

The Rest of the Pack

You probably noticed that we didn’t offer much information about CBS Sportsline, NFL.com, Fox Fantasy Sports, Fleaflicker, RealTime Fantasy Sports. This is a conscious decision. These sites have nothing to offer that the ones we mentioned do, except they fail in areas where the others succeed. We’re not going to spend any time trash talking them, but shouldn’t you just go with the best?

Visual Comparison

For those of you who need to see things from a visual perspective, here is a nice little comparison chart for you:

In the next week we are going to be giving away several Apple TVs and Chromecasts to the FanDraft community via our social networks on Twitter and Facebook.

To be eligible for your chance to win, just simply follow us on these platforms and then keep an eye out for our posts and their instructions.
The first giveaway will begin on this Saturday, July 11th!

Follow us below:

Expires: Aug 30th, 2015

Details:
If you would like to add on FanSoft Media’s “Draft Order” software, you can save $5.00 if you purchase with the FanDraft software at the same time. To receive the discount, just follow the instructions below:
Click here, and then use the code below to order the discounted combo.
» Coupon Code: 9AFD4

Save $20 off MyFantasyLeague.com *

Expires: October 1st, 2015

Details:
MyFantasyLeague has been kind enough to offer a special $20 discount to 2015 FanDraft Football users who aren’t currently using MyFantasyLeague.

* To receive this discounted rate, all you have to do is order FanDraft Football 2015 and be a new user to MyFantasyLeague in 2015. Upon processing of your order, check the instructions at the bottom of your download instructions email that you receive after your FanDraft purchase. If you don’t currently use MyFantasyLeague as your League Manager, this would be a great time to switch!

You can check out their article on FanDraft here:
http://dynastyleaguefootball.com/2015/06/21/advertiser-spotlight-fandraft/

FanDraft automatically displays a pick announcement when a player is selected, which displays the pick information and a player card. In FanDraft 2015 we included the ability to add another layer of excitement, allowing you to instead show a player video (supplied by the user) after a player is selected.

In this tutorial we explain how to “Load MP4 Player Videos”. The new MP4 feature in FanDraft Football ’15 allows you to import videos associated with individual players, that will automatically play once the player is selected.