A fantasy auction is a method of selecting players for a team in a fantasy sports league. A fantasy auction is one of two main methods of selecting players for a fantasy sports team. In addition to the auction-style draft, the other commonly used method of selecting players is known as a traditional draft.
A fantasy sports league consists of a group of players, known as owners, who create and manage teams that consist of current players in a sports league. Owners compete with each other by using the statistics generated by the players on their individual teams. Fantasy leagues can be found in almost any sport, although the most common sports with fantasy leagues tend to be baseball, Americanfootball, soccer, basketball and hockey.
Depending on the sport and the particular league, there are two main modes of play in fantasy leagues. Some leagues utilize a head-to-head style of play where owners play against each other directly, with the team that scores the highest number of points winning. Other fantasy leagues utilize what is known as a rotisserie model of scoring, where statistics are accumulated over the course of a season and the owner with the highest number of points at the end of the season is declared the champion of the league.
Owners select players via a draft. In a fantasy auction-style draft, owners are given a budget, known as a salary cap, which they use to construct a team. During the draft owners bid against each other to select players, with the highest bidder being granted the right to draft a particular player. A fantasy auction continues until all the owners have filled all available roster spots, or until owners have run out of available money.
The other common method of selecting players is known as the traditional draft. The way the traditional draft works is very similar to the way that most professional sports leagues draft players. The selection process is divided into rounds, with each team given the opportunity to select one player per round. The order in which teams select players is pre-determined before the draft and the order generally remains the same during the entire draft.
A fantasy auction draft offers a level of excitement that is generally not present in a traditional draft. The process of bidding for players is often emotional, heated, and extremely competitive. Because owners have the ability to select any player at any time, provided they have the resources to do so, an auction requires and encourages a level of engagement and attention that is not always experienced in a traditional draft.