Patent Application
20180318720
The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to systems for managing and drafting fantasy sports contests.
Current fantasy sports platforms rely on real professional sports games. When a professional team suffers an issue, the fantasy sports team also suffers. The question is, where is the fantasy in today's fantasy contests.
The original system of fantasy gaming is over fifty years old, with the only other fantasy option being over 25 years old. In 2017 there were over 60,000,000 fantasy gamers who invested over $5.1 billion in these two fantasy concepts.
The original fantasy game is a one time, three hour draft, that takes place prior to the start of the season. This drafting platform begins with a randomly selected draft order, usually #1 through #12 and returning in the second round #12 to #1. This drafting method is known as a serpentine or snake draft. Years of statistics reveal this method of play favors teams that draft in the top 4 drafting positions vs. the teams that draft late in their draft. The serpentine draft is time consuming, taking many hours to prepare to draft 17 players from a 2,000 member player pool. In addition to the original draft, serpentine drafting contests require an additional 1 to 3 hours a week searching team rosters and ranking players for the weekly waiver-wire draft, which is drafted in the “reverse order” to your current contest standings. (If your team is in first place, you would have the last pick in the weekly waiver-wire draft.) Add in player injuries, team bye weeks, league suspensions and undependable player reports and serpentine fantasy contests have become extremely complicated to play.
The second method of fantasy play is known as a Salary Cap game, which is a non-drafting method but rather a gaming system, controlled by the company offering salary cap contest, that offers a random amount of fake money ($60 M+/−) to purchase professional players at a predetermined dollar value. (Example: Tom Brady could have a purchase price tag of $24 M or over one third of the teams spending cap.) As you can see, this method of play makes selecting top tier professional players extremely expensive to acquire, knowing you need to fill a 9 man team roster, thus forcing fantasy gamers to select unknown or lower level pros to fill their contest rosters. This results with most users only being able to afford a few of the top pros to fill their lineup; in most cases, users are forced in to selecting the same top professional players as other users in their contest. In the end, many users end up with identical player rosters. The largest issue with Salary Cap contests is professionally created and privately purchased algorithms that have taken over this style of game, which makes Salary Cap games unfair for the average gamer. Today, Salary Cap contests are ruled by those who can build or buy the best algorithm.
The present invention, the Quiver Drafting System, establishes a completely new system of play and a new method for managing and drafting fantasy sports contests. The invention solves the majority of the previously mentioned problems due to the fact that it functions independently of both current systems. The invention requires less time, allows for a fair draft, for every user, every week of the contest. The invention does not depend on a computer driven drafting order, doesn't involve a reverse order waiver-wire draft or having to select a team based on a company's view of a players value or the user's ability to buy a computerized algorithm.
The present invention provides a player organizer (The Drafting Quiver) that allows every user the opportunity to rank and draft (1 through 20) any and every pro player, every week of their contest. All players a free agents, every week of the year. Once the user ranks its players, by position (Quarterback, Running Back, Wide Receiver, Tight End, Kicker and a team Defense), the system lays the users ranked players, side by side, and drafts players from the top down (#1 through #20) every week of the contest, all season long.
The Quiver Drafting System replaces all matching players with the next highest-ranked player in each teams quiver. (Example: If user #1 has Tom Brady ranked as their #1 Quarterback and his weekly opponent, user #2, has Tom Brady ranked as their #1 Quarterback, then Tom Brady will be removed from both teams weekly draft. If user #1 has Aaron Rogers as their second ranked quarterback and user #2 has Drew Brees as their second ranked quarterback, the system will slot Aaron Rogers as user #1's starting QB and slot Drew Brees as user #2's starting QB for that one week of play. Quiver Drafting removes two of the main issues in fantasy sports, “draft order superiority and the reverse order waiver-wire.”
In a variant, a method for managing a fantasy sports league on a plurality of remote devices having instructions stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium, the devices being communicatively connected to a network, providing a plurality of players from teams of a professional sports league on a database; connecting each device to the database over the network; receiving input from each device using an interface to select players from the database and organize the players into a ranked list, for each drafting position; storing the selections made through the interface on each device on the database; placing one fantasy team against a second fantasy team for a fantasy contest; that removes identically-ranked players from each teams organized list and replacing an identically-ranked player with a next highest-ranked player in each teams personally ranked drafting quiver.
In another variant, the method comprises displaying the first users ranked list of 20 players, side by side, with the ranked list of a second users top 20 players. Quiver Drafting allows the user to rank their top 20 draft choices for all six drafting positions. The system lays each users highest-ranked next to each other. If they are a match (same player) the matched player is removed from both teams drafting quiver and the system moves on to the next highest ranked player. The side by side, top to bottom, player draft provides an equally fair and balanced draft for every team, every week of the season.
In a further variant, the method comprises using placeholders for players.
In yet another variant, the method comprises selecting and ranking players for each drafting position.
In another variant, the method comprises forming a different fantasy team for each fantasy game using the users ranked players from each of the drafting position.
In a further variant, the method comprises selecting and ranking players prior to a fantasy game.
In yet another variant, the method comprises duplicating a finalized drafting quiver to clone current player rankings for all new team quivers.
In another variant, the method comprises notifying both users to make at least one player adjustment when both users ranked lists (1 through 20) are identically matched.
In a further variant, the method comprises scoring the fantasy games and posting fantasy game results to the database to proclaim a winner.
In yet another variant, a system for managing a fantasy sports team, comprising a plurality of remote devices having instructions stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium, the devices being communicatively connected to a database over a network. The database comprises a plurality of players from teams of professional leagues; and each device has an interface that is configured to select players from the database and organize the players into a ranked list for each of the six drafting positions. The interface is configured to place one fantasy teams drafting list, side by side, against another fantasy team to form a fantasy contest. The interface is also configured to remove identically-ranked players from each ranked list and replace an identically-ranked player with a next highest-ranked player from each user's ranked player list.
In another variant, the system is configured to display a ranked list of players from a first user, next to a ranked list of a second user, and draft from a highest-ranked player to a lowest-ranked player (1 through 20) for each users drafting quiver.
In a further variant, the system comprises placeholders for players.
In yet another variant, the interface is configured to accept an arrangement of ranked players for each of the six drafting positions.
In another variant, the interface is configured to form a fantasy team comprising a different arrangement of players for each fantasy game using the ranked players for each drafting position.
In a further variant, the interface is configured to perform weekly, one on one, head to head drafts.
In a further variant, the interface is configured to conduct games' draft's head to head, one-on-one against every team in the contest on a daily and weekly basis.
In a further variant, the interface is configured to accept an arrangement of ranked players.
In yet another variant, the interface comprises an option to duplicate a finalized ranked list so that any other ranked lists for the same drafting position are updated to reflect the finalized player rankings.
In another variant, the interface is configured to notify both users to make at least one player adjustment when both ranked lists for the same drafting position are identical.
In a further variant, the interface is configured to score the fantasy games, according to the contests scoring system, and post each fantasy games results to the database.
In yet another variant, the interface is configured to accept money payments and distribute money to the contest winners.
In another variant, the interface is configured to receive and organize fantasy teams into various leagues, tournaments and contests.
Referring generally to
In another variant, drafting quivers are found next to the NFL Player Pool in the system. Six drafting quivers are open with 20 blank drafting slots. To prepare for a draft, a participant selects 20 of their most desired players, from the NFL player pool into the teams drafting quiver, for example, by clicking on green player arrow that moves a player from the player pool and in to their drafting quiver, with a mouse cursor. After the user arrows over a player into the drafting quiver, the user may adjusts the drafting order, by dragging and dropping the players up or down the 20 slot drafting quiver, as often as needed until thirty minutes prior to the start of each week's first game. Otherwise, drafting quivers maintain their prior player order, from week to week, or until the owner makes an actual player adjustment.
In a further variant, a player is removed from its drafting quiver and returned to the player pool by clicking on a green arrow found to the right of the player's name. The removed player automatically returns to their statistical position in the NFL player pool. The user may also choose to duplicate a finalized drafting quiver, by clicking on the blue Duplicate Quiver button, to copy the current drafting quiver over to the users other contest quivers.
In another variant, each of the six drafting positions (QB, RB, WR, TE, K and D) has its own 20 slot drafting quiver.
In a further variant, NFL player pools are separated by position and listed in statistical order. Player pools are displayed next to their drafting quiver. For example, the quarterback player roster is displayed adjacent to the quarterback drafting quiver. To access quivers, an owner navigates through the flow of the web site.
In yet another variant, the system drafts players for each game from the drafting quivers. First, a first team's quiver for a first position is displayed adjacent to the second user's quiver for a first position. For example, the quarterback quiver of one competitor is displayed side by side with the quarterback quiver of a second competitor. Next, the system drafts from the top of the quiver (#1 through #20) to the bottom of the quiver.
If the system detects a matched player (same name player) the system removes the identically-ranked player from each teams quiver and replaces each identically-ranked player with the next highest-ranked player in each quiver. The system designates the identically-ranked player as a matching player and removes the matched player from that week's head to head draft. If both the first-ranked and second-ranked positions in both quivers have matching players, then both players are eliminated from the draft. This elimination of matched players the system continues down the quiver until the system detects unmatched players until the player drat has concluded. If both quivers are fully matched, meaning the quivers ranked the same players in the same order, 1 through 20, the system notifies the users to make at least a one player adjustment by alerting the users with a “red flag” on their contest portal and in an email. The system then repeats the above steps for the remaining five drafting positions. See the following examples:
A first competitor's quarterback quiver has Drew Brees ranked as their number one quarterback and the second users quarterback quiver has Aaron Rogers ranked as their number one quarterback, the system will draft Drew Brees as the starting quarterback for the first users team and draft Aaron Rogers as the opponent's starting quarterback.
A first competitor's quarterback quiver ranks Drew Brees as the number one quarterback and the opponent's quarterback quiver ranks Drew Brees as the number quarterback. The system will remove Drew Brees from both teams' quarterback quivers. Drew Brees is now designated as a matched player by the system and moves on to the next highest ranked QB in each teams QB quiver. This process continues until the two users differ in opinion on the ranking of their QB quiver.
In another variant, the system scores the fantasy games and posts fantasy game results live to the database. The system also accepts money payments and organizes fantasy teams into various leagues, tournaments and contests.
The computer implemented method for managing fantasy sports leagues is carried out by the system on a plurality of remote devices, the devices being communicatively connected to a network, and have instructions stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium that when executed by a computer processor, cause the processor to execute the method. The devices are communicatively connected to a network. The method executed by the processor comprises: providing a plurality of players from teams of a league on a database; connecting each device to the database over the network; receiving input from each device using an interface to select players from the database and organize the players into a ranked list for drafting a team of players; storing the selections made through the interface on each device on the database; placing a first fantasy team against a second fantasy team for a fantasy game; drafting players from each team's ranked player lists; and removing identically-ranked players from each ranked list and replacing an identically-ranked player with a next highest-ranked player on each ranked list.
The present application is a continuation in part of U.S. Non-Provisional application Ser. No. 13/406,520 filed on Feb. 27, 2012, which claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61/447,095 filed on Feb. 27, 2011, which are each hereby incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61447095 | Feb 2011 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 13406520 | Feb 2012 | US |
| Child | 15969051 | US |
