At Drafty, we are building the world's most customizable draft room. A huge part of that is making sure the commissioner has all the tools necessary to fix oopsies, undo controversial outcomes, and facilitate all the weird league traditions that make fantasy sports so much fun.
Important settings that the commissioner can't change in-draft include the number of teams, number of rounds, and the draft format itself. These settings should be configured carefully during the draft room setup process.
A handful of commissioner powers are available in every draft regardless of format.
UNIVERSAL SUPERPOWERS
The commissioner can pause the draft as often as needed and resume at any time, even on another day. The commissioner can also modify the master time limit in case things just need to move a littler faster or slower.
The Draft Settings panel is where each draft participant can manage their own preferences. It also contains dozens of options the commissioner can adjust or toggle on and off including various timers, bidding mechanisms and rules, player nominations, and roster abilities.
We will dive into the Draft Settings panel a little later, but for now let's crack open the Commish Toolbox and see what's inside.
COMMISSIONER TOOLBOX
The Undo Last Auction tool is designed to be self-explanatory. It moves the most recently drafted player back into the Undrafted Players pool and reimburses the team budget and roster.
The Move Player tool scrolls down to the team rosters where the commissioner can touch or mouseover a player and click the Move button to open a new panel and select the player's new destination.
The Team Settings panel is where commissioner can rename teams, rearrange the draft order, and - in advanced and clubhouse drafts - manage each team's remaining budget and roster capacity.
If you're drafting through a clubhouse, commissioner has extra abilities in the Toolbox to import clubhouse settings. Save any changes in the clubhouse first and use these tools to freshly import keepers, team assignments, and the player list as needed.
Last but not least in the Toolbox, the commissioner can End Draft at any time in case the system does not recognize the end of your draft automatically, like when at least one team still has roster vacancy because Max Bid Rule is turned off.
Now let's turn our attention to turn-based tools.
DRAFT BOARD SUPERPOWERS
A commissioner using Drafty will never encounter a draft oopsie in a round robin or snake draft that can't be fixed.
Imagine that a participant loses internet when they are on the clock, their timer runs out, and the draft goes on for another full round before everyone becomes aware of the situation. If he's feeling generous, the commissioner can pause and rewind the draft all the way back to the disconnected user's draft pick.
In fantasy leagues that let teams trade draft picks, it is easy for the commissioner to do that or to vacate draft picks as needed for penalties or keepers that are not draft eligible.
Even if two teams make a trade involving a player who has already been drafted, the commissioner can move the player across team rosters and reassign any upcoming draft picks to facilitate the trade.
Now let's zoom in on Drafty's best-in-class auction draft controls, most of which are located in the Draft Settings panel.
AUCTION DRAFT SUPERPOWERS
While snake and round robin commissioner powers mostly concentrate on time management, pick swapping, and mistake fixing, auction drafts are far more complex and therefore command dozens of micro-options to find the right balance for draft day flow. That's why we built a whole panel just for editing draft settings.
As previously mentioned, the Draft Settings panel is where each individual team owner can manage their own preferences and see details about their server connection, which is important for those tedious snipers who love playing chicken with the timer.
The General Settings give you a snapshot of what how the commissioner configured the draft during setup. These options cannot be changed in-draft, though commish can edit individual team budgets and roster capacities via the Toolbox in advanced and clubhouse draft rooms.
You can easily copy and paste the Draft ID from here too, to share for publicity or inviting leaguemates.
TIMER CONTROLS
Aside from pausing the whole draft, there are many ways to speed up or slow down the action within the Draft Settings.
The commissioner can adjust the master time limit, the reset threshold for when a bid comes in at the last second, and even the buffer time in between player auctions. There are also controls for editing or disabling the More Time Please and Fast-Forward buttons.
PLAYER NOMINATIONS
Drafty engineers have designed 5 unique nomination formats that can be deployed for any auction draft and commissioner can toggle between them under Draft Settings to find the best fit for your league.
BIDDING MECHANISMS
Bidding controls are equally diverse and versatile. The commissioner can manipulate all kinds of bidding mechanisms, like adjusting the minimum bid and bid increment, and disallowing dynamic opening bids which would open every auction for the minimum amount.
The Flash Bid button can be removed to simplify the bidding process for auction novices, and a Match Bid button can be added which lets the team who nominated the current player match the current high bid without incrementing it.
In a Silent Auction Draft, top submitted bids are revealed at the end of each auction by default. The commissioner can turn this off and also decide who gets a second chance to bid on a player in the event of a tie.
ROSTER SUPERPOWERS
In Freeze Tag Player Nominations, commissioner can deny teams the ability to undo a nomination if that player auction is not yet active. There is also a crazy option that evolved from a custom request that allows dropping a player from a team roster mid-draft. This feature is rarely used but quite fun when used in tandem with the Max Bid Rule being set to Overspend, which you can read about in our docs.
ADD-ONS AND UPGRADES
Last but not least, the Settings panel contains add-on configurations that require activation, like the ability to switch draft formats via the Dual Format Draft upgrade, the Branding add-on which lets the commissioner add a custom logo and background images to the draft room, and the Mayhem Draft add-on which is a fun way to spice up your draft with Mario Kart-esque weapons.
FAQs
Common questions about commish controls will be posted here so don't hesitate to ask!