Monday 9 June 2014

FTL 2014-15 Proposal

Now that the final prize money from 2013-14's FTL season has been distributed, (congratulations Skeeve), it's time to look forward to next season, and there appears to me more than enough interest in a second FTL season for 2014-15, so here are some thoughts.

The bad news is that I am thinking of raising the entry fee to, a still very reasonable, £52.50 and capping the entries at a maximum of 32. For a bit of fun that keeps you interested for nine months of the year, I think that price is fair enough. In order to justify the hours spent on this to the boss, (and it does take several hours each week), I'm going to use £2.50 as an 'administration fee' with the pot receiving £50. I hope no one objects to this small token fee.

The good news is that this will mean bigger rewards, and on the topic of maintaining interest, I have a couple of ideas. Of the 22 entries last season, 18 made it through to the end with entries in either April or May, and the earliest 'retirements' were in January

With this in mind, I had the rather brilliant idea of allocating a percentage of the pot to a single-elimination competition, i.e. a Cup. Assuming we get more than 16 entries, there will (if necessary) be a Preliminary Round to reduce the number to 16, and then knock-out rounds on specified dates. I'm thinking of using the weekends after the FA Cup rounds take place to guarantee that there is a full schedule of matches for people to choose from. Cup games themselves are not eligible for the FTL due to their absence from Football Data's results.

The Cup results would simply be the profit or loss for that weekend's matches and would also count in the FTL - this would just be a side event on maybe five weekends of the season. You could lose 3 points, but advance if your 'opponent' loses 4 points, or you could be up 10 points and be eliminated if your 'opponent' makes 11 points.

Otherwise the basic structure will remain the same as last year. I'm also thinking of adding a small prize for each monthly winner, i.e. most profitable entry for the eight months of the season counting August and September as one, and combining April and May also.

In summary then, my proposal is that 75% of the pot money will go to the League competition, 15% to the Cup and 10% to the monthly prizes.

If we fill up with 32 entries, there will be £1,200 prize money for the league, £240 for the 'Cup' and £160 for the eight monthly prizes.

Unless there are objections, the Cup winnings will be 50% for the winner, 25% for the runner-up and 12.5% each for the losing semi-finalists, while the League prize money will be divided among the profitable entries in the ratio of the profits. Thus if four entries are in profit, e.g 6 points, 4 points, 3 points and 2 points, the pot will be split 6/15ths to the winner, 4/15ths to second etc.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?


Slots will be awarded (and are filling up fast) on a first come, first served basis as fees are received - PayPal to calciocassini @ aol.com and if anyone wants to top up the kitty with a sponsorship, and a mention each week, please feel free. Graeme, aka The Football Analyst, has already offered to match his offer of £25 to anyone beating him next season up to a £400 (I think) total liability. Last season cost him £125 but I'm sure the publicity on here made that a worthy investment.

Bottom line - it's good fun and an opportunity to show your skill and win some decent prize money.

11 comments:

Lay Away said...

Hi Mate
Can you delete my previous post, I was logged into my daughters account :-(

Regards

Neil

Unknown said...

Cassini, I am in I will sort it out after I come out of hosp on 19th June.

Happy to match Graemes offer, don't need naming rights etc or happy to just throw a few hundred in pot and try and win it back. Will leave it to you

Ian

Unknown said...

Cassini I am in, I will sort it out when I come out of hosp after 19th June if that is ok.

Happy to match Graemes offer or just throw a few hundred in pot and try an win some back, will leave it to you, let me know whatever you decide. Don't need any naming rights etc

Ian

Graeme Dand said...

Hi Cassini.

Love the changes suggested in the post. A knockout cup competition sounds fun and I think it adds another twist to an already enjoyable friendly league. You’d have to host a live draw on Twitter though so we could see who we are drawn against. :)

I think I said I would cover bounties up to £500 this season at £25 a head, so happy to stick with this. Not sure last season brought me too much good publicity (same for Steve’s blog!) but as the old saying goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity. TFA is probably more known now than ever before but not sure it’s a good thing off the back of a poor season! I needed this publicity at the end of the first 3 seasons. Hopefully my 5th season is better than

I think the split of prizes makes sense too if it is based on profits won. Does open the door to someone winning a massive prize if they have a great season which I think is a great incentive for wannabe tipsters. The fact they get to wipe the floor with my system and win £25 off me should be enough incentives for anyone to get involved. Jessica seems keen to win my £25 anyway! :)

I’m not sure what system I should enter this season in this league….. I think taking on board the issues last season with odds moving, it sort of points to a draw system being deployed into this league as it won’t suffer from the same odds issue as a system backing outright. I’m also in the process of developing a set of new Euro Draw systems which will be in direct competition with your XX Draws this season, so that would be fun too if I put in a system covering these bets.

I’m thinking I’ll maybe put in two systems this season since it’s such a nice prize to win. :) I’ll ping you 2 entry fees when time allows to reserve my two spots for next season. I’ll obviously decide which system the bounty is based on before the season starts.

Good luck with getting entries and let us know with how things are going with the numbers over the Summer. I’m happy to put up a post or a tweet trying to entice some potential entrants.

Cheers,

Graeme

Lay Away said...

No more advertising my daughters Blogs (note to self check which Google Account you are logged into before posting comments on blogs)

Very happy with the new proposals.

Extremely generous of both Ian and Graeme to throw additional money into the pot, just need Graeme to have another "Barnsleyesque" type of season :-)

Pre season training starts soon for the new strategies so as the saying goes "bring it on"

Graeme Dand said...

That made me laugh Lay Away. (Apologies, don’t know your name mate)

I was reading the comment yesterday and thinking that it doesn’t quite go with the profile picture….. Makes more sense to me now!

I’m currently in pre-season training too at the moment with reviewing the season past and also building another (yet another!) set of ratings for the Euro leagues which does Draw bets. Hoping to take on Cassini’s system next season in the FTL with my own Euro Draw system. Should be a nice experiment!

Good luck with your system building over the Summer and let battle commence next season. :)

Graeme

Brian H said...

Just to echo the previous comments and say that I really like the new proposals and the increased entry fee is fine by me.

I will be entering with my premier league selections once again and am confident of claiming more prize money :)

I may also have some bigger value selections from the lower leagues to add to the mix!

These are generated quite close to kick off though... Cassini, is there a cut off time for emailing you selections?

Unknown said...

Count me in!

Happy to provide sponsorship too. Just let me know the details.

Unknown said...

Count me in!

Happy to contribute sponsorship, just let me know what's required.

Unknown said...

Those last 2 posts were from me btw, no idea why they came out as anonymous!

Stewboss

Unknown said...

Stewboss btw!