We are introducing a number of big changes to all of our multi-year leagues in 2026! Not rule changes–these are cost and administrative changes.
The landscape of dynasty leagues in our season-long industry is changing, and this will help us keep our leagues full and competitive. Read on!
Two Orphan Auctions
DataForce is growing, and it’s time to split our annual orphan auction in two. It’s just gotten too big. We still plan to hold both auctions immediately after the renewal deadline
- The renewal deadline comes one week earlier (late April or early May) in order to accommodate the additional auction.
- The two auctions will run consecutively, one right after the other. If you underbid on the first auction, try again on the second!
- The minimum bid requirement will be removed. You can now bid as low as $1.
- The orphans selected for each auction will be completely random.
“For Sale By Owner” Ends at the Auction
In past years, we would continue to try to get a little more out of team sales for the prior owners after the auction, by giving teams a reasonable buy-it-now price when the teams unsold at auction were moved back to the Marketplace. No longer! If your team doesn’t sell at auction, that’s now your last chance to recover any money from it.
DataForce may still initially list a few teams that survive the auction at a positive sale price, but the money we earn from this will be used to offset a little of the losses we take by selling teams at discount.
Believe it or not, this is probably good news for sellers! We believe it may result in a more active marketplace! Read on to see why.
Introducing Community Deposits
Here’s the deal: If we just can’t seem to sell an orphaned team on the Marketplace, we mark the price way down, and we’ll sometimes use part of the team deposit to offset part of the markdown. We’re extremely frugal when doing this, paying a big chunk of the markdown out of our own pocket before using any of the deposit, but it still becomes necessary at times.
Which brings us to community deposits! This is deposit money that basically belongs to the league, rather than to any individual team. Community deposits will help us spread money around a bit better to keep leagues alive longer. If a team needs help selling at discount, we borrow from the league’s community deposit. We’ve never closed a multi-year league and have no plans of breaking that streak anytime soon so we’re taking steps now to preserve our longevity.
No, you don’t pay any more deposit money! Nothing comes out of your pocket. So where does the community deposit money come from?
It comes from orphan teams that don’t sell at auction. If a team can’t find a buyer at auction, the deposit on that team joins the league’s “community deposit” and is used to help keep the league alive by discounting teams as needed.
What does this mean in practical terms for orphan buyers? It means you may want to buy your team before or during the annual auction so that the full deposit follows the team. Don’t wait until the auction ends and buy it off the marketplace, because at that moment the team deposit goes into the community pool.
Community deposit money still belongs to the customers, not to DataForce! Should the league fold, the community deposit amount is divided equally between the teams that contributed to it. (If your team still has it’s deposit, you get THAT returned instead, which should be as much or more.)
I know, this sounds complicated, but it’s really not. Here’s a link to give you all the details about community deposits:
Nominal Prepayments For Start-Up Leagues
If you want to be part of a dynasty league, we’d love it if you join by buying an orphan, rather than form a new start-up league. To this end, and to help decrease the number of orphans in the following year, we want to make sure you’re serious about staying in any new start-up that you join. We basically want to know that you intend to stick around for two years or more.
So, new start-up multi-year leagues will now require a partial “token” prepayment of the next year’s entry fee to help stabilize each league. The prepayment amount will hopefully be small enough to not discourage new buyers, but large enough to discourage buyers who aren’t in it for the long haul. This prepayment is not part of the deposit; it is a non-refundable payment toward next year’s entry fee.
We think a small token non-refundable prepayment for the following year will also help cut back on two dynasty short-term start-up strategies: Drafting to lose, and drafting to win. Owners who draft only with an eye toward selling on the marketplace (immediately angling for the lowest potential points, and the best draft pick next year) and owners who draft planning to dump-and-run a team full of veterans after hopefully winning year one, are not doing new leagues any favors. We want twelve competitive teams in our dynasty leagues, year after year.
Here are the prepayment fees we’ve landed on:
- Copper ($50) leagues: $15 prepayment
- Bronze ($100) leagues: $25 prepayment
- Silver ($200) leagues: $40 prepayment
- Ruby: $350) leagues: $60 prepayment
- Gold ($500) leagues: $80 prepayment
For example, if you buy into a brand new Copper league in 2026, you’ll pay the following:
- The usual entry fee for 2026 ($50 plus regulatory cost)
- The usual league deposit ($50)
- Part of the entry fee for 2027 ($15)
Avoid the second and third charge by buying an orphan instead!
Partial Prepayments To Enable Trading on MFL Leagues
Trading away future-year picks on DataForce-hosted leagues requires that you agree to renew the following year. A pop-up window appears when you offer or accept a trade that will decrease your future-year trade capital. It asks you to agree to “auto-renew” for the next year in January.
We also have a bit more than 100 multi-year leagues hosted on MyFantasyLeague.com. Contrarily, MyFantasyLeague is sort of the “Wild West” when it comes to trading. It’s much harder for us to keep an eye on these leagues to make sure trades are fair, and we don’t have the tools to limit the number of trades allowed on MyFantasyLeague-hosted contests.
Unfortunately, the pop-up option isn’t possible for leagues hosted on MyFantasyLeague, either. That’s third-party software, it doesn’t belong to us, and we can’t make changes to it. So, instead, for MFL leagues we traditionally required you to visit your Keepers->TradingRights page each year on the DataForce site, and indicate whether you want to enable trading your own future-year picks.
We’re finding this solution doesn’t work terribly well to keep these leagues competitive. Orphans on MFL are harder to sell each year, as most of our customers prefer the DataForce software. Trading gets out of hand more easily, since it is so much harder to supervise the Wild West. And, by the time January 1 rolls around, most people have forgotten they asked for trading rights and the auto-renew catches them by surprise.
To solve all these problems, we are going to introduce a partial, conditionally refundable, prepayment requirement to enable trading away future-year picks on this host. This will not be the full prepayment required by most fantasy sites! But beginning in 2026, if you want to enable future-year pick trading on MFL, you must prepay half the future-year entry fee. For a typical Copper ($50) league in 2026, you’ll prepay $25 toward 2027.
It’s conditionally refundable because, if you end the year with all of your draft capital (you don’t wind up trading away any of your future-year picks), you can ask for the prepayment back.
This is only for MyFantasyLeague contests, not leagues hosted on DataForce! If you find this change frustrating, we understand and apologize for its necessity, especially when MFL leagues already cost $7 more per team to pay for their hosting service.
If you prefer, go right now to your Keepers->RenewTeams page and indicate whether you prefer your returning leagues to be hosted on DataForce or on MyFantasyLeague. If everybody agrees one way or the other, we’ll swap hosts to save you money.
🏈 Leagues Forming Now at DataForce Fantasy Football! 🏈
Ready to draft? We offer the widest variety with the best prize payouts anywhere!
Come check out what we have available in our lobby and Orphan Marketplace.
Join the fun and draft your winning team today at DataForceFF.com!
Lee Harmon
Commissioner
Comments (2)