About: The Live Draft

The draft is one of the best parts of a fantasy league, and is available and ready for drafting now. We’ve improved the live draft experience to give coaches a mixture of new and nostalgic: the ability to draft with a familiar queue and player pool, as well as the addition of the draft board visualiser, plus a whole lot more to give you the best live draft experience possible.

🦊 STARTING THE DRAFT

Once you have a full league and a set time, a button to enter your draft waiting room will appear 30 minutes prior to the start of the live draft on both the League Home and View League pages. This will take you to a new window where the draft takes place.  

However, with Slyder, commissioners now have the power to start the draft early if all of their league is organised and ready to go!

🦊 THE LIVE DRAFT WINDOW

The timer on the top left of the screen indicates how long until the draft starts. Once the draft begins, this time will indicate how much longer a coach has to make their selection.

The draft takes place with league members taking it in turns to make their player selections. Once a coach selects a player (by clicking the green plus symbol on a player which appears when it’s the members’ turn and pressing ‘Confirm’) that player will appear on their team under ‘Teams’.

You can see the order of which member is picking at the top of the screen and the number of picks until your turn is displayed below the timer. This can also be viewed with the black line on the player pool which displays where your next pick is, which gives a great indication of what type of players may be available then.

The draft will finish once every player has picked the number of players needed for their league (indicated under the Teams toggle).

🦊 AUTO DRAFT PREFERENCES

If a coach doesn’t make a selection in time, the platform will Auto Draft for them. But don’t worry if this happens to you, we’ve added a couple of new features to ensure that teams who Auto Draft aren’t disadvantaged.

The Auto Draft is that it picks with your League’s team formation in mind, so your field is completed before moving on the your Emergencies and Remaining Squad.

You can also select a preference for which player will be Auto Drafted via the Auto Draft drop-down box, being by Avg (the player with the highest season average remaining in the draft pool), by ADP (the player with the lowest average draft position remaining in the draft pool) and by their Queue (either their Season Queue or Keeper Queue).

A coach can also elect to have their upcoming selections made by Auto Draft by checking the Auto Draft box. When the box is checked, an Auto Draft selection will be made after 5 seconds of the timer starting, so it won’t slow up the draft for the other members of your league.

🦊 THE DRAFT BOARD VISUALISER

By using the view toggle in the top corner, coaches now have the ability to see a highly visualised ‘draft board’ view of selections appearing in real time. These include our player shirts/numbers synonymous with our Bolter & Slyder platforms.

As coaches make selections, the players will appear here colour coded to match their positions (DEF, MID, RUC, FWD). Another handy feature — if you’re watching along on the draft board view and it’s suddenly your turn, Slyder will automatically flick your view back to the selections screen so you don’t miss your pick.

🦊 YOUR DRAFT QUEUE

You will have access to two seperate Queues, with each player given a default Queue number (typically in order of the prior season averages) for both Season and Keeper. This is to cater for coaches taking part in both a Keeper League and a Single Season League, who might rank certain players differently depending on the League Type.  

The Queue allows you to rank all players in the order that you want to draft them. You can adjust your Queue by clicking the three lines next to the player and dragging a player into a new position. You can also adjust the number in the box manually. Once a player is drafted by you or another team, they will automatically be removed from your queue.

You can update your Queue prior to the Live Draft via the Draft Prep or during the Live Draft and can toggle between your Season or Keeper queues.

Favourites

A coach can add players to their ‘Favourites’ by selecting the star next to a players’ name in the draft pool. They can then filter for their ‘Favourites’ to keep them front of mind when drafting.

Pass

If the Pass checkbox is selected for a given player, that player won’t be selected as an Auto-Draft selection, even if they are the next player on the Auto Draft list. This is handy for players who are injured, or even players whom you don’t like, to make sure they don’t end up on your team!

🦊 NEW COMMISSIONER POWERS

The commissioner will see a different screen during the live draft which allows them to pause the draft, fix up and undo any draft picks. This might prove handy if someone is running late, you want a break for a snack or if someone drafts the wrong player by mistake.

🦊 SHARE DRAFT RESULTS

Once the draft is complete, you will in the History section of the site be able to review the draft results. This includes a one-click share button which exports a view (below) that is shareable in your group chats or on social media.