Pandemic Drafting - Fantasy Football during Covid-19
The arrival of the pandemic has wreaked disruption into every aspect of our lives. Adjusting to a “new normal” requires a need for change in nearly every one of our daily activities. For those who participate in fantasy football, this is just another situation that one has to adopt to.
In this time of the pandemic, planning for the annual “fantasy football draft party” is going to bring about more concerns than “what should I do with my first pick?” Instead, for most people, creating a safe and comfortable environment is going to be on the forefront of most people’s minds.
The “draft party” event is one of the primary reasons a majority of people participate in their fantasy leagues. There’s nothing better than getting together with some of your best friends, kicking back a few beers, and talking trash about how great your team is going to be. To help recreate this experience this year, it will require leveraging technology. This will be a year of a multi-screen/multi-device event, where you have your draft on one screen, and on another device you’ll being running a Zoom or Google Hangout. Using multiple devices will allow owners to functionally perform the draft, while also being able to simulate being with your friends.
No matter how your league decides to perform their draft, every owner in your fantasy football league will have different levels of comfort. Some individuals may be willing to get together in person. Some will want to stay home. Some will want to stay home, but will have challenges with technology. Being able to adjust and create a comfortable method for everyone to participate all requires flexibility. It is with the concept of massive flexibility with an uncompromised experience that we approached the FanDraft product this year.
FanDraft is now a fully online platform. Our product continues to offer a majority of the tools and features that help create an unparalleled draft experience, but now fully operational from the web. The biggest benefit is the hugely increased flexibility, which provides the ability to perform both in-person or completely online drafts. If you so desire, a hybrid could even be performed, whereby a league has some owners in-person while others draft remotely. Combining FanDraft with 3rd party “Video Conferencing Tools”, such as Google Hangouts or Zoom, helps to further aid in recreating the draft party experience.
Combine FanDraft with Video Conferencing
To best maintain the experience of the in-person fantasy football draft, simply run a video conference in tandem with FanDraft. If you have more than one device, launch a Google Meet, Google Hangout or Zoom conference on one device (eg a laptop or tablet), and then run FanDraft on the other.
If you don’t have multiple devices, you can simply run the conference in another browser tab. If you go this route you won’t be able to watch both at the same time obviously, but it will still give you audio communication with your league throughout the draft.
Choosing the Best Video Conferencing for your Draft
Google Hangouts is completely free, but is limited to 10 people at once. Google Meet is also free, but is limited to 60 minutes (although it’s currently unlimited until Sept 30, 2020). Zoom can host up to 100 users at once, however, the free version is limited to a 40 minute time limit.
So which one do you choose? If you have a friend in the league with a paid Zoom account, that’s a great route to go, as it is generally a better overall experience.
Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with Google Meet, which won’t limit your owners and offers nearly unlimited time until Sept. 30th.
Start Practicing for FREE
We encourage you try out the all new FanDraft Online, by signing up for your free account. You can create and setup your league draft, run through some mock/practice drafts, and even invite some of your owners to join you — all for FREE!
