Another fantasy football season is here! But, are you drafting like it’s 2010, or are you ready to level up? Each year, fantasy football auction drafts keep growing in popularity, and honestly, it’s easy to see why.
An auction draft puts the power in your hands, giving every manager a fair shot at any player they want. No more crossing your fingers for a lucky draft slot or watching your favorite sleeper get sniped just because you’re stuck at the wrong end of the snake.
Read: Auction Draft – How to set player prices, create a game plan, tips & strategy
Still rolling with a snake draft in your league? That’s fine, but you might be missing out on the real fun. Auction drafts bring more strategy, more flexibility, and way more trash talk to the table. If you’ve never tried one, it’s time to see what all the hype is about.
Here are five big reasons why auction drafts are better than snake drafts.
FANTASY FOOTBALL AUCTION DRAFT VS SNAKE DRAFT
1. NO WAITING AROUND
In a snake draft, you can spend upwards of 25-30 minutes just sitting around and scratching yourself. If you have the first or last pick in the draft, you get your pick(s) and then do literally nothing for 20 or so picks in between. You’re forced to sit there and watch others fill out their rosters while you do nothing other than play with your phone or drink. While that may be fine for some, it is not how real drafting is meant to go.
In an auction draft, every player is live, so the action never dies down. You have the option of bidding on any and every player (until you run out of money), so you have a reason to be engaged and pay attention to the whole draft. There is no better feeling than capitalizing on your buddies’ mistakes when they let you snag a player on the cheap because they weren’t focused and you were.
2. YOU CAN UTILIZE ACTUAL STRATEGY – 2025 AUCTION STRATEGY
To be fair, there is a strategy in every type of fantasy football draft. However, snake strategies are limited to either “take the best available player” or “take x of this position and x of that position by round 5.”
This is not the case in an auction draft.
If you want to go heavy on first-round running backs and take cheap wide receiver sleepers, you can. If you want to go even across the board, you can. If you want to invest heavily in your tight end and quarterback, you can do that too, while still saving enough money to take on some other high-end players, whereas in a snake draft, you might have to forego a quality back to draft a stud like Brock Bowers. Most importantly, you have the option to roster both Jahmyr Gibbs and Justin Jefferson. Whereas if you have the seventh pick in a 12-team snake draft, you likely won’t be able to get either one.
3. LITERALLY EVERYONE IS AVAILABLE (AT LEAST TO START)
As I said in the last point, you have the option of taking anybody regardless of arbitrary draft position, which is enormous. If you want two first-rounders or three second-rounders on your team, you have the power to do it. You will likely have to overpay to get a top guy, so be ready for that, but as long as you have a good plan for your late-round guys, you should be fine.
It’s like being at a strip club. Some guys are throwing their paper around at any ass that waves in front of them while other guys hoard their dollar bills as if they were gold. Figure out which one you are and do what feels natural.
4. YOU GET REWARDED FOR BEING MORE PREPARED
You can roll into an auction without being prepared, but usually, those are the guys that spend 90% of their budget in the first five minutes and sit around for three hours because they didn’t have a plan and budgeted wrong. Maybe you can get lucky with three studs and all $1 players, but more likely, one or two of those studs will bust or get hurt, and you’ll end up screwed.
The better bet is to at least map out a general plan of how you want to spend your money. No specific players necessarily, but $10 on QB, $100 on 3 RB, something like that. If you have actual numbers to look at and draw from, then it will help you stay on budget and help you jump over the scrubs in your league who didn’t prepare.
5. THE DRAFT LASTS A BIT LONGER
Let’s face it, the best part about any fantasy sport is the live draft. There’s always the excitement about who you’re going to be able to roster and the bargains you’re going to be able to exploit and how stacked your team is going to be. Then the season starts and most of your plans go to hell and by week 3, you’ll be swearing at the tv screen because some scrub is going off against you for your opponent while your first-rounder rolled his ankle only five minutes into the game.
Why not savor the good stuff?
In many cases, I only see certain people in my life once a year, and that’s on draft day. I want to spend more time with those friends and I want to soak in more draft time and an auction lets me do both of those things. A lengthy draft is not usually better when it’s a snake draft because it just means that people are taking too long to make their picks and that can be maddening. A longer draft in an auction just means that the bidding is fast and furious and everybody is engaged and having fun.
Give me the auction, please!
As always feel free to holler in the comments below if you have anything to add to these reasons or new reasons of your own. If you’re new to auctions and want some advice or help, I’m here for that too!
