Claimed:Suggestion: Incentives for Free Agents to Join Empty Teams

[Baozi 1,658]

 

Dear Fong,

 

Was thinking the other week when the team stacking conversations came up a little bit ago and its something I've been trying to think about. As a few of my latest players have deemed to go to free agency and join the strongest teams, I've wondered what the impact that has on the parity of some teams. Just like in real life where a player weighs the pros/cons of joining a contender team versus staying with a floundering team because its home to them or the benefits or good. However because our player pool is a bit more shallow, it ends up that typically free agents will be few and far in between joining the empty teams and it cascades from there causing a team to become a high unattractive place to go. 

 

Now we do have salary caps to prevent over stacking but what if we were to give incentives for people to stay on bad/empty/Vasteras teams (other than personal stat achievements) that are as valuable as joining a championship squad?

 

My idea , which is currently very rough, involves offering a FA contract with a "Preferred Destination Bonus" that a team is eligible to offer if they meet certain requirements like if their roster has less than X players and their salary commitments are below X dollars. This "bonus" would be an extra signing bonus that does not come out of the salary cap of the team but is instead paid for by the league (or free dollars basically).

 

The bonus would obviously have to be worth a large amount in order to make it a lucrative and hard decision for the free agent. 

 

Now what happens if a team offers all FA's this bonus and starts with an empty team? Do they basically get all the top free agents?

Answer: Bonus paid would be dependent on the +% modifier of their contract value in that first year paid in order of agent signing. So the player that responds and signs first gets the largest bonus (also encouraging people to sign early) say like +50% of the AAV as the signing bonus, then 30% then 15%..etc..etc...

 

In theory that means the already strong teams with X players locked up with already large salaries committed will not be able to utilize this signing bonus so the only thing free agents are signing on for at the team are basically contender status versus the increase monetary value of the lesser teams. What i hope to encourage in this case is to actually move some of the free agents towards the lesser teams or at least make them more attractive to goto rather than the championship in itself.

 

Currently just a base idea that obviously needs to figure out loopholes and such but I think if the money value is enough (millions that could allow the player to basically purchase way more shop items and bonuses) these players that take min salary to goto contenders would actually goto weaker teams first, closing the gap between having super empty teams and super full teams.

 

I would not want these bonuses to apply to GM players or inactives of course as a rule.

 

 

Edited February 26, 2017 by tfong

[Will 4,660]

Option #3 

[Baozi 1,658]

5 hours ago, Will said:

Option #3 

 

I'm open to further research by someone else  All my evidence is anecdotal. 

[BOOM 8,745]

I'd probably use this option if it was available.

[Corco 1,237]

Claimed