DT2011: How will it work?

DT next year will not be as we know it. We will be dealing with a 17th team and the subsequent bye. Today we’ve got a bit of an insight into what AFL Dream Team will look like in 2011.

One of our mates, makingmemark (who is battling it out with Calvin and myself in our Cash League) attended the Digital Sports Summit today at the MCG. Peter Jankulovski from Vapor Media (Virtual Sports) spoke about Fantasy Sports in Australia and gave a hint that there would be “maybe more trades and emergencies next year“ to deal with the inclusion of Gold Coast.

Their approach would be a “less is more”, but it is still yet to be decided.

This will be interesting as the AFL have also come out and confirmed that each club will have 2 byes over a 24 week roster, but its make up is yet to be determined.

Two possible solutions are:

• Season of 22 weeks with a standard eight matches, with one team having a bye for each of those 22 rounds, along with one round where five matches are played with seven teams having byes and one round where six matches are played with five teams having byes.
• Season under a model whereby we play 19 rounds of eight matches per week, and then five rounds of seven matches per week where three teams have a bye each week for those rounds.

The first option would mean we would have less disruption to Dream Team where only 2 rounds are ‘screwed up’ with more than one bye. The second option would mean we’d have 3 byes per week of 5 weeks. Obviously these would be randomly put in there at different times in the season, so how those will work – for league games especially – would need to be thought about? Maybe ‘rankings’ would still happen, but it could possibly be a ‘bye’ week for Dream Team coaches in League games?

Time will tell.