Contract Dynasty Feature
AdvancedContract bidding: bid a salary and a contract length
Contract bidding is a draft format for contract dynasty leagues. Every bid carries two pieces: a salary and a contract length. Longer contracts can win at a lower per-year salary thanks to multi-year discounts.
This page walks through every part of the format: how a bid is structured, how the draft compares two bids of different lengths, how proxy bidding works, and how the cap and contract slot rules apply. There is also a live playground further down the page so you can see how bids compete yourself.
The Concept
Why contract bidding exists
In real-world contracts, a player on a 4-year deal is paid less per year than a player on a 1-year deal of the same caliber. The team gets cost certainty across multiple seasons. The player gets job security. Both sides give something up to make a longer deal worth signing, and the lower per-year salary is what makes that trade fair.
Contract bidding brings that same trade-off into the draft. You aren't just choosing how much to pay. You are choosing how much risk you want to take on by locking up cap space for multiple years. The team that thinks the player will outperform their salary for four years will bid 4-year. The team that wants flexibility will bid 1-year.
The downside of going long is real: if a 4-year deal doesn't work out, you either keep paying that salary until the contract expires or eat dead money to drop the player. Multi-year contracts are a commitment, not a free upgrade. Discounts are how the draft prices that commitment.
The result is a draft that produces real contract diversity instead of a flat field of 1-year deals, and a roster that has the kind of layered contract structure you'd actually find in an NFL front office.
Walkthrough
How a contract bid works, step by step
From nomination to signing. Live and slow drafts run the same way; only the timers and proxy bidding change.
A live contract bidding draft board. One player is on the clock at a time, with the current high bid's salary, contract length, and bidding team displayed. Slow contract bidding uses the same bid structure but runs over days or weeks with multiple nominations on the board at once.
Place a bid: salary and length
When a player is nominated, every bid you place has two parts: a salary and a contract length. Length options are 1 through 5 years, depending on what the commissioner has enabled and which contract slots your team still has available.
In slow contract bidding, you submit a max bid (the most you're willing to pay at the chosen length) and the platform proxy-bids on your behalf. In live contract bidding, every click is a real-time bid against a short timer.
The draft uses multi-year discounts to compare bids
Every bid is converted to a 1-year equivalent value using the league's multi-year discount settings. That equivalent value is what the draft compares. Higher equivalent wins. Discounts apply only inside the draft room: they are the rule the draft uses to compare two bids of different lengths and have no effect once the draft ends.
Defaults are 8% for 2-year, 16% for 3-year, 24% for 4-year, and 32% for 5-year. With a 24% discount on 4-year, a 4-year bid is worth 24% more per year than a flat comparison would say. That makes long contracts attractive in the bidding room. With all discounts set to 0%, a 1-year $50 bid is treated as equal to a 5-year $50 per year bid, and there's no advantage to bidding long.
Multi-year discount settings. Defaults: 8% / 16% / 24% / 32%.
What the discount actually does
The simplest way to see the discount: take a 1-year $50 bid and find the 4-year bid that's equivalent to it.
4-year discount: 0%
No reason to bid long
With no discount, a 4-year bid is just 4 copies of a 1-year bid. A 1-year $50 bid is equal to a 4-year $50 per year bid. Same per-year salary, more years of risk. No team would choose the 4-year here.
4-year discount: 24% (default)
Lock the player up at $12 less per year
A 24% discount knocks $50 × 24% = $12 off the per-year salary. So a 1-year $50 bid is now equal to a 4-year $38 per year bid. Same value to the draft, but you've locked the player up for four seasons at a lower per-year cost.
1-year $50 ≡ 4-year $38 / yr
That's the whole mechanic. The bigger the discount, the cheaper a long contract becomes per year. Discounts let teams pay less per year for committing more years.
Proxy bidding (slow drafts)
In slow contract bidding, you don't click bid every time someone outbids you. You set a max bid: the most you're willing to pay, plus the contract length you want it at. The platform bids the minimum needed to keep you in the lead, all the way up to your max.
When two max bids are at different contract lengths, the draft compares them at the discount. The team whose offer is worth more becomes the high bidder at their chosen length. The losing team's max stays active at their length, ready to take the lead if they get bumped back ahead.
Auction ends, contract signs
When the timer expires, the winning bid becomes a signed contract. Year 1 is the bid amount. Subsequent years are calculated from the league's player salary increase per year setting at the moment of signing, then locked in for the life of the contract.
With the default 0% increase, every year of the contract has the same salary. With a non-zero increase, each year is the previous year multiplied by (1 + increase) and rounded up. So a 4-year bid at $40 with a 10% yearly increase signs at $40, $44, $49, $54.
The contract slot for the chosen length is consumed at signing, and the player joins the team's roster with a full multi-year contract on file.
Plain English
What discounts actually mean
Multi-year discounts are not a price cut applied to the contract. They are the rule the draft uses to compare two bids of different lengths. Outside the draft, discounts don't exist: signed contracts pay the salary that was bid, every year, with no discount applied. Discounts shape the bidding only.
The big idea: you should be able to pay less per year for a longer contract. In real life no team would treat 1 year at $50 the same as 4 years at $50 per year — the longer commitment is more valuable to the player and more risk to the team, so the per-year number comes down. Discounts are how the draft enforces that math.
Set discounts to 0% if you want flat comparisons
With all discounts at 0%, a 1-year $50 bid equals a 5-year $50 per year bid. There is no incentive to bid long. Most leagues want some discount so longer contracts have a reason to exist in the draft.
The defaults — 8%, 16%, 24%, 32% — are a reasonable curve: small discount for a 2-year, meaningful discount for a 5-year. Tune them to taste. A league that wants long contracts to be the norm should crank discounts up. A league that wants 1-year deals to dominate should lower them.
Try It
Bidding playground
Adjust the discounts, the salary increase, and the sample bid. The table shows the minimum winning bid at each contract length using the same comparison rule the draft uses.
Bidding Playground
Adjust the discounts, salary increase, and sample bid to see what it takes to beat a bid at each contract length.
Multi-year discounts
Bid to beat $49(1y):
| YR1 | YR2 | YR3 | YR4 | YR5 | AVG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-Year | $50 | - | - | - | - | $50 |
| 2-Year | $46 | $46 | - | - | - | $46 |
| 3-Year | $42 | $42 | $42 | - | - | $42 |
| 4-Year | $38 | $38 | $38 | $38 | - | $38 |
| 5-Year | $34 | $34 | $34 | $34 | $34 | $34 |
Format Options
Live or slow
Both formats use the same bid comparison rules. Pick whichever matches how your league operates.
Live contract bidding
Runs in a single session. One player is nominated at a time and teams bid in real time against short timers. No proxy bids. Best for leagues that can get everyone online at the same time.
Slow contract bidding
Runs over days or weeks. Multiple nominations on the board at once with proxy bidding, anti-snipe timer extensions, and an optional nightly pause. Best for leagues that can't get everyone online at the same time.
Tip: keep simultaneous nominations lower for slow contract bidding
Active high bids on multi-year contracts tie up the corresponding contract slots while the auction is running. If your league has tight slot allocations (for example, only 1 four-year and 2 three-year contracts per team), a high simultaneous-nomination cap can leave teams unable to bid the length they want on later players. A lower cap keeps the slot math sensible. A standard slow auction (no contract length on the bids) doesn't have this problem and can comfortably run 30+ nominations at a time.
All defaults are configurable. See the contract league rules reference for every draft setting.
The Rules That Apply
Cap, contract slots, and roster checks
Current-season cap is enforced
You cannot bid past your current-season cap minus the league's holdback. Bidding stops there. Every team sees their available cap update in real time as bids accumulate.
Future cap is optional
If your commissioner enables future cap enforcement, the platform also checks years 2-5 of any multi-year bid against future cap space. Otherwise only the current season is checked.
Contract slots are limited
Multi-year contracts consume slot allocations. Defaults are 3 two-year, 2 three-year, 1 four-year, and 0 five-year (must be enabled). 1-year contracts are unlimited. Active high bids count against your slots.
Must-fill-roster
When enabled (default), the platform reserves enough cap to fill every open roster spot at minimum salary. You can always nominate at the league minimum 1-year, even if you'd otherwise be locked out by cap.
Anti-snipe timer extends
When you're outbid late in the timer, the bid reset timer kicks in (10 seconds live, 16 hours slow, both configurable). Nobody gets sniped at the buzzer.
Same engine on every device
Mobile app and web run the same bid validation, comparison, and signing logic. Bidding from your phone is identical to bidding from a laptop.
Strategy
What contract bidding rewards
Conviction on a player
If you believe a player will outperform their salary for multiple years, lock them up long. The discount means you can win them at a lower per-year cost than a 1-year bidder is willing to match.
Cap flexibility
If you want to keep cap space free for future free agents, bid 1-year. You'll need a higher per-year salary to win, but you avoid committing future cap.
Slot scarcity
Multi-year contract slots are limited. Use them on players you genuinely want to keep multiple years. Burning a 4-year slot on a depth player is a strategic mistake.
Reading the room
When the league is heavy on 1-year bids, multi-year bids can sneak through cheaply. When everyone is bidding long, 1-year bids can win at a high per-year because there's less competition at that length.
Salary growth math
If your league has a non-zero salary increase per year, multi-year contracts grow over time. Factor years 2-5 into your bid: a 4-year $40 contract with 10% growth signs $40, $44, $49, $54. Make sure the future hits fit your cap.
Roster construction
Mix 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year contracts to layer your roster's contract expiration dates. A team with everything expiring in the same season has no flexibility. A team with a balanced ladder always has cap space coming back.
Commissioner Control
Tune contract bidding to your league
Commissioners set the discount for each contract length, the player salary increase per year, the contract slot allocations, the timers, the holdback amount, and whether future cap enforcement is on. Every team sees the same rules and the same comparison results.
For first-time leagues, the defaults are a sane starting point. Run a season with the 8% / 16% / 24% / 32% defaults, see how your league bids, then tune from there. Leagues that want a lot of long-term commitment dial discounts up; leagues that want shorter deals dial them down or set them to 0%. The full reference, with every default, is in the contract league rules.
One special case worth knowing: the RFA auction is always a contract bidding draft, because RFA needs multi-year offers to make the right-to-match mechanic work. If your league runs RFA, you're running contract bidding for that auction whether or not you use it for the FA draft.
Contract bidding FAQ
What is a contract bidding draft?
How are bids of different contract lengths compared?
What do the multi-year discounts actually do?
What are the default discount percentages?
What happens to year 2-5 salaries?
Can I bid past my salary cap?
Do multi-year contracts use up contract slot allocations?
What is the difference between live and slow contract bidding?
How does proxy bidding work in slow contract bidding?
Is contract bidding required in contract leagues?
Why is the RFA auction always contract bidding?
Try contract bidding in your contract league
Contract bidding, salary caps, extensions, franchise tags, RFA tenders, and cap enforcement. All managed inside the platform with no spreadsheets.