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Postseason and Playoffs Operations

The goal in Franchise Ball is to have a winning team of course. Winning enough games in a season to clinch your division, and advance to the post season, and hopefully advance through the playoffs to a World Championship. The sections below detail how the playoff elimination process operates.

There are 3 playoff phases in the post-season : League & Wildcard playoff games (21st - 23rd of month), World playoffs (starts on 24th, spanning up to 3 days as needed), and the World Series (spans 2 days, depending on how many games are needed).

League playoffs are 3 rounds, best of 3 games series. League champions advance to the world playoffs. Wildcard playoff games are single elimination. The remaining teams after a max of 9 rounds advance to the world playoffs. The world playoffs are single elimination as well, and keep going until 2 teams remain. The final 2 teams advance to the monthly Franchise Ball world series. The world series is a 5 game series that spans 1 or 2 days.

There are 6 teams per division (max), and 8 divisions (48 teams) in each league ultimately. Although, not every league will have exactly 48 teams. In fact, there will always be one league (the newest one) that doesn't have 8 divisions, because a new league is always being formed by the creation of new franchises.

Each season spans the first 20 days of each month. After this duration, 8 division champions, and 16 wildcard teams from each league will move on to the playoffs. The 8 division champions advance to an 8 team league playoff bracket where a best of 3 game series occurs over the next 3 days. Ties used to force a playoff, but after our playoff format upgrade in October 2020, any ties for first place are now broken by runs +/-, and then total runs scored. This applies to all division and wildcard races. Subscribers in the top 40% of all non-division and non-wildcard teams will advance to the wildcard playoffs as well.


League Playoffs :

The league playoffs span 3 days and occur on the 21st - 23rd. Each day is a new 3 game series round. The teams are seeded in a 8 team bracket : 1st seed plays 8th, 2nd plays 7th, 3rd plays 6th, 4th plays 5th, with the higher seeds getting home field advantage. The higher seed of each matchup gets the first and potential 3rd game home field. Note, in the less common occurrence where there aren't enough teams in a league upon the end of a season to crown 8 division champions, wildcard teams are used to fill all 8 division seeds for league playoffs, and that league will not have any league wildcard teams otherwise.

Wildcard Playoffs :

The wildcard playoffs occur in conjunction with the league playoffs, spanning 3 days over the 21st - 23rd. Each game is single elimination, just like the world playoffs. The process of elimination essentially operates the same as the world playoffs. Just as world playoff games are seeded, teams are matched by their world rank. Highest seed plays lowest, next highest plays next lowest, etc (see World Playoffs below for more information on this process). There is a max of 9 rounds (3 days / 3 games per day). If there are enough teams in the game, all 9 rounds may be needed. If there aren't multiple teams remaining after all 9 potential rounds, just one team will advance to the world playoffs.

World Playoffs :

The World Playoffs is the final postseason phase that determines who will play for the World Championship, the Franchise Ball World Series. All games are sudden death. The world playoffs start on the 24th of the month, and last until 2 teams remain. After 2 top teams have been determined, the world series is scheduled and begins on the following day. Below details how the process of elimination operates in the world playoffs :

To gracefully eliminate an odd number of teams of any value that is not a power of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, etc), Franchise Ball grants random Byes for each round of world playoffs play. For example, if there are 17 leagues, we need to determine 2 teams out of 23.

For 23 team league champions, the process would operate as follows :

  • Round 1 : 23 is an odd number, so the highest ranked team that hasn't had a bye gets the first bye. 22 / 2 = 11, so 11 games are played with 11 teams eliminated.
  • Round 2 : 11 teams won and advanced the last round, and we have our bye team too. 11 + 1 = 12 teams remain. This is an even number so we schedule 12 / 2 = 6 games.
  • Round 3 : 6 teams won and advanced, so 6 teams remain. This is an even number so we schedule 6 / 2 = 3 games
  • Round 4 : 3 teams won and advanced. This is an odd number so we need to schedule a bye. 3 teams remain, with one bye team, so we schedule one game with the highest ranked team remaining getting the last bye. The winner of this game + the bye team will advance to the World Series.

We now have 2 teams remaining. These 2 teams will play the next day in a 3 game series to determine the Franchise Ball world champion.

World Series :

The Franchise Ball monthly world series is the big event, the big show! Its by far the biggest event of the season, and tends to get a lot of commenting spectators. This 5 game series hosts the top 2 teams in the game after all world playoff results have been determined. The series starts the day after the world playoffs is completed. All 5 games are scheduled upon world playoff completion, 3 games for the first day, and a potential game 4 and 5 the following day. The winner is crowned the Franchise Ball champion! This is of course the ultimate goal of every franchise. Much game currency earnings and notoriety tend to follow!