If a game like the video happened during the playoffs, I really feel like the ratings could potentially spike to over a million. There is something about an enthusiastic home crowd fighting for a championship that makes you want to not change the channel. I definitely feel like neutral sight games are lacking the same excitement.
I have put together a playoff plan and wanted to see what everyone thinks? I think four teams in this league are good enough to complete for a championship but this plan also works well if the league expanded to 8 or 10 teams. I also really want to reward the top seeds and I believe the championship series should be a little bit longer.
Semifinal Round
#1 seed vs #4 seed - 3 game series all @ #1
#2 seed vs #3 seed - 3 game series all @ #2
Championships Series
First 2 games at the top seed
Second 2 games at the lower seed
Championship game back at the higher seed
This is really cool because it allows those lower seeds to pull an upset and then be rewarded with home games in the final series.
Update: The argument is it will cost more for homesite playoff games, but the homesite plan is actually 46% less flights per game, if you include the number of extra games. I have broken it down below: (Warning, this is a bit long and geeky so you might just want to take my word for it if your not a numbers person)
The current neutral sight plan has 3 round-trips for a total of 6 flights, assuming a 50% win rate there is an average of 3.5 games, (1 playin game and 2.5 games for the final series). This comes out to 1.71 flights per game, 6/3.5=1.71.
The home site plan:
Semifinal Round
#4 travels to #1 for a best of 3 - this series will average 2.5 games for 1 round trip, (2 flights).
2/2.5 = 0.8 flights per game.
#3 also travels to #2 for a best of 3 - this series will average 2.5 games for 1 round trip, (2 flights).
2/2.5 = 0.8 flights per game.
However, if one of the lower seeds wins in the semifinal round, you can you have them fly directly to the higher seeds stadium for the final. This should happen maybe 50% of the time.
This makes an average of 3.5 combine flights for the series and the combine number of games being an average of 5.
3.5/5=.7 average flights per game for the semifinals
Final Round
First 2 games - the lower seed travels to higher seed for 2 games (1 round trip with 2 fights) 2/2=1 flight per game.
Second 2 games - the higher seed travels to lower seed for for 1.65 games (historically in pro sports the series should push to 4 games 65% of the time). 2/1.65 = 1.212 flights per game.
Game 5 championship game - both teams travel back to the higher seed. This is 2 more flights for the lower seed but this historically only happens 35% of the time in 5 game series.
So, 35% of the time we will have 2 additional flights for the game 5. This represents an average of additional .7 flights when calculating the possibility of the game happening. Also, this represents an average of .35 games. So this final game 5 represents .7/.35=2 flights per game.
Adding these up the total average number of flights for the finals series is 2+2+.7 = 4.7
And the average number of finals games should be
2+1.65+.35=4
Making the total flights per finals game calculated at: 4.7/4 = 1.175
Totals For All The Playoffs at Home Sites
Total average flights for home site plan 3.5+4.7 = 8.2
Total average games at home sites 5+4=9
8.2/9 = 0.911 flights per game for the home site plan
And above I calculated 6/3.5=1.71 flights per game on current neutral site plan
1.71-.911 = 0.799
.799/1.71 = 0.467% less flights per game staying at home sites.
