I am curious how many active owners we have currently in MFN.

I currently run 4 private leagues and own teams in several other leagues. Several of the leagues are reaching minimal numbers and one league has stopped spinning.

Every league needs owners and knowing the amount of current active owners can go a long way in knowing how many leagues can be fully supported. The league matchmaking forum is a constant struggle to recruit a finate number of owners.

In addition, what steps are being taken to advertise for new owners? Is there anyway owners can assist in recruiting? An influx of new owners would not only help the game as a whole but help fill the leagues that are starving for owners.

In closing, I would seriously consider creating an app version of the game for smartphones where we owners can rate and boost the games visibility in a world where more people have smartphones then personal computers.

Unfortunately, in the past few sim cycles I've noticed Private Leagues which weren't at a threat level for being under the required # get hit as you've mentioned.

There needs to be a re-sparking to get once passionate owners passionate again for the game.

The biggest problem I have as a league owner is that I keep getting Noobies wanting to join, I have no problem with that, but I've been bitten in the past with people just wanting to wreck a team then leave. So alot of the time I don't let them in, if I did and they were OK I would have full leagues. Unfortunately if you're a well known player then you are more likely to get it, its sad that it is this way, but still miles better than having half a dozen ruined teams and the league folding which I've seen.

you just lost another

Players come and go. You can't force people to stay.

So focus is on how you spread the word to more people.

You can not run them off.

Well, you wouldn't want to admit an owner who deliberatley trashes a team willfully, as opposed to mere incompetnce. Like inviting a well-known loot ninja to your group in WoW, you just don't do that.

Let's just ask punisher. He probably has some sort of advanced database on it. He's EVERYWHERE at once.

Should be relatively easy to run a quick query:
Owners active in the past 7 days where they currently have a team in an active league
Unique owners active with the same criteria
Owners not seen in 8+ days where they currently have an active team

Even if that data is not publicly shared it would serve as a decent healthcheck for game activity.

I would like to offer a commissioner's perspective. For commissioners of user-created leagues, keeping a league full has become nearly impossible.

* The only way to prevent an AI-crippled franchise is to take it over yourself. You can almost manage this until you have five or six empty teams. At that point, most commissioners give up and feed those empty teams to the AI wolves.
* Vetting potential new coaches is ideal, but almost impractical because you might not get another applicant.
* There is a glut of user-created leagues, way out of proportion with the number of MFN coaches, and thus more competition among the commissioners for the few available coaches.
* Most of the experienced, dependable coaches are already running more teams than they wish to be.
* No matter how good of an experience and what degree of immersion you offer the coaches in your league, some won't want to stay and build a team because there are plenty of playoff-caliber teams sitting empty out there. It's easier to just cherry-pick one of them.

My league, the USFL/WFL has been full for 11 seasons. I have been fortunate to have a core group of 13 coaches who have stuck with the league since Day One. But, barring a marketing initiative that brings in more coaches, I am afraid operating with uncoached, AI-ruined teams is going to be the norm across all user-created leagues.

I wish I could offer a solution for marketing MFN. It is such a niche product that zeroing in on a target audience would require some study. Maybe I will just start another thread about marketing.