Conclusions from the League balancing poll

26-06-2017 18:00
As you probably remember, a poll was announced two weeks back where we asked you to help us decide about league balancing in the active part of the league (read the announcement here if you are unsure what balancing means). More than 1200 Managers cast their votes in the poll and many voiced their opinions in forums across all languages.

After due consideration, we have decided to go with option B.

Option B. Division movers are rebalanced
Teams that are moving to another division via promotion or relegation will be shuffled.

Teams that stay in a division will continue in the same league groups as before.


This ensures that leagues stay balanced, while managers who stay in a division for more than one season will have a chance to get familiar with other managers.


Example


To make it as clear as possible, let's have a look at a group in the Argentinean 2nd division and go through the various possible promotion/relegation scenarios.



A - The winner is promoted to a random division 1 league group.
B - If these teams win their playoffs, they are promoted to a random division 1 league group. If they don't win, they stay in division 2.1.
C - These teams stay in division 2.1.
D - If these teams win their playoffs, they stay in division 2.1. If they don't win, they are moved down to a random division 3 league group.
E - These teams are moved down to a random division 3 league group.

Also note that when the balancing occurs, all promoted and relegated teams are seeded (based on their league results) and spread out across the league groups. See this article for more information.


Poll results and forum insights helped us make this decision


Option A was the runaway winner in terms of votes in the poll, but among our regular forum posters options B, C and D were more popular, while advocates for option A were few and far between. This convinced us that B, C and D has to be seen as a unit, as expressed in the announcement article:

Be aware that we regard options B, C and D as similar to each other, and option A as more of a standalone option. Therefore, even if option A turns out to be the most selected, we may still weigh it against the other three as a unit.

A comparison between option A on the one hand and the other three options on the other, gives the following result:

597 in total for option A (503 in football, 94 in Hockey)
622 in total for options B, C and D (533 in football, 89 in Hockey)

Not a landslide by any means, but a slight majority for a more community-oriented league balancing structure. Out of the three alternatives in that group, option B was far more popular than the other two. It is also the most similar to option A, which makes it the most suitable compromise out of the bunch.


When will this be implemented?


As soon as possible, which means during the upcoming season break, ahead of next season! In the future we'll always do this between seasons to keep our league system fresh and balanced.

Besides balancing, we will also do compacting every season from now on. The goal of compacting is to ensure that all active teams are promoted as high as possible, as well as create space for new teams to join the game a bit higher up in the league system by dropping inactive and bankrupt teams to the bottom.