Forum thread

The European League of Football 2024 prediction game is over.

One of these very rare situations where the Classic gold was decided by the tie-breaker. After a season-long comp and with quite a wide points scale for am.football (as compared to 0-6pts ftbll scale) Lukas and myself still finished even on points!

I personally think Lukas deserved the win more as he had 2 more correct outcome predictions than I did but rules are rules. The trick here was that many EFL games end up with much higher pts differents that one might prectict pre-game based theoretically on team strengths. Apparently this tiny observation proved enough for me to make up for this 2 correct outcome deficit (so 150pts max difference) in the course of the entire season. Or maybe no rule here, just a pure coincidence and luck? Not sure :)

thx for a great competition and see you next year! I think ELF is getting more and more interest these days, I could even see live tv broadcasts of it on one of my sports channels. Personally, I enjoy predicting this comp more than NFL. Still I find am/football much less enjoyable than rugby :)

Still I find am/football much less enjoyable than rugby :)
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New Zealand rugby is certainly the very famous tournament in narrow circles.

But there is also such little-known sport like Ice Hockey which is almost absent here.

It's a German site - will Deutsche Eishockey Liga be interesting to anyone (or Svenska HL, SM-liiga, Česká extraliga, Schweizer NL, Österreichischen EL)?

Michał, would you really refused to play 'Polska Hokej Liga' in favour of an ordinary rugby tournament? ))

Bad example. Polish hockey league really sucks...

Being a big ice hockey fan i wouldnt say no to SWE, FIN and CZE leagues though.

Speaking of Polish leagues. I'd really enjoy Speedway (best in the world; and we have no speedway league on here) and Volleyball (2nd after ITA but maybe joint 1st?). But at the same time I understand that these two may not be interesting to most people.

From among other leagues, I'd say German handball and Spanish basketball could attract some interest. I'd say introduction of the German chess Bundesliga set very open standards! :)))

And the one missing big time for any Polish fan is SKIJUMPING World Cup. :))) Tracking skijumpers for a given event might be an issue but a top-10 country-list selections (like in athletics) might potentially work, too. There is a very limited and defined number of countries taking part.

Swiss National League would be great. The highest average attendance in Europe!

The excellent choice! - Genève-Servette HC is the Champion of Europe.
The path to the Great Hockey begins here!

Then, Michał, let's replace Polska Hokej Liga by Swiss NL in my previous message.

Switzerland has made a huge progress in hockey at all levels with the likes of Josi, Hischier (no.1 drft pick in 2017), Fiala and Meier onboard but I am a Man of Old and have a narrow-minded approach. For me the hockey world is limited to Canada, USA, USSR, Czechoslovakia, Sweden and Finland :) Still paying the price for it in the Champions League as I tend to underestimate teams from SUI and GER vs teams from CZE, FIN, SWE, often to my detriment.

I won't.
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And what about making a poll to figure out how many players are ready to take part in some ice hockey contests?

You can include all leading European leagues in it - SWE, FIN, CZE, SUI, GER, AUT (I would also add FRA, GBR, DEN, NOR, SVK, POL).

And let players vote for ALL leagues they are ready to play if a contest would be created.

(I would play in all the above 12 contests :) )

You can also pre-determine the number of votes sufficient for making a contest (taking into account that usually much more people play than take part in polls).

From among other leagues, I'd say German handball and Spanish basketball could attract some interest.
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Make a poll (as I have described for ice hockey earlier) and you'll know it.

My guess is that results of the poll would not be representative at all. I'd expect max 15-20 people voting, half of them if not more eventually not enrolling for such a comp

I'd expect max 15-20 people voting, half of them if not more eventually not enrolling for such a comp
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Why not to verify your prediction?
Do you believe that you're never wrong?

I do

And seriously, I'd prefer not to do any polls before a directional decision on further expansions is taken (eg. yes, we expand hockey now let's vote which league etc.) . Otherwise we might be giving false hope to some die-hard fans of a given sport discipline only to disappoint them at the end of the day.

I'd prefer not to do any polls before a directional decision on further expansions is taken
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Does it mean that 'a directional decision' and players wishes have no connection to each other?

Does 'a directional decision' come from nowhere (bypassing the discussion forum)?

What is a decision-making mechanism? Could you describe it in general?

Thank you for your questions :) What I mean is that polls are generally important or even critical and are connected to directional decisions but once you have passed certain volume (and we have passed it by far) where pretty much all sports disciplines are represented or even overrepresented on here and each new addition is practically guaranteed not to attract more than 25-30 active players max, polls start to lose their purpose and it's more up to the site owner to decide in what direction to expand if at all.

Polls will be used from time to time to help taking decisions, that's for sure. But if polls were decisive, we would never cover Chess Bundesliga (or any chess comp:)

And to put it simple as regards the decision process, the number of comps is so overwhelming already now that I wouldn't dare to set up a poll without knowing if Klaus thinks of any expansions at all and if so, in what direction. For me personally, we should focus on what we have now rather than to expand with anything unless there's some real jewel that we find (and Spanish basketball or Swiss hockey do not rather belong to this category) :) And if we were to expand, I'd value more DIVERSITY and NOVELTY rather than quantity. As an example, I think Futsal World Cup was a great addition. I don't think it would have ever been added, had we asked people if they preferred Futsal or League Two England.

I'm just saying that ice hockey (and basketball) contests take up non-proportional little space in our contest system (and it's amazing).

There are only 2 long contests in ice hockey - CHL and NHL.

There are only 3 long contests in basketball - Euroleague, NBA and NCAAB.

NCAAB - I won the last two contests - but it had only 18 constant participants last season (and the only 1 non-European).
I think any of top European basketball leagues (ESP, GER, ITA, FRA, GRE, TUR) will go over this mark.

Agree,
College basketball might be easily replaced by Spanish league.

But to be completely honest with you, I am a big fan of hockey as you know and like basketball too but - if it is any indication - I find predicting hockey and basketball comps season-long relatively boring, unlike European League of Football for instance. Not sure why it is so but there's a good chance many people would then find it equally boring, too.

The more comps there are, the more I think we should focus on quick ones (tournaments-type) rather than season long leagues. Still with a couple of clear exceptions: Polish volleyball league, Polish speedway league :))

A possible compromise could be to consistently pick one top domestic league for each discipline, like volleyball (Italy - we cover this one already), handball - Germany, basketball - Spain, speedway - Poland etc. But I wouldn't mind if we just stick to what we have now.

A possible compromise could be to consistently pick one top domestic league for each discipline
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Good!

And what about the one more possible compromise - to hear the opinion of potential participants?

I'm afraid 'potential' is the keyword here :)