BuzzerBeater Forums

The one concern I would have is that if two teams from each series promote to the next level, 8 teams will have to demote from the leagues above to balance that out. Part of the fun of the game for me is developing long-term rivalries inside leagues and with 10 of 16 teams being replaced each season (two promotions, 8 demotions), it'd be much harder to see those rivalries form.

One alternative might be to extend the offseason by a week (starting the tournament a week earlier so that the All-Star game might also no longer be needed), and have the top team in each league that didn't promote (either by regular season record or the team that lost in the finals) play a 3-game series against a relegation series winner in the higher division, with the winner being in the higher league and the loser in the lower league. It would allow some more movement, and make the consequences of falling to sixth still matter if (as in our series) the bottom three teams on one side are either tanking or a bot/replaced by a new team.

The whole idea with my suggestion is to not change how many teams that relegate. It would still be four teams relegating from higher division. The difference would be a factor of 2 leagues per division instead of 4 as it is now. Now it is 1 division I, 4 division II, 16 division III and 64 division IV. My suggestion would change it to 1 division I, 2 division II, 4 division III, 8 division IV, 16 division V and 32 division VI. It would be some divisions more in each country but instead these divisions would have more equal teams than are the case today. In Sweden already the second division has a very huge difference in quality between top, middle and bottom, which is not strange as there are barely any teams left in division III nowadays.

How to solve such short term problems are certainly something that is solvable. One alternative is to have same income in the two level lower division after it is implemented. To improve the fun in the games for users surely must be worth such short-term problem. You have a similar situation when teams gets relegated today.

Short term a new league system might lose a few users but on long-term I think that it is of high value to keep BB alive.