I've been thinking... As a way to discourage tanking would it be worth adding prize money for league standings at the end of the season? Say the two 1st seed teams receive 250k, 2nd seeds 200k and so on until the bottom teams get 0.
I think the profit you get from a MVP/HoF isn't too bad. Might not necessarily be 250k , but it should still be better than than the prize money for at least third place, so there will still be rewards for tanking if it isn't high enough. That said, bump it even higher, it might cause an imbalance in income for teams which don't plan on tanking but are just not good enough to compete.
The way to discourage tanking for the draft pick (or merely tanking) is to scrap the current fan boycott system and introduce one based on point differential. If conditions are right, you can still tank for No. 1 pick without boycott in any part of the season, which is the real problem here.
Kinda agree here. As someone who's been tanking eternally against bots (sorry, I have a micronation so that's the only way to prevent our MVP/HoFs from dropping into the hands of bots) I generally get 3 wins a season except on seasons where I don't have enough scouting points to invest in the draft. There is still a financial hit tho, due to my league being almost all bots (hence the TV contract is so low) and due to the losses I rack up, my merchandising and tickets are low (I earn about 70k per week now, and it's shrinking due to my ever increasing staff salaries) so tanking is not all a bed of roses.
As for people tanking to finish 5th, that seems very counter-intuitive as it's more than possible that this way they would be paying their salaries one week more than the 4th seed that gets bounced in the first PO round. I don't think any measures to discourage such behavior are necessary, apart from maybe informing people they are shooting themselves in the foot financially that way.
Yes, I agree with this. In fact the current system was implemented to discourage people to tank for 5th. I can still remember in the early days when I would lose my last couple of games if I feel I don't have any chance to progress in the playoffs so I can save up on salary since the fifth place didn't have any games. I don't think that's a smart choice anymore now.