An auction turns team selection into the evening everyone remembers. Owners build their squads in public, with a budget, against each other — and nobody can say the teams were picked by a friend of the organizer. This is how to run one for a local tournament, from the first registration to the morning after.
Three weeks out: open registration
Decide the basics first: how many teams, how many players each, and the dates. Then open registration with one link and share it wherever your players already are — usually a WhatsApp group. Ask for the playing role and the batting and bowling style; that is what owners will bid on. The registration form template lists the exact questions.
- Approve players as they register, so the pool you auction is the pool you have checked.
- Collect the entry fee before the auction, and mark each player paid, pending or waived.
- Close registration a few days before the night, so owners can study the pool.
Two weeks out: owners, purses and rules
Pick one owner per team and agree the rules in writing before anyone sees a bid: the purse per team, the minimum and maximum squad, base prices, and whether captains or icon players are placed before the auction. Work the numbers out with the purse calculator — the reserve rule means an owner's biggest first bid is less than the whole purse.
On DesiAuction the auction's configuration is set once, when you create it, and then locked, so the rules cannot drift on the night. Send each owner their invitation link yourself; once they accept, grant them a paddle so they can bid.
The night
- Put the auction board on a projector or TV: the player on the block, the current price, and every team's purse and squad.
- The auctioneer calls each player; owners bid from their own phones, and every screen shows the same bid at the same moment.
- A bid over a team's purse, below the base price or off the increment is refused, so nobody has to argue about it.
- A player nobody bids on passes for now and can come back in a later round.
After the gavel
Each team's squad has its own page to share, what every team owes is worked out from its buys, and the night can be replayed lot by lot. Publish the fixtures and the points table follows every result. The help guides for auction night explain each step in the product.