Running a live auction

This is the main event. The auctioneer drives the auction from a laptop, the team owners bid from their phones, and the audience watches a TV or projector. Everything stays in sync automatically.

Before you start — quick checklist

Run through this 30 minutes before your auction begins:

Your tournament has an active season
All teams are added with their budgets
All players are added (and the ones you want to auction are in queue status)
The auctioneer's laptop is on the same Wi-Fi as the team owners' phones
The big-screen TV / projector is showing the Big screen page in fullscreen mode
Each team owner either has the bidding link OR is logged in to their team account on their phone

If any of those isn't ready, fix it now — it'll save you scrambling later.

The control panel

Click Live auction in the sidebar. You'll see three columns:

Left column — Player queue. Every player in your active season, filterable by status (queue, sold, unsold). Click a player to load them as the current player — the one teams are about to bid on.

Middle column — Current player. The player's photo, name, position, base price, and other details are shown big at the top. Below: the current bid amount, the timer, the action buttons (Start, Pause, Sold, Unsold, Reset), and a list of recent bids.

Right column — Team budgets. Every team's remaining money, with a bar showing how much they've spent. Click a team to expand quick-bid buttons — useful when someone in the room shouts a bid and you want to record it for them.

Running a single lot — step by step

Pick a player from the left queue. Their card loads in the middle.
Pick a duration — 30, 60, 90, or 120 seconds — from the Next Player dropdown
Click Start — the timer counts down, the bidding window is open
As bids come in from the team phones, the Current bid number updates in real time and the leading team's name appears
If a bid lands in the last 10 seconds, the timer automatically extends to 10 seconds. This stops last-second sniping — everyone gets a fair counter-bid window
If you need to give the room more time, click +10s, +30s, or +60s — or type any number of seconds in the custom box
When the timer hits zero:
- With auto-finalize on (default): the player is automatically marked sold to the leading team, or unsold if no one bid
- With auto-finalize off: the lot stays open until you click Sold or Unsold yourself

That's one lot. Then click the next player and repeat.

Keyboard shortcuts (auctioneer's friend)

When you're not typing in a text box, these shortcuts work:

Key	What it does
Space	Start, pause, or resume the timer
S	Sold
U	Unsold
R	Reset (clear bids, return to queue)

The keyboard is faster than the mouse during a busy auction.

What everyone else sees

Big screen (open at auctionball.com/dashboard/bigscreen): a cinematic view with huge fonts — perfect for projecting onto the venue wall. Player photo, current bid, timer, leading team, recent bids, all team budgets at the bottom.
Rosters page: every team's roster with the players they've bought. Auto-refreshes when new players are sold. Great to keep open on a second TV for the audience to track team rosters.

"I made a mistake" — undoing things

I sold the wrong player / to the wrong team. Find the player in the left queue. Click Reset in the action buttons. The bids are cleared, the team's budget is restored, and the player goes back to the queue. Then re-auction them.

I clicked Pause but actually want to resume. Click Resume — the timer picks up where it left off, with the same number of seconds remaining.

I want to skip a player and come back later. Click any other player in the queue. The current one stays in idle status with no bids on them. You can come back and click them again any time.

Next: The big-screen view →