Ultimately, as much as I love the execution and quality of Dotts in many ways, I do not believe that Dotts will work as an effective solution to the problem it was intended for. The issue that Dotts targets is that players often settle for small team-friendly contracts rather than test free agency, which reduces league competitive equity as well as the excitement of the free agency period. While it would seem that taking money out of the system would be an effective way to increase the value of team contracts, I believe there are several limitations to this implementation:
1. It is a product that appeals primarily to heavily-entrenched users who already have lots of money and therefore little need of larger contracts.
2. It is lower on users' hierarchy of needs than equipment or weekly training, so users will first make sure they can afford these necessities before spending excess money on Dotts packs.
3. The packs are too expensive in relation to contract salaries. Players seeking competitive market-rate contracts compared to team-friendly ones will probably see an increase of perhaps $2-3M per season on average. This is not enough to maintain a full subscription to Dotts service (which costs $3.5M a week), or even 1 pack a week for the entire season + offseason. Meanwhile, a single media piece of moderate length is a comparable amount of payment to this salary increase, and arguably less time-intensive than negotiating new contracts and talking with other teams. That $2-3M number is arguable, but even if it is larger for some users once again those users are likely high earners already and have the money to spare.
In my eyes, the main issue that prevents a more exciting free agency process is that players' and teams' interests are too closely aligned. Users get invested in their team and want them to win, and seeing their team have more success because they take a smaller contract is often worth more to them than the few millions of dollars per season they could get if they took a market-rate contract. In my mind, particularly because of point #2 above, Dotts will not do enough to change the incentive structure to create the desired environment. A real solution will need to give players real incentives to accrue contract money even if it means their team might perform worse, and to make it worthwhile to leave a team they are personally invested in.
1. It is a product that appeals primarily to heavily-entrenched users who already have lots of money and therefore little need of larger contracts.
2. It is lower on users' hierarchy of needs than equipment or weekly training, so users will first make sure they can afford these necessities before spending excess money on Dotts packs.
3. The packs are too expensive in relation to contract salaries. Players seeking competitive market-rate contracts compared to team-friendly ones will probably see an increase of perhaps $2-3M per season on average. This is not enough to maintain a full subscription to Dotts service (which costs $3.5M a week), or even 1 pack a week for the entire season + offseason. Meanwhile, a single media piece of moderate length is a comparable amount of payment to this salary increase, and arguably less time-intensive than negotiating new contracts and talking with other teams. That $2-3M number is arguable, but even if it is larger for some users once again those users are likely high earners already and have the money to spare.
In my eyes, the main issue that prevents a more exciting free agency process is that players' and teams' interests are too closely aligned. Users get invested in their team and want them to win, and seeing their team have more success because they take a smaller contract is often worth more to them than the few millions of dollars per season they could get if they took a market-rate contract. In my mind, particularly because of point #2 above, Dotts will not do enough to change the incentive structure to create the desired environment. A real solution will need to give players real incentives to accrue contract money even if it means their team might perform worse, and to make it worthwhile to leave a team they are personally invested in.