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Can someone tell me how promotion works for the next best placed team? It is all the division winners that promote, then the next best teams. Is that teams that playing in the Playoff final and didn't win, or just the next best win/loss record regardless of the finishing position. For example, does a team that finished second in the Big 8 or Great 8, promote because they had a better record than the runner up?

Can someone tell me how promotion works for the next best placed team? It is all the division winners that promote, then the next best teams. Is that teams that playing in the Playoff final and didn't win, or just the next best win/loss record regardless of the finishing position. For example, does a team that finished second in the Big 8 or Great 8, promote because they had a better record than the runner up?

Hey there, Moose_77.

Others might correct me, however, I believe it works like this:

If you have the best win-loss record across all of your level DIVISIONS and don't promote by winning the league, then you will promote. I am very sure, unless it has changed, that you have to have the best win/loss record across all divisions the same level as yours, not just your division.

In other words, you are currently in Div II. Therefore, if you do not promote by winning the championship, the only other way to promote is by having the best win/loss record of ALL Div IIs. (all four of them...II.1, II.2, II.3 and II.4)

I recall back in season 50-something, I had the best win/loss record of DIv II but Bryce's WA IS A DUMP won the title, yet I still promoted to the ABBL because I had the highest win/loss record across all Div IIs who didn't win the championship.

Hope this helps...and hopefulkly things haven't changed. I have been away fro a few seasons.

Last edited by MrJ at 2/19/2025 3:46:16 AM

Also, although you probably know this part, you get the same promotion benefits as if you had won the championship. The only thing different is you don't get the trophy.

Hey, this is definitely how that works, since this worked for me 2 seasons ago. Just an addition, which was not explicitly mentioned: Different amount of teams promote to different divisions. So in normal national divisions there will always be 5 teams demoted from the first division, while 4 teams will be promoted by winning their respective leagues in the second division. So only the best team across the second divisions regarding win/loss ratio (then point difference and so on), which did not win the league will be promoted. By promotion from the third to second divisions the best 4 teams get this chance. Sometimes it really helps to keep this in mind, check how other leagues in your division are looking like and then adjusting your tactics for the last games before the play-offs accordingly.

Hey, this is definitely how that works, since this worked for me 2 seasons ago. Just an addition, which was not explicitly mentioned: Different amount of teams promote to different divisions. So in normal national divisions there will always be 5 teams demoted from the first division, while 4 teams will be promoted by winning their respective leagues in the second division. So only the best team across the second divisions regarding win/loss ratio (then point difference and so on), which did not win the league will be promoted. By promotion from the third to second divisions the best 4 teams get this chance. Sometimes it really helps to keep this in mind, check how other leagues in your division are looking like and then adjusting your tactics for the last games before the play-offs accordingly.

Nicely added, my friend :-)

I agree...and I keeping an eye on this is definitely good advice.

The playoff winner of each league promotes (for national leagues, this will fill 80% of the promotion spots -- there are 4 leagues in a lower level for each 1 league in a higher level, and that 1 higher level league demotes 5 teams. For Utopia, there are 6 demotees per league, so for Utopia divisions 2 and 3 promoting up, 67% of promotion spots are full, while Utopia division 4 has 6 leagues per league in the higher level and thus fills 100% of promotion spots with champion promotions).

The remaining promotion spots are filled via the auto-promotion list. This list is ordered by:
1. Regular season conference rank (ALL teams who finished first in their conference come before any teams who finished second in their conference, regardless of comparative record)
2. Regular season wins
3. Regular season point differential

Teams who win champion promotion are not included in the auto-promotion list.

After standard promotion/relegation runs, any bot teams who are not now in the lowest possible division level for their country will be demoted as many times as necessary to reach that division (for countries like the US where there are human managers in divisions I through IV, but all bots in division V, the bot cleanup only tries to demote bots to division IV, the last division with human managers in it). Promoting teams are drawn from the auto-promotion list to replace these bots as they relegate.

Thanks for the additional clarification!

With all being clarified here I have 1 question which is quite specific for my case.
Speaking in pure theoretics (i want that cup in my profile)

We in SVK have only 2 half populated 3 div leagues.
I'm now on a way to 22-0/21-1 season. So if I dropped the ball in quarterfinals for some reason. Would I still get promoted? I won't win league, but I'll be in 1-3rd place of not winners across all leagues in 3rd division

Last edited by Merimen at 2/19/2025 8:55:36 AM

Looking at your position and assuming you make a 22-0/21-1 season, we could easily say that Slovensko III.16 teams will not be able to compete against you for the auto-promotion spots and following the logic put forward by Azariah you should be able to promote anyway in the case you wont get the trophy. At least that is how I would interpret it.

New users are also being put in III.16, so the champion from there will probably be human.

Assuming that, then there will be 4 auto promotion spots and 13 bot promotion spots (for the bot champions of III.3 - III.15) into div 2. I'm not 100% sure in these edge cases of very high bot populations, but my expectation would be that bot cleanup would go through as many human managers who were in III during the season as possible, and then would start "re-promoting" teams that relegated from II if necessary. Please don't treat this as official confirmation though, I'm speculating, and I'm not really sure how it would handle choosing between teams that "would have relegated" out of III if you had a lower league vs teams that did relegate out of II when choosing order for the bot cleanup.

That said, as long as you win your conference's regular season, you'll definitely promote regardless of the playoff result, unless there is a huge wave of new SVK users between now and the end of the season such that it fills up d.III

Thanks. That is how I read it as well. You don't even need to make the final as long as you have the best win/loss record across all the division leagues.