Daily Fantasy Sports: A Quick Fix to Sports Betting

Daily Fantasy Sports is a competitive short-term fantasy sports game industry played between a group of people who each pick a roster of players, and earn points based on those players’ statistics. Though tens of millions of users play fantasy sports for a variety of sports leagues, football and the NFL season are especially popular. Daily fantasy sports, however, condense season-long fantasy games into as short as a week or a day. While season-long games are often limited to a group of up to twelve people, daily fantasy sports have no member limits, and any user can be competing against upwards of hundreds of thousands of players at once. The daily fantasy sports industry has been dominated by two companies: DraftKings, created in 2009, and FanDuel, created in 2011, together account for more than 90% of the market share. The two companies plan to merge in 2017, and the industry is worth more than $3 billion a year.

How to Play

Though there are variations of daily fantasy sports, the majority of platforms follow the same procedure. First, users select a sport and a specific contest to enter. Entrance fees for contests vary from free to $10,000. From there, the user is given a salary cap, meaning the maximum amount of “dollars” they may use to develop a team roster, and the user must then construct his or her team. Finally, during the real games, users will see how their own team performs against others, using the results of actual sports games and the statistics of the actual athletes. Depending on the success of the user’s team, he or she may win a cash prize.

Types of Daily Fantasy Sports Contests

There are four general contest types:

• Guaranteed Prize Pools (Big Tournaments): Users pay an entrance fee to compete for a shared prize pool. Regardless of the number of users who enter, the game will continue.
• 50/50 (Double Up games): The top 50% of users receive double their investment whereas the bottom 50% receives noting.
• 3x, 4x, 5x Contests: With the same concept as Double Up games, 3x, 4x or 5x contests return greater investment for the smaller top percentage of players. For example, in a 3x game, the top third field of players receive three times their investment back.
• Beginners Games: Created for amateurs and new users, beginner games restrict their players to similarly new users and offer a higher salary cap. Different sites offer different types of beginner games.
• Cash Games: Users set up their own contest guidelines, including creating their own leagues or joining an existing one, and the best-performing team wins prizes. Depending on the number of users who enter, the game may or may not continue.
• Head-to-Head: Two players play against each other and the winner receives the entire prize pool.
• Leagues/Tournaments: Similar to a large poker tournament, players are compensated in accordance to their success within the specific tournament.

There are many other variants of contest types, including ones where there are no salary caps, or ones that are more based in betting on certain players. However, regardless, daily fantasy sports will most always be based on real player statistics.

Selecting a Team

The most important aspect of finding successful in daily fantasy sports is to select a high performing team. On each daily fantasy sports site, there will be a list of players as well as their price tag, or salary indication, Not only does each sport having different statistics that a user should consider and research, but different daily fantasy sports sites may also score points differently. Therefore, before new users begin a game, they should research the guidelines, regulations, and procedures for the site they would like to use.

Works Consulted

"Contests – Leagues – Tournaments and Fantasy Games." Daily Fantasy Sports 101. Daily Fantasy Sports 101, n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2017.

"Daily Fantasy Sports Sites." Legal Sports Report. Legal Sports Report, n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2017.

Newman, Nico. "History of Fantasy Sports." Fantasy-Sport.net. Fantasy-Sport, 12 May 2016.

Web. 24 Jan. 2017.

By Kelly Gould.