Draft.com Review (CLOSED)

Draft.com review update: In December 2019, DRAFT announced it would stop hosting fantasy contests at the end of the year in order to merge into the FanDuel daily fantasy sports platform.

Existing DRAFT customers were able to transfer their account balances to FanDuel (and claim a 10% transfer bonus while doing so) to stay in the action.

The former DRAFT team launched Underdog Fantasy, which is now one of the nation’s most prominent fantasy pick ’em apps.

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Draft.com was a daily fantasy sports site that broke from industry trends by dropping the salary cap model in favor of a more traditional snake-draft style picking system. Rather than working with a virtual salary and drafting a team based on player costs, you and your opponents took turns picking players for your teams.

In this way, DRAFT resembled traditional season-long leagues that were popular before the advent of modern daily fantasy sites. However, DRAFT retained daily fantasy elements by allowing players to build new teams each week. The end result was a fantasy platform that took the best from season-long fantasy games and daily fantasy games and wrapped them all into one product.

DRAFT.com Company Background

We first became aware of DRAFT when it launched as a mobile-only offering under the name PlayDraft.com. We didn’t hear much from the people at DRAFT for several years afterwards, but then the company hit our radar again in 2017 when it was announced that international gaming giant Paddy Power Betfair had acquired PlayDraft. It was around this time that the company also moved from the original PlayDraft.com domain to DRAFT.com.

DRAFT CEO Jeremy Levine reported at the time that the acquisition of DRAFT by Paddy Power Betfair allowed the company to increase its marketing spend by as much as 100x compared to the previous year. What was once a relatively small player in the DFS game was given a chance to become a serious contender in the compeititive DFS industry.

Nonetheless, DRAFT remained a smaller daily fantasy site with most contests involving 2-10 players. A few of the larger contests attracted several hundred players, while the largest season-long head-to-head tournaments had room for 2,000+ entrants. Overall, DRAFT was much smaller than the likes of FanDuel and DraftKings with their biggest contests involving hundreds of thousands of entries.

DRAFT Contest Types

The majority of the contests hosted at DRAFT used a snake-style system in which you and your opponents took turns drafting players for your teams. Once an athlete has been picked, he was removed from the pool and no one else could select the same athlete.

The first pick advantage alternated between each contestant each round. If you picked first in the first round of a head-to-head contest, for example, your opponent would get to pick first in the second round.

Players also had the option to create a queue of preferred athletes and rank others according to their own preferences. This was a useful option because it protected you in case something prevented you from making a pick within the 30-second time limit for each drafting round.

If you were away from the computer or phone when a contest began, DRAFT used your queue to make picks for you. If you didn’t have a queue, DRAFT looked for your own rankings and tried to pick the athlete you had ranked the highest for that position. If you had neither a queue nor ranked athletes, the system auto-drafted the player with the highest projected point total for that position.

Not all contests followed this exact format, but that was the basic idea behind DRAFT. Here’s how each of the contest types worked.

Head-to-head contest pitted you against a single opponent with a snake-style draft. You each took turns picking first as the draft rounds progressed until each of you had a full team comprised of athletes participating in that week’s games.

You could play in public head-to-head games against anyone and everyone or create private games to challenge your friends. Public games gave each of you 30 seconds per pick, while private games gave you an untimed option (which became timed when the first game of the day was one hour away).

Multiplayer contests worked in the same basic manner as head-to-head contests but with more players. These contests were also played in the snake draft format with each player taking turns drafting first. If you picked first in one round, you would pick last in the next round.

Payouts in multiplayer contests with 2-5 players were winner-take-all. Contests with six or more players had a tiered payout structure with the biggest prize paid out to the first-place finisher, a smaller prize paid out to the second-place finisher and so on.

The simplest contests of all at DRAFT were Dream Team games. In these, each participant selected five athletes with no salary cap or snake draft rules. You simply chose any five athletes you wanted and began the game. Athletes were not removed from the player pool when selected, so you and your opponents could draft the same player(s) for your teams.

Head-to-head bracket tournaments combined daily fantasy with season-long fantasy by lasting multiple weeks but still allowed you and your opponents to draft new athlets each week. In these contests, the field was cut in half each week through head-to-head contests.

Each week, you were matched with one other player to compete in a snake-style draft contest. You and your opponent took turns making your picks and then pit your teams against one another for that week’s games. The loser of each head-to-head matchup was eliminated from the tournament while the winner moved on to the next round.

For eample, round 1 of an NFL head-to-head tournament may begin with 2,048 players. After that weeks’ NFL games were completed, 1,024 players would move on to compete in another round of head-to-head contests the following week. That group was once again cut in half, with 512 players moving on.

This weeding-out process continued until just two players remained and competed in one last head-to-head contest to determine the 1st and 2nd place finishers.

DRAFT offered a simplified version of season-long fantasy football called Best Ball. In a Best Ball contest, you began the NFL season by drafting a team of 18 players before the Week 1 games got underway.

Once you had a team of 18 players, the contest began, and your top-scoring athletes were automatically started each week. From Week 1 through Week 16, you did not need to do anything else other than watch the games and check your ranking on the season-long leaderboard. There were no waivers, no trades, and none of the other hassle that comes with traditional season-long leagues.

Guaranteed games specified a prize pool and ran even if the contest did not attract the targeted number of players. If the game did not attract enough players, it ran anyways and you got to play for the same prize pool but with less competition. Playing in a guaranteed game that failed to fill is a great position to find yourself in.

If you did not want an easy contest, you could look for the games marked with the red “E” icon next to their names. The difficulty level in these games was turned up a notch by deactivating the top projected players in each position, making those players undraftable.

Removing the top players from each position removed most of the obvious picks and therefore made this a more challenging format for everyone. If you believed you have more knowledge than just about anyone else when it comes to a specific sport, these games gave you a chance to put yourself to the test and possibly gain an even bigger edge over the competition.

Beginner games were the opposite of expert contests – these were limited to players who do not have a long history on DRAFT.com.

DRAFT Deposits And Withdrawals

Players could fund their DRAFT accounts with the following methods:

Credit Cards Debit Cards PayPal Show more Show less Draft Get Bonus

Withdrawals were processed back via PayPal, credit/debit card and check. Speeds varied, but PayPal withdrawals generally took up to 48 hours, withdrawals back to a credit or debit card took about 3-5 days, while checks in the mail took about 7-10 days.

Draft.com Contest Scoring Rules

The following scoring rules show how your lineup earned points based on the play of each player on your lineup. Overall, the rules at DRAFT were similar to the rules used at other fantasy sites.

  • Passing yards: 0.04 points per yard
  • Passing TD: 4 points
  • Interception thrown: -1 point
  • Reception: 0.5 points
  • Rushing yards: 0.1 points per yard
  • Rushing TD: 6 points
  • Receiving yards: 0.1 points per yard
  • Receiving TD: 6 points
  • Return TD: 6 points
  • 2-Point conversion: 2 points
  • Fumble Lost: -2 points

  • Point scored: 1 point
  • Rebound: 1.25 points
  • Assist: 1.5 points
  • Block: 2 points
  • Steal: 2 points
  • Turnover: -1 point
  • 3-Pointer: 0.5 points

Pitchers

  • Win: 4 points
  • Earned run: -1 point
  • Strikeout: 1 point
  • Inning pitched: 1 point

Hitters

  • Single: 3 points
  • Double: 6 points
  • Triple: 8 points
  • Home run: 10 points
  • RBI: 2 points
  • Run: 2 points
  • Walk: 3 points
  • Stolen base: 4 points
  • Hit by pitch: 3 points

  • Goal: 3 points
  • Assist: 2 points
  • +/-: 1 point
  • Shot on goal: 0.5 points
  • Goalie win: 3 points
  • Save: 0.2 points
  • Shutout: 2 points
  • Goal against: -1 point

Per Hole Scoring

  • Double eagle or better: 15 points
  • Eagle: 8 points
  • Birdie: 3 points
  • Par: 0.5 points
  • Bogey: -0.5 points
  • Double bogey: -1 point
  • Worse than double bogey: -3 points

Tournament Finish

  • 1st: 30 points
  • 2nd: 20 points
  • 3rd: 18 points
  • 4th: 16 points
  • 5th: 14 points
  • 6th: 12 points
  • 7th: 10 points
  • 8th: 9 points
  • 9th: 8 points
  • 10th: 7 points
  • 11-15th: 6 points
  • 16-20th: 5 points
  • 21-25th: 4 points
  • 26-30th: 3 points
  • 31-40th: 2 points
  • 41-50th: 1 point

Expert Opinion: Is Draft.com Legit?

DRAFT offered a unique experience for fantasy players and was financially stable due to the backing of one of the largest gaming companies on the planet (Paddy Power Betfair). These facts alone made it worth checking out – especially if you were starting to get a little burned out on all those salary cap games hosted by the competition.

DRAFT was also worth a look for players new to DFS because it was not full to the brim with sharks. Unlike the other major fantasy sports sites, DRAFT did not allow multiple entries into a single tournament.

When you played in contests here, you played against individual players, one lineup at a time. If you compare this to other major fantasy sites where expert players buy into individual contests hundreds of times with dozens of different lineups, you can see why DRAFT was often preferable for new and casual DFS players.

A simple and intuitive interface whether you’re mobile or on the desktop also helped to make this site friendly to the inexperienced and experienced alike. Once you signed up for an account and visited the lobby, it was easy to find contests and draft teams.

The one knock against DRAFT.com was that it remained a relatively small DFS site. Players did not find the million-dollar guarantees here like at DraftKings or FanDuel. This was a site where you played in smaller contests with smaller prize pools, but with a much better chance to actually win real money.