NFL: DFS Sites and Apps add Pick’em and Championship Leagues
If you’ve been away from fantasy sports since the last NFL season, you will find a few things have changed at FanDuel and DraftKings over the interim. Each fantasy site has added one new type of fantasy football contest just in time for the 2017 NFL season.
Both sites still have all their traditional fantasy football games with big prize pools, but now there are new ways to play and win online.
DraftKings has launched all new pick’em style contests while FanDuel has come out with a new season-long format that offers weekly contests in addition to an overall prize pool for the best player at the end of the season.
Both new game types appear designed to attract a wider contingent of fantasy players – especially those who aren’t fully on board with the daily fantasy games that have dominated the online fantasy landscape these last few years.
Let’s take a look at both.
DraftKings Pick’em Games Launched for the 2017 NFL Season
DraftKings is definitely targeting casual players this year with the introduction of pick’em games that do away with salary caps altogether. Now, you can start a new game and be in the mix within minutes and still have a competitive shot at winning.
Whereas salary cap games require a significant time investment as you research players and try to build a balanced lineup without going over the salary cap, pick’em NFL contests simplify things by presenting you with eight players at a time letting you pick anyone you want without any salary considerations whatsoever.
DraftKings pick’em contests work in tiers. In a typical fantasy NFL contest, DraftKings has you pick one player from a list of eight tier 1 players. Then, you move to the second tier to pick one more player. This continues down through eight tiers until you have a team consisting of eight players.
Each tier consists of eight players of roughly similar potential. For example, tier 1 might let you pick between Matt Ryan, Ben Roethlisberger, Marcus Mariota, Derek Carr, Kirk Cousins, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and Cam Newton.
Moving down to tier 2 might have you choosing between Tyrod Taylor, Andy Dalton, Matthew Stafford, Carson Palmer, Jameis Winston, Andrew Luck, Dak Prescott and Eli Manning.
This short video from DraftKings explains the concept in simple terms:
Each week’s tiers will look a little different as each player’s relative strength is also impacted by who he will be playing that week. You’ll still need to take upcoming opponents and recent performance into account, but the lack of salary considerations and only having to choose from a handful of players in each tier makes the drafting process much easier and less time-consuming.
DraftKings pick’em games are available now for the NFL, MLB and soccer. It has also been reported that DraftKings will be rolling out these contests for other sports in the near future.
The first few DraftKings pick’em NFL contests are now open for business with at least two boasting very large prize pools. Here’s a look at the first lineup of pick’em NFL games that are accepting entries right now:
NFL Pick’em $1M Kickoff
- $1,000,000 guaranteed
- $100,000 to first place
- $3 entry fee
NFL Pick’em $300K Gridiron
- $300,000 guaranteed
- $50,000 to first place
- $27 entry fee
NFL Pick’em 200-Player
- $3,600 guaranteed
- Winner-take-all
- 200 players
- $20 entry fee
Check out the new DraftKings NFL Pick’em games
Introducing FanDuel Championship Leagues
FanDuel launched Friends Mode last year as a season-long fantasy offering that gives players a way to play with friends and family all season long. Each week, the system automatically creates a new contest for that week while also giving the commissioner the ability to alter contest parameters such as entry fee and number of entries permitted.
The original Friends Mode is more casual as players can come and go as they please. League members can play in a Week 1 contest, for example, skip Week 2 and then play again in Week 3 without penalty. A season-long leaderboard tracks performances over the year, but there is no overall prize to win for performing the best over the season.
The new Championship Leagues mode changes that a bit. League members may still come and go, but now commissioners can set an up-front entry fee to establish payouts at the end of the season. League members now compete for weekly prizes in addition to competing for the end-of-the-season prize.
You can think of Championship Leagues as a cross between traditional season-long leagues and modern daily fantasy contests. Like traditional leagues, Championship Leagues have each person into the prize pool at the beginning of the season and issue prizes to the overall winners at the end of the season.
There are two things that make Championship Leagues different than traditional season-long leagues. First, you are not locked into a single lineup of players from beginning to end. You draft a new team of players each week. If your star players is injured in Week 1, you can still get right back on track with an entirely new lineup the next week.
Second, Championship Leagues include weekly payouts. In addition to the up-front season-long entry fee, you’ll buy into each week’s contests and earn prizes for winning those contests. This means you can earn a series of payouts throughout the season in addition to vying for the end-of-season prizes.
Championship Leagues also include a chat feature so you and your friends can talk shop or trash talk each other just like you would in an old-fashioned league. The difference here, of course, is that FanDuel does a lot of the work behind the scenes.
Once the commissioner sets the prizes and basic parameters of each weekly contest, FanDuel hosts the contests, manages the season-long leaderboard, pays out weekly prizes and then pays out the season-long prizes at the end of the season.
Wes Burns has more than a decade’s worth of experience as a writer, researcher and analyst in the legal gambling industry and is co-founder of BettingUSA.com. As a former professional online poker player, Wes approaches his work from the viewpoint of players.
