NFL Pick’em Pools Explained: Where And How To Play

It’s common knowledge that the NFL point spread is one of the most efficient lines in all of sports betting. For bettors tired of being ground down by the house edge, NFL Pick’em contests present a viable, and potentially profitable, alternative.

Best Online Sportsbook for NFL Pick’em Pools

Pick’em pools, otherwise known as handicapping contests, are simple in theory. Contestants compete against one another in a weekly or season-long battles, and whoever picks the most winners straight up or against the spread secures the grand prize. Sportsbooks adore NFL Pick’ems because they drive tons of traffic and positive publicity, and players love them for their entertainment value and the allure of lottery-style jackpots.

Pick’ems are also popular because it’s much easier to get an edge against other players than it is betting NFL spreads against the house. However, to secure that advantage, bettors need to employ proven strategies and have a firm knowledge of how NFL Pick’em contests work.

In this post, we’ll cover these strategies, talk more about how handicapping contests function, and lead you to the best NFL Pick’em sites.

What Is An NFL Pick’em Contest?

NFL Pick’em contests have evolved in recent years, facilitated by the widespread proliferation of legal US online sports betting. What used to be a few isolated contests in Las Vegas has quickly expanded to dozens of options accessible to half the country or more.

Every Pick’em pool has unique rules, but there are some universal constants. Foremost, Pick’ems are leaderboard-style peer-to-peer contests where contestants submit selections from the upcoming NFL slate before the designated deadline. For each win, they accumulate points, and whoever has the most points at the end of the contest’s duration is declared the winner.

Generally speaking, the rules governing NFL Pick’ems are not as rigid as NFL Survivor contests, as teams can be selected more than once, and forgetting to submit picks doesn’t result in instant disqualification. However, failing to select teams causes contestants to not receive any points for the week, severely hurting their chances of winning.

The prize pools for NFL handicapping contests can be massive, with the largest guaranteed prize pools running up into the millions. That’s far more than bettors with a $100 or even $1,000 bankroll can ever expect to win betting spreads against the book. Even a $5 contest can have a five-figure top prize, making them extremely appealing to casual bettors.

Some online sportsbooks and media outlets even offer NFL pick’em contests exclusively for marketing purposes and charge no fee to enter. For example, ESPN and CBS Sports host free NFL pick’em contests every year and award cash prizes every week.

The Three Types Of NFL Pick’em Contests

The term NFL Pick’em has become a bit of a misnomer, as it implies merely “picking” a team to win outright. However, many handicapping contests no longer follow such a simple format.

Generally speaking, there are now three types of pick’em contests:

• Classic: Standard, or classic, NFL Pick’ems are contests where bettors pick teams to win outright. A win usually earns one leaderboard point.
• Spread: This has become the most popular format for NFL Pick’em events. Bettors pick teams against the spread, with the lines usually posted around Tuesday or Wednesday each week. Wins earn a point, and losses are counted as goose eggs.
• Confidence: This format has grown in popularity in recent years, and adds a layer of complexity to Classic Pick’em contests. Bettors still pick teams to win outright, but they assign a number of confidence points to each of their selections.

Say a contest tasks a bettor with selecting five teams per week. In a confidence pool, the contestant would assign 5 points to their most confident pick, 4 points to their second favorite selection, and so forth, down to 1 point. Leaderboard points are tallied by adding together the confidence point totals of winning selections.

So if the bettor assigns a 5 to the Dallas Cowboys over the New York Giants, they’d receive 5 leaderboard points if the Cowboys are victorious.

If instead, the pool required contestants to select a winner of all 16 games, then the highest confidence pick would be allocated a score of 16. Now it becomes far more important for bettors to scrutinize their selections, as their top pick receives tremendous weight compared to lower picks. The top 5 picks alone account for a whopping 70 out of a total 136 leaderboard points (51.5%).

NFL Pick’em Contest Rules

Moving beyond the basics, each NFL Pick’em contest has a distinct set of rules that bettors will want to be acutely aware of.

Here are the most common variations that haven’t been discussed thus far:

• Registration period: Most of the time users will have a few weeks or months to register their entry or entries. However, prospective contestants will want to make keen note of the registration deadline and allocate enough time to sign up for an account, read the rules, and submit their first selections.
• Single vs. multi-entry: Some contests only permit a single entry, but most allow multiple submissions. It’s fairly common for free-to-play contests to allow up to 5 entries, and paid contests to accept as many as 50 entries at the micro stakes level.
• Guaranteed vs. non-guaranteed prize pools: A guaranteed prize pool is a luxury offered by hosts to drive engagement, and is generally successful at doing so. It represents the minimum amount that must be distributed to winners, regardless of the number of entries. Guaranteed fields are often much larger than their non-guaranteed counterparts, and often present valuable overlay opportunities.
• Administrative fees: Paid Pick’em pools may or may not be subject to administrative fees, commonly known as rake. Obviously, a rake-free contest offers more value than one where the house takes 15% off the top.
• Deadlines: All Pick’em contests have deadlines, but some have a static deadline, whereas others permit users to submit and edit picks up until the kickoff time of their earliest game.
• Winner-take-all vs. a % of the field: Different Pick’em pools have different payout structures. The most competitive are winner-take-all, where a single winner takes the entire prize pool. A softer version of winner-take-all doesn’t utilize tiebreakers and splits the pot evenly among contestants tied for first. Others use a staggered payout structure, similar to a poker tournament, with 1st place getting the lion’s share but the top 10-20% receiving some sort of payout.
• Weekly or season-long: Most Pick’em pools run for the duration, or at least most, of the NFL season. However, quick-and-easy weekly contests are growing in popularity, especially online.
• Handling ties: Each contest handles ties differently. Some purposely offer half-point spreads exclusively to avoid draws. Others award 0.5 leaderboard points when a game ends tied, and a few count ties as losses.

These aren’t the only nuances that Pick’em bettors need to be aware of, but they cover the majority. Ensure that you thoroughly understand the terms and conditions before entering a contest, whether it be a $1 Mini Pick’em or a $10,000 High Roller event.

Where To Play NFL Pick’em Contests

The best NFL pick’em contests offer the dual advantages of being affordable to enter and legal in most states. As a result, bettors on budgets and those in states without legal sportsbooks can put their NFL knowledge to use and potentially win money.

Several online sportsbooks and news outlets host NFL Pick’em contests every year. Most are open to fans nationwide, but some sportsbooks host Pick ’em pools only available to customers in select states.

Free NFL Pick’em Contests

Some NFL pick’em contests are free to enter and require nothing more than the time it takes for users to sign up and make their picks. Here’s a look at some of the most popular:

CBSSports.com Pro Football Pick’em Contest

CBS Sports hosts pick’em contests every NFL season with $1,000 awarded to weekly winners and $5,000 to the contestant that accumulates the most points throughout the entire season. There are also two $100,000 contingency prizes available to bettors who accomplish the rare feat of picking every game correctly during a weekly period and guessing the exact scores of two featured games.

The Pro Football Pick’em Contest works on a tiebreaker system, meaning that there will only be one winner each week, and just one seasonal champion. The contest is open to all legal residents of the United States 21 and over who are registered with either CBSSports.com or SportsLine.com.

The contest tasks contestants with choosing winners of every game against the spread, and also selecting the exact scores of two featured games for tiebreaker purposes. Lines open at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, and picks must be submitted prior to game time.

ESPN Pigskin Pick’em

ESPN has expanded its free Pigskin Pick’em roster to now include three different events. In total, contestants will compete for $92,000 spread across 58 prizes.

The three game modes are:

• Standard: Select teams to win outright, with each win generating one leaderboard point.
• Spread: Choose teams to win against the spread. Wins accrue one point each.
• Confidence: Same as standard, except contestants assign weighted values ranging from 1-16 (less if fewer games are scheduled) in accordance with how confident they are in their picks. Points are awarded based on the confidence scores of winning selections.

Contestants are permitted 5 total entries across all three formats and are encouraged to register before the first game of each NFL season. To get started, register an account at ESPN.com. The Pigskin Pick’em is available to fans from all fifty states and Canada.

In total, 54 $500 weekly prizes will be awarded to contestants, and the three season-long winners will each snag a lucrative $20,000 prize. In addition, one lucky contestant will win $5k via a random drawing.

ESPN adheres to a winner-take-all format. In the event of a tie for a weekly contest, the score of that week’s Monday Night Football is used as a tiebreaker. In the event of a season-long tie, the highest score from Week 18 is used as the first tiebreaker, followed by the highest score from Week 17, and so forth.

Fox Sports Super 6

FOX Sports hosts Super 6 contests annually for several pro sports leagues, including the NFL. FOX Super 6 is free to enter and open to fans 18+ from every state and Washington D.C.

The contest isn’t exactly a traditional pick’em, as contestants are tasked with answering six questions about the upcoming NFL slate, ranging from who will have the most receiving yards, to team scores, game outcomes, and more. They’ll also be asked to answer questions about a tiebreaker game.

Users who score the most leaderboard points can win a portion of the $10,000 weekly prize pool. In total, there are a whopping 25 contest periods, meaning that $250k will be distributed over the NFL season.

New users can get started by visiting FoxSuper6.com to register, download the Pick 6 app, and pick predictions involving six games every week.

Paid NFL Pick’em Contests

Fans in Nevada and states where DraftKings Sportsbook operates may also participate in paid pick’em contests for chances to win betting bonuses or cash.

DraftKings NFL Pick’em Pools

DraftKings Sportsbook undoubtedly has the most comprehensive selection of NFL pick’em contests, offering pools across a wide variety of price points. The season-long pools are as follows:

• Micro NFL Pick’em Pool: The most accessible of DraftKings’ season-long pick’em pools only costs $5 per entry and guarantees at least $25,000, although that number is often blown away. Contestants are permitted up to 50 unique entries.
• Mini NFL Pick’em Pool: Moving up the ladder, the Mini Pool has a $50 entry fee, a massive $100,000 prize pool, and allows for 25 entries per customer. First place is awarded at least $15,000.
• Main Event NFL Pick’em Pool: DraftKings is always tinkering with the formula for its Main Event, which has had entry points as low as $250 and as high as $1,500. The 2023-24 iteration of the contest settles at a $500 price point, guarantees $500,000, and awards $100,000 to the winner. Contestants can submit up to 15 entries.
• High Roller NFL Pick’em Pool: Bettors must pony up $5,000 to partake in this exclusive event, guaranteed to award $100,000. Entries are limited to 5 per user.

It’s also worth noting that DraftKings offers an absolute smorgasbord of weekly and primetime pick’em pools, with entry fees generally falling in the $5 – $100 range, and minimum guaranteed prize pools ranging from $5,000 – $10,000.

DraftKings pools function a bit differently than most, as contestants are only required to pick five games per week against the spread. They’re also allowed to take a bye week, where they don’t have to submit any selections at all. The pools only run for the first 17 weeks of the NFL season, meaning that users will submit a total of 80 picks.

A few other nuances worth noting:

• In order to participate, users must have a registered DraftKings Sportsbook account and be located in a state where the operator is legal and licensed. To see if DraftKings is legal in your state, reference our state-by-state betting guides.
• Pools pay out approximately 15-20% of the field, but the payouts are extremely top-heavy. First place is generally awarded between 15-20% of the total pot, and the lowest money finishers merely double their buy-in.
• Users pay a 5-15% administrative fee on each entry. The fees for smaller buy-ins are on the higher end of that range, whereas high-rollers only pay about 5-6% in taxes.
• Lines are released on Wednesday morning and are fixed throughout the selection period. The spreads always end in half-points, as to avoid ties.
• Games that are delayed, postponed, or canceled for any reason are counted as a loss.
• Selection lock at 1 p.m. on NFL Sundays.

Although DraftKings supports more pick’em pools than ever before, it’s a bit disappointing that the days of $1,000,000 guaranteed first-place prizes and massive overlays seem to be relics of the past.

Circa Sports Million Pro Football Contest

Circa Sports is home to two of the most lucrative NFL Pick’em contests fans will find anywhere.

The Circa Sports Million Pro Football Contest might be a relatively new pick’em pool, but it’s quickly evolved into the season’s most prestigious event. Together with the equally esteemed Circa Sports Survivor, $14 million in guaranteed prizes is up for grabs, with $6 million allocated toward the pick’em pool.

Contestants can submit up to 5 entries, with each one costing $1,000 a pop. There are a few nuances that bettors will certainly want to be aware of before participating:

• Contestants place 5 picks against the spread each week. The turnaround time is tighter than most pools, with lines posted at 10 a.m. on Thursday and submissions due by Saturday at 4 p.m. This will limit a contestant’s ability to bet stale lines.
• Wins earn one point and ties earn one half-point.
• There is no rake. All entry fees go into the prize fund.
• Bettors can only register and submit picks in person at a Circa-affiliated casino in Las Vegas. If they’re not in Vegas, contestants have the option to use a proxy service, but that will cost them.

In addition to the $1 million guaranteed first-place prize, the pool pays out places 2-100. It also pays out quarterly prizes, and last & second to last place are awarded “booby” prizes. This goes to show that having an especially poor run of luck at the sportsbook isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Besides having no rake, the Circa Sports Million often has an overlay, making it a particularly appealing pick’em for value hunters. The 2023 iteration of the contest drew 5,274 entries, amounting to a $726,000 overlay.

Superbook Sports SuperContest

Before Circa opened its doors, the Westgate Superbook was by far the most famous Las Vegas sportsbook. Part of its reputation was garnered through its annual SuperContest, a three-pronged mega event that generates tons of publicity and awards enormous cash prizes.

The three legs of the SuperContest are as follows:

• SuperContest: The Main Event is a $1,000 pick’em where contestants select 5 teams against the contest line for the entire 18-week regular season. Up to 7 entries per customer are permitted, and the top 20 regular season finishers get paid, along with 11 in-season contest winners.
• SuperContest Gold: The ruleset for SuperContest Gold is effectively the same as SuperContest’s, the two monumental differences being that the entry fee is $5,000 and the pool is winner-take-all. The only exception is if more than one contestant finishes ties for first, in the prize pool will be divided evenly. Suffice it to say, this pool is for serious bettors only.
• SuperContest Reboot: The reboot is a smaller $500 contest (5 max entries), that runs from Week 10 – 18 of the NFL Season. It gives a second lease on life to those who either bricked their Survivor pools, haven’t done well to date in their pick’em contests, or simply prefer shorter, less expensive contests.

All SuperContests are rake-free, but they do not support minimum guaranteed prize pools, at least not for the season-long portion of the contest. However, the SuperContest allocates an impressive $810,000 to contestants that have the best showing over designated 3-, 6-, and 9-week periods. These contests within a contest ensure that no entry is truly out of the running until the bitter end.

Unfortunately, registration for any of these events must take place in person, even for fans who have SuperBook Sportsbook accounts. If contestants want to use a proxy, then both the contestant and the proxy must sign up at the Westgate. From that point forward, the contest rules get a bit more lenient, as contestants/proxies are permitted to submit their picks either in person or via the SuperContest mobile app.

Do Other Online Sportsbooks Offer NFL Pick’em Pools?

At this time, DraftKings Sportsbook is the only legal online sportsbook that supports NFL pick’em pools. However, its selection is so dense that bettors shouldn’t really feel starved.

BetRivers used to offer a Beat the Spread challenge, open to bettors that placed $25 or more in NFL spreads priced at -125 or longer in a single week. Users earned one leaderboard point for every winning $25+ spread bet, and three points for every $25+ spread bet on the featured game.

Each week, BetRivers issued up to $5,000 in bonus funds to the top 200 users on the leaderboard. Additionally, BetRivers gave up to $50,000 in bonus funds to the top 1,000 bettors on the leaderboard at the end of the season.

Here’s hoping that at least a version of this contest makes a return appearance.

Interestingly enough, FanDuel Sportsbook offers a sort of pick’em contest, but it’s for NCAA Football. Each Saturday, bettors can make six free picks, and they’ll generate points for each correct selection. The twist is that the bigger the underdog, the more points that contestants can receive.

Winners divvy up a $10,000 weekly prize pool, allocated as a site credit. However, the prize fund for Week 1 is boosted to $50,000.

NFL Handicapping Contest Tips

Winning an NFL handicapping contest is a formidable task, and luck will need to be on your side. However, contestants can bolster their odds of taking home a cash prize by adopting a few strategies.

Free-To-Play Isn’t Always Worth It

Free NFL Pick’em contests sound like a great deal on paper, but they’re actually quite costly in terms of time equity.

Consider that free contest fields are usually massive, often drawing 10,000 contestants or more. Even if half the field is dead money, and the prize pool is a rather generous $20,000, your expected return is only $4, and you’ll almost always come up completely empty because free pick’em pools usually only pay first place.

Furthermore, whereas paid contests usually ask bettors to pick just 5 winners per week, free contests often require you to select a winner from all 15 or 16 games. Factor in confidence intervals and the process can be downright exhausting.

To realistically compete for first place, it’ll require a significant time investment of at least 30 minutes or more per week. Sure, you could just throw darts and hope for the best, but that strategy will almost never work.

Before entering a free-to-play NFL pick’em consider if it’s worth your time in terms of both monetary reward and entertainment value. One tip might be to enter at least one paid contest, and then simply copy and paste your selections to free pools that only require 5 picks per week, rare as they may be.

Know The Rules

Before parting with a single dime, it’s critical to know the rules surrounding contest participation. In particular, you’ll want to know the contest’s format, how ties and cancellations are handled, when lines are posted, and when picks must be submitted.

Going further, knowing how Thursday, Saturday, and Monday games are handled, the payout structure, and whether there are in-season “mini” contests, will help you chart sound early and late-season strategies.

You’d be shocked at how many users blindly enter contests without an inkling of knowledge about the rules. Sometimes they score 0 points during Week 1, not because their picks flopped, but because they thought they could submit picks up until Sunday kickoff.

Hunt For Picke’em Pool Overlays

NFL Pick’em contests defy conventional wisdom in that it’s always more beneficial to do things at the last minute. This includes registering.

By registering late, you’ll be able to see how many entrants are in the field, which in and of itself is good to know. For contests with guaranteed prize pools, registering late is especially valuable, as you can quickly determine if there’s going to be an overlay.

The quick way to calculate overlays is to divide the prize pool by the buy-in amount. For instance, if a contest guarantees $500,000 and the entry fee is $500, then 500,000 / 500 = 1,000 contestants will need to register to fulfill the guarantee. If there are only 800 people registered 10 minutes before the deadline, then it’s safe to say there will be a pretty sizable overlay.

Figuring out the exact amount of an overlay requires an extra step, but it’s easy. Just take the prize pool and divide it by the current number of entries plus your prospective entry. Using the example above, if there are 800 registrants, each ticket will be worth $500,000 / 801 = $624.22, pending that you also enter.

Congratulations, you just generated $124.22 in cash equity, just for signing up.

These simple overlay formulas apply regardless of administrative fees, and it’s suggested you use them to quickly find hidden value.

Always Submit Entries

It goes without saying, but if you’re going to enter an NFL Pick’em contest, ensure that you’ll always be able to submit your entries. If you’ll be out of the country for a week, or are so bogged down with work that you’ll likely forget about the contest, just sit this season out.

Missing a week is not as devastating as it is for NFL Survivor pools, but it’s pretty close. Assume that you select winners against the spread at a roughly 70% clip, which is about the hit rate you should aim for. If the contest is 17 weeks long, and you lay goose eggs just once due to negligence, your win percentage will drop to 65.9%.

That’s a big enough dip to take you immediately out of the running.

Plot Out An Early Season Strategy

Early season pick’em strategy tends to revolve around a few strong fundamentals. The goal during the first 8-10 weeks is to accumulate as many wins as possible and to pay little attention to the standings and betting trends.

Here are a few tips on doing just that:

• Pick off stale lines: NFL Pick’em contests usually post lines around Wednesday. By Sunday morning, many of these lines will move several points, whether it be due to injury, sharp action, weather forecasts, or a whole slew of other factors. The main point here is that you want to favor teams that offer closing line value (CLV). If the Chicago Bears are listed at +2.5 on Wednesday, but shoot up to -3.5 by Sunday morning, take the Bears.
• Know the key numbers: When betting stale lines, it’s not enough to just look at how much a line moved. You need to give key numbers like 3, 6, 7, and 10 more weight because these are common winning differentials in the NFL. For instance, if a line moves from +5.5 to +3.5, it’s far less valuable than one that goes from +7.5 to +6.5, despite only moving half as much.
• Don’t overemphasize Week 1: If this season’s Super Bowl betting favorite gets a few unlucky breaks and loses its Week 1 game to a mediocre team, don’t instantly write them off. A lot of bettors do that and are shocked when great teams bounce back in Week 2 and beyond. Recency bias can result in a quick jaunt to the bottom of the pick’em standings.
• Bet late, extremely late: The NFL point spread is a very efficient market, with the average bettor winning just 49-50% of their picks. Yet, NFL pick’em winners usually hit about 65-70% of their selections. This is partially because they’re fully maximizing their time, waiting until the very last minute (when lines are at their most efficient) to bet Wednesday’s “contest lines,” which are magnitudes less efficient. Just don’t wait until 5 minutes before kickoff, because then you’ll risk not meeting the deadline due to poor wi-fi reception or a mobile software glitch, but submitting picks about an hour ahead is a good rule of thumb.

Also worth noting, is that some contests only post spreads ending in 0.5. If the public line is +7 and your opening line is +7.5, you’re already at a half-point advantage, with no other factors considered.

The Goal Is To Win, Not Cash

NFL Pick’em pool payout tables are extremely top-heavy. Circa allocates over 18% to the winner, while the SuperContest pays a staggering 42% of the remaining prize pool to 1st place. Even on DraftKings Sportsbook, the winner might net 15-20% of the total prize pool, while second place receives just 3-6%.

The point is that if you find yourself in a good position after Week 10 or so, it’s time to devise a strategy with the aim of winning, not cashing. Here is where your unique handicapping strategy will come into play, and when you’ll also want to start paying attention to what other contestants are betting, especially those at the top of the standings.

Sticking with safe bets will likely result in a cash, but since so many other contestants will be taking the same approach, it won’t position you for a win. Going contrarian, or at least blending safe picks with less obvious choices is a viable strategy. You could also try betting on the Thursday, Saturday, or Monday games, as these tend to generate less action. Or avoid Sunday afternoon games altogether, since there’s a tendency for pick’em contestants to want to watch the teams they select.

In either case, always evaluate the standings, and try to determine just how much maneuvering you’ll need to do to rise in the rankings. It’s better to have a small chance at $100,000 than a guaranteed chance at $100 or $200.