Underdog Fantasy Review
Underdog Fantasy offers simplified best ball games, single-slate snake draft contests, and straightforward “higher or lower” pick’em games that pay up to 100x to customers who make accurate player prop predictions.
Sports fans who loathe the shark-infested waters of daily salary cap contests or love season-long fantasy but lack the time to manage their lineups every week should consider Underdog Fantasy.
Underdog Fantasy’s value proposition is minimizing the time and effort required for fans to have skin in the game while still providing a healthy sense of competition.
In this comprehensive Underdog Fantasy review, we discuss how the app works, where it excels, where it needs to improve, and our overall experience after extensive hands-on testing.
Underdog Fantasy
- Offers Pick'em and Draft Contests
- Predict Athletes' Stats for Money
- Available in Most States
Pros
Intuitive best ball formats Simple pick’em games Earn rake back rewards Refer-a-friend bonusesCons
Lacks salary cap contestsIt is not the perfect fantasy app for everyone, but Underdog Fantasy concentrates its efforts on a few key strengths to make it an easy choice for some players. One need only ask Twitter for best ball recommendations to see Underdog may actually be the top dog, at least in certain fantasy sports categories.
Underdog Fantasy is also a prominent operator in the pick’em fantasy space. Fans who prefer fast, straightforward action can enter Underdog Fantasy’s pick’em contests to make higher/lower predictions on athletes’ statistical projections for real-money payouts.
Underdog Fantasy doesn’t do it all, but what it does do, it executes very well. Former DRAFT players who enjoyed the best ball concept will be happy to know that its founder, Jeremy Levine, is also the man behind Underdog Fantasy.
A pleasing interface and lightweight mobile app wrap the concept into a pretty package that makes it easy for newbies and vets alike to get straight to the action.
Underdog Fantasy Legal States
Underdog Fantasy offers each of its main types of contests (more on how they work below) in different states:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Get Bonus
Underdog Fantasy Promo Code: BETUSA
Play $5, Get $50Underdog Fantasy Promo Code: BETUSA
Must be 18+ (19+ in AL, NE; 19+ in CO for some games; 21+ in AZ, MA, and VA) and present in a state where Underdog Fantasy operates. Terms apply. See assets.underdogfantasy.com/web/PlayandGetTerms_DFS_.html for details. Offer not valid in MD, MI, OH, NY and PA. Concerned with your play? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit www.ncpgambling.org; NY: Call the 24/7 HOPEline at 1-877-8-HOPENY or Text HOPENY (467369)
| Title | Details |
|---|---|
Underdog Fantasy Promo Code | BETUSA |
| Welcome Bonus | Play $5, Get $50 |
| Eligibility | New customers 18/21+ |
| Terms | Withdrawable after playing through bonus one time Unused bonus funds expire after 14 days |
Underdog Fantasy Bonus Offer
New Underdog Fantasy customers can sign up with the Underdog Fantasy promo code BETUSA and play their first $5 entry to get $50 in bonus lineups.
This is a straightforward welcome bonus: once you play your first $5 lineup, you’ll get $50 in bonuses. The Underdog Fantasy bonus is non-withdrawable, but any winnings you obtain with it are immediately withdrawable.
Fortunately, the Underdog bonus also has minimal terms and conditions:
- You must play through your bonus one time before withdrawing any winnings
- Unused bonus funds expire after 14 days
Claim Your $50 Underdog Fantasy Bonus Today at:
www.underdogfantasy.com
Use the UnderDog Fantasy promo code BETUSA
Underdog Fantasy Promotions
Fans can follow Underdog Fantasy on social media for updates on the latest promotions, which can take various forms, such as:
- Gimme Pick Tokens: Tokens fans can apply to any roster selection to have it graded a win regardless of the athlete’s actual performance.
- Multiplier Boosts: Enhances the standard payout on a winning roster – for example, a roster that would normally pay 10x may instead pay 20x with a multiplier boost
- Pick’em Specials: Adjusts an athlete’s projection to heavily favor the user – for example, adjusting a starting quarterback’s passing total to 0.5 yards
- Vulture Protection: Get your entry refunded a free pick if you pick over on a running back’s TD total but an athlete from a different position scores a rushing TD – for example, your RB gets your team to the end zone but they score with a quarterback sneak (rest of your roster must win to receive vulture protection)
Underdog Fantasy Rewards Program
Underdog Fantasy has an underappreciated rakeback rewards scheme called the Gladiator Program. Customers who enter a minimum number of paid contests in a week qualify for 10% to 50% rake back paid as bonus funds.
Note: Rake is how fantasy sports sites make money. It’s the difference between the total value of entry fees paid into a contest and prizes issued to entrants. For example, a $20 contest with five entrants and 10% rake would collect $100 in entry fees and return $90 in prizes. That means each entrant contributed $18 to the prize pool and paid $2 in rake. A user on a 50% rakeback plan would get back $1 for entering that contest.
Underdog’s Gladiator Program offers rakeback on Battle Royale entry fees year-round. However, Best Ball and pick’em contests only generate rake back during promotional periods.
For Battle Royale contests, players can achieve three rake back tiers based on the number of paid entries they enter in a single week:
- 25-49 Entries: 10% rake back
- 50-74 Entries: 25% rake back
- 75+ Entries: 50% rake back
Best Ball and pick’em rakeback rates vary because rakeback is only available for those contests during time-limited promos. Here’s an example from a past Gladiators promotion that ran for three months and awarded rakeback on all Best Ball contests:
- 50+ Entries during the entire promo period: 10% rake back
- 150+ Entries: 15% rake back
- 250+ Entries: 20% rake back
Players can follow Underdog Drafts (@underdogdrafts) and Underdog Fantasy (@underdog) on X or opt-in to promotional e-mails to receive a heads-up whenever a rakeback promo launches for Best Ball or pick’em contests.
The Underdog Fantasy rakeback program provides tremendous value to frequent players, but there’s room for improvement in two aspects.
First, the Gladiator Program is easy to miss, and the details are hard to find. Underdog Fantasy could improve in both regards by publishing a comprehensive explainer somewhere prominent on its app and website.
Second, there’s not an easy way for players to track their progress in the Underdog Fantasy rake back program. It would be ideal for Underdog Fantasy to implement a rewards tracker displaying how much rakeback users have generated since the last payment and how many more contests they need to enter to advance to the next tier.
Instead, Underdog Fantasy notifies users that they have become “Gladiators” via e-mail once they have reached the minimum threshold of entries to qualify for rakeback or move up a tier.
That said, those are relatively minor complaints because other daily fantasy rewards programs tend to be underwhelming or nonexistent. Rake back is practically unheard of in daily fantasy, so being able to accumulate rewards at a nice clip is a big plus for Underdog Fantasy customers.
Underdog Fantasy Refer-a-Friend Program
Underdog Fantasy maintains a simple refer-a-friend program. Current customers can refer their friends by inviting them to download the app and input the referrer’s username in the promo field when signing up.
For each new user existing customers refer, they receive $10 in site credit after their referrals deposit at least $10 and play through it one time.
Underdog Fantasy Games & Contests
Underdog made its reputation on best ball fantasy, but it offers a range of contest types covering short-term and season-long commitments. The one mainstay category that Underdog lacks is salary cap contests, as its games are all of the snake draft or pick’em variety.
Best ball contests are Underdog Fantasy’s bread and butter. Other fantasy sites have joined the set-it-and-forget-it bandwagon, but this DFS app does it best.
The best ball concept offers the best of season-long fantasy leagues but drops the need for players to manage their lineups every week. Instead, after players set their rosters, the system retroactively selects each player’s best-performing athletes as their starters at the end of each week to give them the highest score possible for their lineups.
The result is a season-long experience that doesn’t require players to manage waivers, substitutions, and trades. After players set their rosters, all they need to do is log in occasionally to see how their lineups are faring against the competition.
Best ball contests offer two snake draft styles, fast and slow. Fast drafts give players 30 seconds per pick and can be completed in under an hour, while slow drafts give players eight hours per pick.
Contests buyins range from $3 to $100 and span a range of sizes, from heads-up games to large GPPs with massive prize pools on the line.
For example, Underdog Fantasy’s most recent Best Ball Mania tournament for the NFL season guaranteed $3.5 million in prizes for a reasonable $25 buyin.
Battle Royale Contests are Underdog Fantasy’s take on daily fantasy, featuring single-game and weekly slates. They begin with short snake drafts but function like standard DFS contests after players have set their rosters.
For example, a typical NFL Battle Royale contest may involve draft groups of 6 or 12 players filling six slots each. However, unlike season-long leagues, Battle Royale players don’t just compete against their groups – they compete against every other entrant. As a result, some lineups are bound to share players.
At the end of the contest, Underdog Fantasy tallies the scores, and the players with the highest point totals among everyone win cash prizes.
Rivals contests are a type of pick’em game, but instead of over/under predictions, players try to predict which of two athletes will accumulate the highest total for a given stat.
For example, a player might choose Russel Wilson vs. Matthew Stafford and predict which of the two will record the most completions. For their next pick, that player might select DK Metcalf vs. Cooper Kupp and predict which will have the most reception yards.
After players make two to five predictions, they submit the lineup and get paid if they win. Underdog Fantasy offers a 3x payout for two picks, 6x for three, 10x for four, and 20x for five.
Fans can find Underdog Fantasy’s simplest contests under the Pick’em tab, which offers two variants: over/under and Rivals. Both involve paying an entry fee and making prop-style predictions on individual athletes for payouts ranging from 2x to 20x.
Unlike standard fantasy contests, pick’em games pit players against the house. Players select up to five athletes, make simple projections on their statistics, and receive payouts if they get them all right.
In an over/under contest, players select two to five athletes and make over/under predictions on their stat totals in an upcoming game.
For example, a player might select Russel Wilson for one of their picks and take the over or under on him achieving 295.5 total yards in his next game. That player might next select Tyler Lockett and predict the over/under on him notching 5.5 receptions.
Pick’em contests offer fixed payouts for players who get every prediction correct, depending on the number of picks:
- Two athletes: 3x payout
- Three athletes: 6x payout
- Four athletes: 10x payout
- Five athletes: 20x payout
Pick’em Champions is a variant of Underdog’s regular pick’em fantasy games available in some states that prohibit player-vs-house contests.
The chief difference between the two is in how Underdog Fantasy manages payouts. Pick’em Champions contests combine players’ entry fees into pools and use that money to award prizes worth up to 100x to the winners. In contrast, pick’em contests pit players against the house for fixed payouts.
A secondary difference is that Pick’em Champions contests require players to select a tournament to join after building their rosters.
Otherwise, the mechanics between Pick’em Champions and Underdog’s other pick’em contests are largely the same.
Playing an Underdog Fantasy Pick’em Champions game involves:
- Creating a roster of 2, 3, 4, or 5 athletes
- Choosing a statistic for each athlete on your roster
- Predicting whether each athlete’s gameday performance will be HIGHER or LOWER than Underdog Fantasy’s projection for that statistic
- Entering your roster into any open tournament and paying the entry fee
- The more predictions you get correct, the better the odds you win a significant prize
Once a Champions contest ends, Underdog Fantasy uses the pooled entry fees to pay the winners. Potential payouts can vary based on the tournament rules and how well other players score, but generally, payouts take this format:
- If a single entrant gets the most picks correct, they win the full prize pool
- If multiple entrants tie for getting the most picks correct, they split the prize pool
In all Underdog Fantasy Champions contests, players will see the exact scoring criteria, available prizes, and maximum number of entries before paying their entry fees.
Underdog launched Team Picks in 2025 for users in select states, allowing fans to:
- Pick individual game outcomes straight up or against the spread
- Predict whether a game’s point total will be over or under its projected total
- Cash out game-winner predictions early
In short, Team Picks looks and feels like traditional sports betting, except it’s available in states that haven’t yet authorized full-scale wagering.
How Team Picks Works
Underdog offers Team Picks in partnership with Crypto.com, a CFTC-regulated sports prediction market, where users buy and sell contracts tied to game outcomes. Each contract trades between $0.01 and $0.99, with the market price reflecting the implied probability of the outcome.
For example, contracts on the Dallas Cowboys to win their next game might trade at $0.65, indicating a (roughly) 65% chance of victory. If you buy at that price and the Cowboys win, your contracts settle at $1.00, netting a $0.35 profit per contract (minus fees).
However, instead of displaying a contract price of “$0.65,” Underdog converts the price into moneyline-style odds (e.g., “-185”) for a more familiar experience.
When you make a Team Pick on Underdog, you are effectively buying contracts on Crypto.com’s prediction market. Underdog’s backend handles the conversion between real-time market prices and displayed odds to present you with a clean, simple pick’em choice.
Team Picks Combos
Underdog also offers Combo entries that combine one Team Picks with two or more standard More/Less player picks:
In a Combo entry, 90% of your entry fee funds the Team Picks contracts, while 10% goes toward the fantasy pick’em legs.
If the Team Picks leg resolves first and wins, Underdog will roll its proceeds into the fantasy pick’em portion, creating a parlay-style potential payout. If your Team Pick loses, the remaining 10% fantasy portion still plays out on its own.
For example, imagine you create a $100 Combo featuring a Dallas Cowboys Team Pick and two player predictions:
- $90 funds “Cowboys to win” contracts
- $10 funds your two-athlete slate
If the Cowboys win, Underdog rolls your $90 Team Pick winnings into the fantasy portion, boosting your potential payout. If they lose, you forfeit the $90 Team Pick, but your $10 fantasy slate remains live.
Note: Users cannot use Underdog bonuses to fund Team Picks directly. In Combo plays, bonus funds may cover the fantasy pick’em portion only.
Underdog Fantasy App Review
One of Underdog Fantasy’s strongest points is its lightweight and functional app. Users will find it intuitive due to its simple styling and intelligent presentation of information. Getting started is easy, even for users unfamiliar with some game types.
Many users compare it to the former DRAFT app in online discussions, which is a positive because customers also liked that one before FanDuel acquired and retired it. With much of the same team that built DRAFT now employed by the company, the Underdog app feels a lot like a better version of DRAFT.
After signing up and logging in, customers can browse the main games lobby to view all upcoming contests, sorted by type. A simple tab system allows users to view only the game types they want and quickly enter contests.
When users select a specific contest, the Underdog Fantasy app displays all relevant rules and info specific to that game. Among other details, the app also shows how much rake Underdog is taking out of each contest. All the major fantasy operators collect rake, but only Underdog is transparent about it.
Underdog Fantasy Deposit Methods
Underdog Fantasy offers most basic deposit methods:
Players can withdraw their winnings via PayPal or ACH.
Underdog Sportsbook
Underdog Sports, Inc. also offers legal online sports betting. The Underdog Sports app is now live in North Carolina, and additional launches are on the way. Colorado, Massachusetts, and Ohio are on the company’s shortlist of states where it will enter the online sports betting market.
Underdog Sports Betting Overview
Underdog Sports, Inc. announced its intention to enter the online sports betting market in September 2021 after acquiring GOAT Gaming, a B2B supplier of risk and account management technology.
Details remained sparse for two full years following the acquisition, but Underdog Sports, Inc. promised to provide a unique experience in an industry dominated by sportsbooks that do little to differentiate themselves from one another.
Here’s how Underdog President and Chairman Jeremy Levine put it in a statement:
“Since the start of Underdog, we’ve believed that building quality products and putting customers first is a winning recipe. We’re excited to continue to innovate and build new experiences from the ground up in fantasy, sports betting, and adjacent spaces. This funding round gives us the firepower to continue to build; and build we will.”
Fans got their first good look at Underdog Sportsbook when it launched for North Carolina bettors in March 2024. The jury remains out as to whether Underdog Sports will succeed where many others have failed when it comes to toppling the entrenched giants, but it has certainly lived up to Levine’s promises that it will offer something different.
Most noticeably, the Underdog Sports app is significantly more newbie-friendly than other online sportsbooks. Whereas most sports betting apps greet new users with rows upon rows of odds and acronyms, Underdog Sportsbook displays wagers in a simple but intuitive manner.
For example, Underdog Sports uses large buttons with labels like “Steelers to Win” or “Hornets to Win” and displays the odds as multiples of the bettor’s wager. For casual fans, it’s just a lot easier to comprehend what it means to win 1.5x their bet than what it means to get moneyline odds of -200, which is what they would see anywhere else for the same wager.
Underdog Fantasy FAQ
Expert Opinion: Is Underdog Fantasy Legit?
Underdog Fantasy is a legitimate fantasy sports app in terms of reputation, security, and overall quality.
The name “Underdog Fantasy” was certainly appropriate when Underdog Fantasy initially launched in 2020. At that time, it was just the latest entrant in the crowded daily fantasy market. However, Underdog Fantasy filled a massive void by offering DFS fans uncomplicated and less time-intensive forms of best ball and snake draft fantasy contests. Underdog Fantasy is now a market leader in best ball DFS, online snake draft tournaments, and pick’em predictions.
The Underdog approach to daily fantasy is refreshing, even if it isn’t for everyone. Fans interested in expanding beyond the shark-infested waters of mainstream DFS sites should consider giving Underdog Fantasy a chance.
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.