NFL survivor pools are simultaneously the most accessible and exhaustive form of football betting. Conceptually, they’re about as simple as handicapping contests can get.

Pick a team each week before kickoff; if that team wins, you’re still in the hunt for the grand prize.

Winning an NFL Survivor pool requires skill, planning, and luck. The odds will be heavily stacked against you throughout, and the longer you outwit and outlast your opponents, the more anxiety and doubt will settle in.

While there is no perfect formula for success, bettors can improve their chances by adhering to a few tried and true NFL survivor betting principles.

In this guide, you’ll learn how and where to enter free and paid NFL Survivor pools.

How Do NFL Survivor Pools Work?

There are two types of NFL survivor pools:

Traditional survivor pools where bettors pick one team to win outright each week. If that team wins, they “survive” and remain eligible for the winner’s prize. If they lose, the contest ends right there.

The catch is that bettors cannot select a team more than once, and blindly picking heavy moneyline favorites early in the season can be a recipe for disaster.

The second type of survivor pool is Last Man Standing contests, where fans pick a team to win against the spread (ATS) each week.

Since all ATS games are a theoretical coin flip, contestants can pick the same team as many times as they like.

Regardless of the format, a survivor pool continues throughout the NFL season, until either all but one contestant is eliminated, or the season ends. Each contest has its own rules for tiebreakers.

NFL Survivor Contest Rules

NFL survivor pools usually follow some general rules and guidelines:

  • Contestants must register during the eligible registration period. Registration typically opens a few weeks before the season starts and closes on the first Sunday of the NFL season.
  • Contest entry fees and minimum guaranteed prize pools are posted when registration opens. If the size of the pot exceeds the minimum prize pool after administrative fees are accounted for, then the pot size will adjust upward. However, for free contests, the prize pool is usually fixed.
  • Before each NFL Sunday, participants select one team from a list of teams they haven’t chosen before.
  • If a contestant forgets to submit their weekly pick at any time throughout the contest, they will be automatically eliminated.
  • A contestant is also eliminated if they make a single losing pick. NFL Survivors are often called “suicides” because of this one-and-done rule, and the lack of re-entries. This rule applies to both standard and ATS survivors.
  • Contestants do not play against the house. Instead, they compete against one another.
  • The winner receives the entire prize pool unless there are multiple survivors or all remaining survivors are eliminated during the same week. In that case, the pool is evenly split among the last men and women standing.

Tip: Read the fine print and understand what happens if a game is postponed, canceled, or ends in a tie, and how many entries each contestant is allowed.

Where to Play NFL Survivor Contests

NFL survivor pools are a great marketing tool to increase brand engagement and generate positive PR for online sportsbooks and sports media sites.

Below is a list of 2024 NFL survivor pools with the biggest prize pools, categorized into free and paid contests.

Free NFL Survivor Contests

Free NFL Survivor pools are usually offered by sports media brands, online sportsbooks, and daily fantasy sports sites. Below is a list of free NFL Survivor contests for 2024:

ESPN Eliminator Challenge

The ESPN Eliminator Challenge is a free NFL Survivor pool with a $25,000 grand prize. Contestants can submit up to 25 entries.

The 2024 ESPN Eliminator Challenge is unique in a few ways:

  • All ties count as wins: Although ties are rare in the NFL, they slightly increase the chance of someone surviving until the end.
  • Eligibility: The contest is open to registered ESPN.com members 18 years or older in the United States.
  • There’s (usually) only one winner: If multiple entries survive until the end of the season, or all remaining entries are eliminated during the same week, the winner is decided by a tiebreaker.
  • Tiebreaker rules: In the event of a tie, the entry with the largest aggregate total team score difference is the winner. In other words, the winning margins for each week are added together, and whoever has the greater total margin of victory wins.

If aggregate totals are identical, the prize pool is split.

As ESPN Bet establishes itself in the competitive US sports betting market, look for more eye-catching NFL betting promotions moving forward.

Make Your Own NFL Survivor Pools

Many sites allow fans to create their own NFL survivor contests. Some of the most popular include:

  • Yahoo Sports
  • Gridiron Games
  • Run Your Pool

Note: some sites charge the pool runner administrative fees.

Paid NFL Survivor Contests

Bettors looking for pay to enter NFL survivor pools will often compete against much smaller fields, and the grand prizes can be massive.

DraftKings Sportsbook Survivor Pools

DraftKings Sportsbook is the undisputed “King” of NFL survivor pools, and offers a wide choice of paid contests:

  • Main Event NFL Survivor Pool: The 2024 iteration of DraftKings’ biggest survivor pool guarantees at least $1,500,000 in prizes for a $100 entry fee. Each contestant may submit up to 150 entries.
  • The Ultimate NFL Survivor Pool: Reserved for high rollers, this contest costs $10,000 to enter and guarantees $100,000 in payouts.
  • Mega DraftKings NFL Survivor Pool: The Mega Survivor pool costs $1,000 to enter and guarantees $500,000, although the guarantee usually grows much larger. Each contestant is permitted up to 50 entries.
  • Micro NFL Survivor Pool: a low-stakes survivor pool with a $1 entry fee, 150 maximum entries per contestant, and a prize pool that easily eclipses its $30,000 guarantee.
  • Mini NFL Survivor Pool: An affordable survivor pool that costs $10 to enter, permits up to 150 entries, with a prize pool over $400,000.

It’s important to know how much the host of NFL Survivor Pools charges in administrative fees. At DraftKings, Survivor Pool fees range from 5% for contests with large entry fees to 15% at the micro levels.

A few rules apply to all DraftKings survivor pools:

  • Contestants must hold a verified DraftKings Sportsbook account and be physically geolocated in a state where DraftKings Sportsbook is legal.
  • Ties count the same as wins.
  • Contestants who don’t make selections by 1 p.m. on NFL Sunday are eliminated. Wednesday is considered the first day of the NFL Week.
  • If a game is delayed to a later week or canceled, all selections will be graded as a loss.

DraftKings doesn’t use tiebreakers and splits the pot equally if there are multiple survivors or all remaining contestants are eliminated in the same week.

DraftKings also offers “2nd Chance” pools that begin later in the NFL Season. These pools give bettors a greater chance of surviving, and are a nice option for contestants who were eliminated from season-long pools.

Circa Sports Survivor Pro Football Contest

The Circa Sports NFL survivor is the biggest pay to enter NFL Survivor Pool in 2024.

Circa Sports raised the 2024 edition’s guaranteed prize pool to $10 million and received enough entries to exceed the guarantee before the September 7th registration deadline despite the $1,000 entry fee.

Better yet, there are no administrative fees.

Bettors are permitted up to 20 entries and should note the following rules:

  • Unlike most traditional survivor contests, Circa’s spans a full 20 rounds including the 18 weeks of the NFL season, plus Thanksgiving/Black Friday and Christmas Day games.
  • Ties count as losses. Most NFL Survivor Pool rules grade ties as wins.
  • Picks are due at 4 pm PST every Saturday on normal weeks, by 10 pm PST on the Wednesday preceding Thanksgiving, and 9 am PST on Christmas Day.
  • Unfortunately, bettors can only register and submit picks in person at Circa-affiliated casinos. They can use proxy services, but contestants will be charged for the convenience.

A contestant who survives the full 20 weeks will win the grand prize. If multiple contestants survive or all remaining contestants are eliminated in the last week, the prize pool is evenly split.

Last Man Standing & Stations Casinos

Stations Sports hosts an annual elimination contest with a twist. Instead of selecting a team to win outright, contestants make selections against the spread.

There are no ties because all spreads are half points.

The minimum prize pool for this contest is $150,000, and there are no administrative fees. Bettors pay just $25 per entry and are limited to five entries each.

The Stations Casino Last Man Standing Survivor Pool requires in-person registration in Las Vegas and contestants must have a Boarding Pass of Club Cortez loyalty rewards card.

Contestants who survive all 18 weeks split the prize pool. If all participants are eliminated earlier, the last contestants standing split the prize.

Splash Survivor Contests

Splash Sports offers a variety of paid NFL survivor contests. The peer-to-peer service is currently available in 33 states including the massive sports markets of Florida, California, and Texas.

Splash Sports sets the bar high with guaranteed Survivor prize pools that soar as high as $100,000.

Contest rules are also more flexible than what bettors typically find on most NFL survivor sites. Here are some variables to consider:

  • Single entry vs. multi-entry: Some contests only permit one entry while others allow bettors to submit 30+
  • # of picks: Splash varies the amount of picks contestants can have in each pool. For example, a recent survivor tasked contestants with selecting one team for Weeks 1 through 14, and two teams per week for Weeks 15 – 18.
  • Guaranteed vs. non-guaranteed: Contests hosted by Splash Sports usually guarantee a minimum prize pool, peer-run contests generally do not.

Splash Sports also offers NFL Pick’em Pools and daily fantasy sports contests for most leagues including the NFL, EPL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and PGA.

NFL Elimination Contest Strategies

Bettors can give themselves a better chance of winning by using a few common-sense strategies:

Know That The Odds Are Against You

Winning an NFL Survivor Pool requires a tremendous amount of luck.

With thousands of entries into some NFL Survivor Pools, the odds of a single entry or even multiple entrants winning are very low.

Moneyline odds in the NFL run tight, and as teams are used up, your best option might only be a slight favorite to win. Assuming your teams have a 65% average win percentage, the odds of surviving for 5 weeks is about 11.6%.

That drops to 1.3% after 10 weeks, and about 0.1% (or 1-in-1,000) after 16 weeks.

In an 18-week contest, a safe assumption is that roughly 4 out of every 10,000 contestants will be left standing at the end.

It’s important to recognize how much the odds are stacked against you. This awareness will help you cope with negative emotions and reduce the psychological impact of losses.

Going on tilt is a surefire way to cloud your judgment, which could result in rash decision-making, which is the last thing you want to do if you still have live survivor entries.

Upsets in the NFL happen frequently, and selecting 18-20 consecutive winners is extremely hard.

Accept this as truth before submitting your first survivor entry.

Do Not Forget To Submit Entries

It is amazing how many contestants forget to submit their picks before the deadline, especially in free-to-enter NFL Survivor Pools.

Failing to submit picks by the deadline just once will result in elimination, without exception.

While there are no exact statistics on how many contestants are eliminated from missing the entry deadlines, paid contest entrants will be more diligent than those who participate in freerolls, especially as the stakes rise.

Tip: Set an alert or calendar reminder to avoid missing deadlines.

Lastly, be aware of when the deadline is, because they vary from contest to contest.

Be On The Lookout For Overlays

NFL Survivor Pool overlays occur when there aren’t enough entries to fulfill a guaranteed prize pool.

For instance, if DraftKings runs a $1,000,000 Survivor Pool with a $100 buy-in, but only 9,000 players enter, the entry fees total $900,000, resulting in a $100,000 overlay.

Each entry is then worth $1,000,000/9,000 or $111.11, making it a positive expectation play.

If the house charges a 10% administrative fee and the contest draws 10,200 entrants, only $90 of each entry is applied to the prize pool, for a total of $922,500.

That’s still below the guarantee despite the initial appearance that the contest reached its targeted prize pool.

In this scenario, each ticket is worth $92.25, which is not enough to turn the expected value (EV) positive.

Look for Survivor Pools with guaranteed prize pools that still offer positive expectations after accounting for administrative fees. The best way to do this is to search Survivor Pool lobbies right before registration closes and target contests that are not reaching their guarantees.

Research your picks before registering, so entering at the last minute won’t hurt your chances of winning.

Know The NFL Survivor Contest Rules

There are several variables to consider before entering NFL survivor contests:

  • When does the registration period close?
  • What is the weekly pick deadline?
  • What happens if a game is postponed or canceled?
  • Are Thanksgiving and Christmas games separate slates or included with the next or previous week’s games?
  • How are tiebreakers handled?
  • Is the contest a true survivor or an ATS survivor?

Knowing the rules will help ensure you aren’t dead money in the pool.

Know Your Enemy

Although NFL Survivor Pools are about ensuring your survival, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. The main goal is to outlast and outsmart your opponents.

Let’s say that each week, you and the rest of the field pick the biggest remaining moneyline favorite and they all win. You survived, but now have to split the prize pool with everyone else. Surviving and winning are not interchangeable.

Admittedly, this is an extreme example, but illustrates the point that winning a Survivor Pool isn’t about blindly picking the biggest favorites, because that’s what the public does.

Following this method will either result in you surviving with a large portion of the field still intact or being eliminated with the rest of them.

Say that during Week 1, 40% of the field picks a -400 fair odds moneyline favorite. This equates to an 80% probability of a win. Seems like a good bet right?

However, going contrarian unlocks a valuable opportunity to beat nearly half the field in a single week, and this will happen 20% of the time.

Recognizing this, you take a team listed at -250 (71.4% chance to win). Collectively, there’s a 14.3% chance that you’ll advance and at least 40% of the field will be eliminated.

Use Visualization Tools

At the very least, NFL Survivor Pool contestants should keep an eye on which teams their opponents are selecting. Sometimes, the contest host will display ownership percentages, but you can also check out visualization tools like Survivor Grid.

This site displays ownership, a team’s win probability, their EV, and the value of saving a team for later (on a scale of 1-5 stars).

Visualization tools are extremely helpful in plotting out your own early-season course.

Adapt Frequently

Finally, the best NFL survivor players are always retooling their strategies. Usually, it’s ideal to chart out all 18 weeks of the contest and be consistent with your first 4 or 5 picks, pending any major injuries.

Around Week 5, the NFL landscape will start to shift. Dark horses emerge, and teams that were supposed to be Super Bowl contenders can underperform.

You should still have an idea of which teams you want to save until later in the season but be flexible.

Start with a concrete strategy and allow it to adapt as the season progresses for the best chance to win.