The Different Daily Fantasy Sports Leagues. Today’s daily fantasy websites are able to accommodate many different types of players by dint of the sheer abundance of sports and leagues. That’s a major reason bettors choose to get started with DFS in the first place. It’s true, there is something for everyone.

• Daily Fantasy Sports Sites

Fantasy sports betting isn’t new – fantasy owners in private leagues have no doubt been laying real cash wagers on the outcome of the game since the 1950s, when the first rudimentary fantasy sport (based on golf) was played. What’s new is the existence of mobile and Web-based platforms for fantasy sports betting. Also new, so-called DFS or Daily Fantasy Sports games which turn a contest that’s usually an entire sports season long into a 24-hour competition that has huge prize payouts. As a matter of fact, the 2 legal fantasy sites we recommend to players both offer 1 million to first place every single week during football season. Actually Draft Kings has a 10 million guaranteed tournament the first week of NFL. That’s life changing money, so anyone who knows their way around fantasy sports should really sign up and take a shot.

Fantasy Sports Has Already Become A Multi-Billion Dollar Industry

• PlayON is the best place to win cash prizes playing daily fantasy football, basketball, golf, cricket, rugby, tennis and more. Make your first deposit and receive a free bonus entry.
• FanDuel offers a multitude of one-day, weekly and season-long game options for NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, Golf, WNBA, and the EPL. New users can get a bonus up to $500 with their first deposit. Try daily fantasy sports on FanDuel today! Find complete sports coverage with FanDuel, including game schedules, results, news, & highlights!
• Daily fantasy sports articles for DraftKings and FanDuel. DFS lineup picks, cheat sheets for cash games and GPPs for MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, PGA, NASCAR, NCAA, NASCAR.
• Yahoo Sports Daily Fantasy. Multi-round, single-entry contest with 23 rounds where the top 7,950 entry overall and top 540 entries per round share $50,000, with $10,000 to first.

An estimated 40 million fans of American pro sports participate in fantasy games each year, a huge market that’s ripe for innovation. Of that 40 million, some 2% are currently signed up to play DFS and other cash-based fantasy games on one of the two biggest DFS and cash betting fantasy platforms available today. Already, these services are paying out big bucks, a total of around $1 billion in 2014 and over 2 billion expected in 2015. The 2 big names are paying out over 100 million a week in cash prizes during football season.

Venture capitalists (some of them big names in the industry) are racing to stuff cash into the pockets of the owners and operators of FanDuel and DraftKings, the two biggest names in DFS and fantasy sports cash betting. Similar to the early days of online casino and poker play, the name of the game for these two competitors (and the start-ups nipping at their heels) is acquiring massive amounts of customers through advertising and marketing, then keeping them there with promotions, contests, and innovative design and features.

For now, the number of fantasy leagues and games that don’t involve real-money wagers so far outpaces the number of those that do, it may be difficult to imagine placing cash bets on a hobby that for decades has been primarily played for free. The rapid acceptance of services like FanDuel and DraftKings by professional leagues (MLB and NBC Sports both see DFS and fantasy-for-cash as a way to increase their audience) is proof that there is a market hungry for this sort of fantasy interaction.

Put simply, these new forms of fantasy are good for multiple industries. New markets that involve cash bets are rare and likely to be very lucrative. But the interesting wrinkle with fantasy betting is that it appears to be welcomed by professional sports, unlike sports gambling in decades past. As the pro leagues see it, increased interest in the fantasy version of a sport increases the fan’s overall interaction with the sport. That interest trickles up, so to speak, and becomes revenue for the league and teams involved, from increased ticket and merchandise sales.

Top Real Money Fantasy Sports Betting Sites That Are Legal In The US

The Legality of Playing Fantasy Sports For Real Money

Is Playing Fantasy Sports For Real Money Legal In The United States?

Both FanDuel and DraftKings operate openly in the United States. Since both of these platforms involve real-money betting, it may surprise some people familiar with American gaming law that these services operate well within legal boundaries. In fact, DFS and cash fantasy start-ups are being funded by the biggest names in the VC industry and are becoming widely accepted by professional sports leagues.

In the United States, the biggest hurdle for cash betting services is the UIGEA, a bill passed in 2006 that made headlines as the cause of the collapse of the US online poker market. The UIGEA prevents financial institutions (banks and credit card companies) from allowing Americans to make transactions with known gambling sites, but it provides a crucial exception in the case of DFS and fantasy betting.

According to the UIGEA, a cash wager is legal if the outcome “. . . reflects the relative knowledge of the participants, or their skill at physical reaction or physical manipulation (but not chance), and, in the case of a fantasy or simulation sports game, has an outcome that is determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of sporting events.”

In short, skill-based games are okay, and in particular, fantasy sports wagers are okay if they are determined based on hard statistical data. DFS is both a skill-based game and based on a statistical outcome. Some make an argument that the draft or auction used to determine a player’s fantasy roster is a skill element. While it is true that luck plays a role in the draft, any fantasy owner will tell you that fantasy drafts and auctions require as much skill or maybe more skill than lining up rosters for head-to-head competition.

So far, support and funding for sites like FanDuel and DraftKings has come from major players (the NBC Sports and MLB support mentioned earlier), which is an indication that the industry as a whole sees this as a fully-legal contest of skill. The luck element involved in a fantasy draft is no different from the luck element involved in the deal of a poker hand – there is no indication whatsoever that the federal government is interested in shutting down DFS and fantasy cash betting services using the UIGEA or the more antiquated 1961 Wire Act.

Daily Fantasy Football Leagues

The earliest fantasy football league formed in 1963. Though football is the most popular fantasy sport today, that hasn’t always been the case. The first rotisserie-style leagues didn’t appear until the mid-80s, some three decades after roto leagues for sports like golf and baseball began. Now, football-based fantasy games are so prevalent, reports each year estimate the cost to businesses from loss of productivity due to fantasy football in the billions of dollars. As the most popular fantasy sport, football is an early contender for most popular DFS and cash fantasy leagues as well, even though other sports’ schedules fit in better with the DFS mode of fantasy competition. Legal Fantasy Football Leagues

Daily Fantasy Baseball Leagues

Not the first fantasy sport in history – that honor goes to golf – but baseball was the first to catch on in a big way, and many of the traditions and rules used for other fantasy contests evolved from early rotisserie-style baseball leagues. Baseball is one of the most statistically-dense sports available, which makes it a prime target for fantasy fans. A sport like baseball, in which games take place throughout a given week and aren’t concentrated on specific days like football, requires a different approach by DFS services. In some ways, baseball is more suited to micro-fantasy contests like DFS, in that members can play basically every day of the week. Legal Fantasy Baseball Leagues

Daily Fantasy Basketball Leagues

Another fantasy sport that benefits in some ways from less-formal scheduling is basketball – similar in many ways to baseball, fantasy basketball is catching on among American sports fans as the sport itself gains in popularity. Basketball teams have a relatively small roster, which makes the fantasy version of the game more competitive and a bit easier to research. Legal Fantasy Basketball Leagues

Daily Fantasy Hockey Leagues

This sport, slow to catch on in some parts of the American sports market, was also one of the last pro US sports to be used as the basis of a fantasy contest. Like basketball and baseball, hockey represents a potentially lucrative market for cash-betting fantasy platforms, thanks to the availability of games all week long. With the modern NHL reporting record revenues in the billions, TV viewership up 11 points from just five years ago, and increased interest in international contests, hockey is a sport on the rise, and a potentially big market for fantasy cash betting platforms. Legal Fantasy Hockey Leagues

Daily Fantasy Golf Leagues

The sport that inspired the world’s first fantasy leagues is now a small player in the worldwide fantasy stage. The simplicity of fantasy golf comes from the fact that it’s a sport played by individuals rather than players on a team. Fantasy golf rosters are easier to maintain, post-draft, than rosters based on other sports. The fantasy version is alive and well – just look to the organized versions of the game available through popular fantasy services like Yahoo and ESPN for proof. But there is not nearly the fan interest in this sport that there is for fantasy football, baseball, or even basketball and hockey. Still, lovers of golf (and lovers of fantasy competition) appreciate it for its purity and for the weekly head-to-head competition, so regular a fan could set his watch by it. Legal Fantasy Golf Leagues

Latest News Related To Fantasy Sports

Fantasy Sports Scandal Equates to Potential Regulations

Fantasy sports have actually been around for well over a decade, but it wasn’t until last year that they really started exploding in popularity across the Internet. Sites like DraftKings

If you are just getting into the daily style fantasy football games then this page will show you an overview of most of the different style of contest you can play. Each contest offers different levels of risk and reward. For example, you can enter a $2 large field tournament and the first place prize can be $2000. Of course you will have to score better than the thousands of other entrants, but the payout can be huge if you pick a great team. Contrast that with a 50/50 league where all you have to do is outscore half of the other players and you double your entry. Let’s take a look at the different types of fantasy leagues, contests, tournaments and games you can play.

Types of Contests You Can Play

You can play the following types of contests with any of the sports. If you are playing baseball you could play a big field tournament or a head 2 head matchup. The same with football or basketball. Each type of contest offers players different levels of risk and reward.

• Big Tournaments (GPP’s)
• Heads Up, 1v1 (cash game)
• Double Up Tourneys (cash games)
• 3x, 4x, 5x your money tourneys (cash games)
• Leagues (10 person + cash tourneys)
• Beginners Only (at Draftkings, 50 games or less in that sport)
• Satellites (small buy-in’s to qualify for big contests)

Big Field Tournaments / Large Prize Guarantees (GPP’s)

I personally love playing in these style of tournaments because of the huge payout potential if you pick an awesome team that clicks all at once you can make serious money by winning with very little risk up front. There are a lot of $1, 2, $5, $10, $25, $50, and $100 tournaments going daily at the the big sites. The big field tourneys are the biggest daily fantasy games in terms of numbers of players and prize money awarded. During football season, each week there thousands of players playing with buy-ins ranging from $0.25 up to $1500. I love these because of the small up front risk and huge payout potential and I think you will too.

Head 2 Head.
Man to man, head to head. You vs 1 other player. These games are not for newbies or new players. I advise avoiding the head to head matches when you are first starting out unless you are a fantasy wizard. Even if you are wizard it is recommended not to post your own head 2 head match as it will almost certainly be filled by a sharp experienced player. If you want to play head to head you will need to find an opponent you are comfortable playing against by looking through the current heads up matches listed.

50/50 – Double Up Games
If you can beat half of the field you double your buy-in. Great way to reduce risk. The upside is limited. I like playing in the larger field versions of these, with around 100 or more players. I recommend these for new players, just watch your bankroll. There are sharp players in these. Just start out small not risking more of your bankroll than you are comfortable with.

3x, 4x, 5x Contests
A continuation on the double up concept are the 3x, 4x and 5x games available. You can triple, quadruple or quintuple your buy-in in a progressively higher contests. In a 5x league, The top fifth of the field wins, in a 4x league, the top fourth of the league wins, in a 3x league, the top third wins. The winning players also triple, quadruple or quintuple their buy-in depending on which contest they played.

10 person tournament
Essentially a sit-n-go for fantasy. Top 3 get paid progressively more for 1st. The others walk away empty handed. These are recommended for new players.

10+ person league
Essentially the same as a 10 person tourney just with a larger field usually up to a few dozen. Higher number of finishers make the money depending on the size of the contest. These are recommended for new players.

Beginners Games
Depending on which fantasy betting site you sign up at will determine what they mean by beginner style games. For example, at FanDuel there are beginner games available that offer a higher salary cap for you (and everyone else) to spend in order to draft your team. Other contests are only for newbies, or new players, who haven’t played before and the only entrants to this contest would be new players. Read through the site reviews of each site to see how they treat their beginner games and find out if there are any worthwhile edges to take advantage of IF you are a new player at a certain site.

Leagues – Tournaments – Contests
Playing daily fantasy sports you are inevitably playing in what people call tournaments, contests, leagues or games. Most people consider a tournament to be a big field / large player base contest. I think of them similar to the larger poker tournaments in the way there are a lot of players and the top of the field gets paid out. With 1st place winning the lion’s share down through the smaller ‘in the money finishes’. Players also call the smaller events like the sit-n-go’s, head 2 heads tournaments and other competions tournaments.

Styles of Contests

You can play the above types of contests in different styles. The most common type of game is the salary cap game. The other styles are less common.

Salary Cap Games
Most all daily fantasy games are done via salary cap. This is useful because your draft is independent of everyone else’s. It does not matter who or when you draft your team as long as you do so before the tournament begins.

Roto Style Games – Snake Drafts
Worth a quick mention is the snake style draft games offered at DraftStreet. These work where each player takes a turn drafting teams in a turn by turn basis and where each player can only be chosen once. These work similar to a sit-n-go in poker and can take a while to complete as you are waiting on everyone else to make their picks. Everyone has to be online at the same time or have a draft card set.

Pick Em’
These games work by providing you a choice of 3-8 players for each given position you have to fill. IE if you are playing basketball and you have to pick a shooting guard, you can pick from a selection of 6 guards. Then when you need to pick a center, there are 6 centers available to choose from. There are no salary caps or roto drafts in these contests, just a “pick the best player from the group” for each of your positions and put your team together that way. These are only available at DraftStreet and DraftDay. You can see our pick’em fantasy guide here.

Beat A Points Threshold
The fantasy site sets a certain number of points to score. If you score that many or more you win if not you lose. These were offered at a now out of business site called DailyJoust. They are not currently offered at any of the fantasy sites we list. If and when they become available we will update this page.

Stock Market With Fantasy Sports Players
Buy shares of a player low and sell when they are high. Or hold them all season and get the return at the conclusion of the season. These are offered at StarStreet and function much in the same way as a traditional stock market. We will review this style of fantasy sports trading at a later date since it is not really a daily or weekly style of game. Still cool, but not what this site is focused on.

Daily Fantasy Sports Sites