Fantasy Sports Betting Sites
Major sports leagues are offered by all major fantasy betting sites. The NFL, MLB and NBA are covered almost universally. If your primary focus will be on one of the major professional North American leagues, you can play real money fantasy sports at any of the DFS sites listed and reviewed by BettingUSA. With fantasy sports increasing in popularity, despite legal controversy, there are more online betting sites making their way onto the scene. These fantasy sports sites offer something different, especially for new players that aren’t battle hardened pros on the big sites.tr.
Best Overall AppFantasy sports betting sites takes advantage of a loophole in US gambling law by letting people wager legally for real money on fantasy games. This is considered a type of skill game, not pure gambling, so fantasy sports betting websites are actually located on United States land and can accept major payment methods like Visa, MasterCard. The skills transition or many people moving from either sports betting or season-long fantasy into daily fantasy is not a steep hill to climb. The concept is simple, scoring is straight forward, and the rake is an easy concept to grasp.
DraftKings
There is no debating that DraftKings is the leader in Daily Fantasy Sports. They offer the largest contests, the widest variety of sports, the industry’s top promotions, and also have a solid, US-based Sportsbook available in 7 states. Read more…
Best Salary Cap AlternativeMonkey Knife Fight
We love products that think outside of the box to solve problems, and that is exactly what Monkey Knife Fight is. MKF offers the only you vs the house product in daily fantasy… No sharks, no learning curve, DFS in the form of prop betting. Read more…
Best For New PlayersYahoo
Yahoo is all about creating a level playing field for their DFS players. They have much stricter entry limits, more beginner-only contests, strict no-scripting rules, and have created a product that allows new players to quickly find success in daily fantasy. Read more…
Best SportsbookFanDuel
While FanDuel may not be too far behind DraftKings in terms of volume, they are trailing in terms of quality of promotions, size of contests, and variety of sports offered. That being said, their sportsbook is undeniably the industry-best right now. Read more…
Best New App/FormatSuperDraft
Fantasy Draft offers a subscription based, rake-free fantasy product. This means increased odds of winning, with true 50/50 double-up contests. The caveat is you need a subscription to enter more than 100 monthly contests. Read more…
DraftKings
DraftKings joined FanDuel as one of the two major players in the fantasy industry in late 2014 early 2015. They offer a wide range of daily fantasy sports including NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, PGA, UFC, Nascar, EPL, and more.
Fantasy football on DraftKings differs from FanDuel in a few ways. For one, you get a flex position instead of the kicker, and secondly, it is a full-ppr scoring league, and players also receive bonuses for 100+ yard rushing/receiving games and 300+ yard passing games. All of these differences should effect the way you build your lineups.
While DraftKings app and mobile website isn’t quite to the level of FanDuel’s in terms of user interface. It is easy to use, never slow, never down, and a blast to use. DraftKings offers the largest GPPs in the industry, including a $3 week 1 tournament with a $1 Million top prize. Check out the current DraftKings promotions for the 2020 NFL season.
Monkey Knife Fight
Monkey Knife Fight somewhat snuck up on the DFS industry last season. They came up with a genius solution to a problem that has plagued the DFS industry for years, and that is Pros vs Joes.
The skills transition or many people moving from either sports betting or season-long fantasy into daily fantasy is not a steep hill to climb. The concept is simple, scoring is straight forward, and the rake is an easy concept to grasp. The issue is understanding contest selection and bankroll management. By entering the wrong contests you open yourself up to the sharks of the industry that abuse entry limits and feast on new players.
With Monkey Knife Fight you are only competing against the house. It’s simple over-under bets, or prop bets, that include everything from yardage and touchdowns to total fantasy points scored. You compete against a number that the house, Monkey Knife Fight, determines. It is a format that we absolutely love, and has become a mainstay of the Hello Rookie podcast. We close most shows with a series of Monkey Knife Fight contests. Register this September and receive a free $5 entry when you use our promo code HELLOROOKIE.
Yahoo Fantasy App
Yes, Yahoo offers Daily Fantasy! Not only does Yahoo offer DFS, but they are one of the fastest-growing names in the industry. This should come as no surprise, as arguably the biggest name in season-long fantasy sports, they have access to one of the largest pools of fantasy players in the industry.
For those of you that use the Yahoo! Fantasy app to manage your season-long fantasy football team, it may be worth a look as a daily fantasy app as well. You can view their lobby, build rosters, and ever contests right from the same app.
In terms of looks and functionality, it is right up there with FanDuel and DraftKings. The overall look is maybe a notch above DraftKings and below FanDuel, but the in-game features, tracking and size of GPP contests can’t compete with either site. It does, however, do a great job of not catering to ‘sharks’ that enter tens-of-thousands of contests every week and hunt out weaker players.
Yahoo! fantasy is a great option if you are looking for a mainstream company, a product developed for the little guy, maybe without the massive 7-figure prizes, but just about every other feature you could want from a DFS provider.
FanDuel
FanDuel is one of two brands cemented at the top of this industry. They offer the most polished app, website, and mobile website in the industry. Their user experience is second to none and has frequently been described as flawless.
FanDuel offers a daily fantasy product that is well thought out, extremely easy to learn, and extremely easy to win. They have GPPs that have paid out as much as $2 million to the winner, or head-to-head contests that allow you to challenge one other player, or free tournaments that let you test your skills against hundreds or thousands of other players.
If you are new to daily fantasy sports, FanDuel is the likely the app for you. Just stick to their beginner contests, and focus on 50/50 contests for your first couple weeks. Register using our top rated promotion for the start of the 2020 NFL season to receive a free entry into this week’s Sunday Million.
SuperDraft
One of the fastest growing companies in the DFS industry, SuperDraft offers a completely unique take on salary-based fantasy football. Rather than give each player a salary, SuperDraft attaches a multiplier to every player available in a slate.
This multiplier could be anywhere from 1.2x to 2x. For instance, during week one of the NFL season, Lamar Jackson was the highest priced QB and had a 1x (or no) multiplier. Contrastingly, Teddy Bridgewater had a 1.75x multiplier and as a result, outscored Jackson despite scoring significantly fewer fantasy points.
The upside to this format is that you can start any player available in a slate. The downside is that building a lineup becomes extremely projection-based. It is truly impossible to assign a value to each player without using some sort of weekly projection, which tend to be wildly inaccurate.
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
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
Fantasy Site | Rating | Bonus | Promo Code | Review | Visit |
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100% - $200 | Use Signup Link | ||||
100% - $600 | Use Signup Link |
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