Daily Fantasy Sports Explained
If you’re a sports fan, you’ve almost certainly heard of fantasy sports. You may have even dabbled in fantasy sports leagues in your free time. After all, close to 60 million people participate in the games in the US and Canada alone. What was once a game played with friends has transformed into a multi-billion-dollar industry that significantly influences real sports. Daily fantasy sports are a subset of this industry.
Unlike traditional fantasy sports, daily fantasy sports take place over hours or weeks instead of an entire season. If you participate in these condensed contests, you still get to build a team from the ground up and earn points based on your players’ real-life performance. Daily fantasy football allows players to compete in high-stakes tournaments, place bets, and go up against other players in high-stakes matchups. Here we explain the intricacies of this entertaining twist on fantasy sports.
What Are Fantasy Sports
While many sports enthusiasts enjoy sports-themed video games, playing fantasy sports takes this passion to a new level. Before we explain daily fantasy sports, you need to know a little about traditional fantasy sports. Fantasy sports are games where participants put together an imaginary team using real players from various professional sports. There are multiple leagues depending on which fantasy sport you play, and everyone in the league builds their own fantasy team too. Then you compete against each other.
Participants get points based on specific actions. Fantasy football awards you six points when a quarterback throws a touchdown or one point each time a wide receiver catches the ball. When the game is over, all of your points are added up. If your fantasy team has the highest score, you win.
How Are Daily Fantasy Sports Different?
When you play traditional fantasy sports, the action takes place over an entire season. In fantasy football, everyone in your league would draft teams in September, and you wouldn’t learn who won until the season ended in January. Once you draft your players, you’re stuck with them for the entire season unless you find someone in your league willing to trade with you.
As the name suggests, daily fantasy sports don’t take place over an entire season. Instead, you draft your players in the morning, and you know who won by the afternoon or evening after the games are over. With traditional fantasy sports, friends often play in the same league for years, while daily fantasy sports participants are usually played with random competitors online.
There are also substantial monetary rewards when playing in daily fantasy sports leagues. Thousands of competitors pay a few dollars to enter, resulting in winners taking home a lot of prize money.
How to Play
Daily fantasy sports are played in the same way as their traditional counterparts. You receive a salary budget that you must use to draft players to form your fantasy team. Each sport has differing lineup requirements you must follow. In fantasy football, you have to draft two quarterbacks, two tight ends, two kickers, four running backs, four wide receivers, and two defense/special teams (punt and kickoff return) units.
The maximum number of players and lineups will vary depending on the fantasy site. As we mentioned earlier, you accumulate points based on how your players perform in real life. You may lose points for infractions such as fouls or if your running back fumbles the ball, so be sure to read the scoring rules carefully to maximize your chances of success.
Tournament Types
Entering the lobby for the first time when you sign up to play daily fantasy sports is a bit overwhelming.
- Traditional Guaranteed Prize Pool Tournaments: These contents have lots of players. Most enter with multiple lineups. The prizes are big.
- Double-Ups aka 50/50 Games: 50% of participants win in these contests, plus they get double the money they spent.
- Heads-Up aka HeadToHead or H2H: Play one-on-one against a single opponent. Whoever wins takes home all of the money.
Whatever tournament you opt to join you can be sure that there’s always help available from the league admins or even other players.
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