What is Daily Fantasy Sports?

When people find out I play DFS or Daily Fantasy Sports, one of the primary questions I get asked is, "what is Daily fantasy sports?" Well, that's a good question, one ill try to answer to the best of my capability.

So knowing what DFS is, we need to understand what Fantasy sports are and where that began first. So season-long fantasy sports are where it all began. A group of sportswriters got together a long time ago and tried something new. They all covered and loved baseball, so they came up with a plan to draft and create a fantasy team of their own to compete. They would all take turns drafting their players until they fielded an entire team of a few pitchers, every position, and of course, bench players. The group of men then had to figure out a way to keep score. So they gave a point value to hits, Home Runs, RBI, walks, and many other stats. This group of guys created what we would know as a Rotisserie league scoring. There have been minor tweaks to the scoring system, but the basis for most seasonlong fantasy sports comes from this. When all of this began, there was not as much TV coverage as they have now; they had no MLB extra innings package where you could watch any game you wanted. So they relied on the box scores of the games that came out in the newspaper to calculate their score. This was the basis for the start of what would be a huge phenomenon. Nowadays, millions of people still draft year-long teams in every sport. People hold draft parties and make wonderful friendships through playing Fantasy sports.

In season-long Fantasy, you start at the first of whatever sport you are playing and draft a team; it is usually a snake draft. Nobody has the same players; each unit is unique to the drafter. Of course, as with actual sports, the tricky thing about season long is the fact injuries can hamper a team, slumps, suspensions, to name a few. These things can contribute to a winning or losing season. While season-long Fantasy is undoubtedly a grind and highly challenging, some people realized we could do this daily.

There were versions of Daily Fantasy Sports back in the ancient times of the 1990s. A bunch of newspapers carried a game called Dugout Derby and a football game called Pigskin Playoff. These games followed a basic template to how DFS works, except the internet wasn't what it is now. Hence, you had to call a phone service that cost $2.00 for the first minute and 1.50 for each additional minute to manage your teams.

As the internet became more readily available, some of the first Internet DFS began business. In 2009 Fanduel became one of the most prominent DFS providers. Fanduel was one of the first of its kind offering big payouts for tournaments and intruding the salary cap system (which ill explain a little later). Fanduel dominated the DFS industry until 2012 when Draftkings came along. DK was the first big-time competition that Fanduel ever had. Draftkings showed they were a legit company by securing sponsorship from Major League Baseball. Once MLB signed with Draftkings in 2015, Fanduel signed the NBA, and Draftkings signed the NHL. Individual NFL teams also started signing deals with the sites as well. With significant sponsorship from professional sports and a massive marketing campaign, DFS was on its way.

Now that there were two major players in the DFS industry to choose from, both Draftkings and Fanduel flourished. By 2017 Draftkings had become the DFS leader and wanted to merge with Fanduel, creating a DFS superpower. Unfortunately, the mega-deal was not to be as the Federal Trade Commission stepped in to block the merger on anti-trust grounds. Since the deal could not go through, FD and DK went on their separate ways; both still offer substantial daily prize pools.

Ok, so how do you build a lineup? Well, that depends on what site you are playing on, so for this, I'm going to stick with how Draftkings works. You can play pretty much any sport you choose to play, and how it works is this. Let's say you decide to play an MLB lineup for the day. First, we pick the contest we want to enter, and DK has a contest of all buy-in prices, from 10 cents to thousands of dollars. After you choose your game, then we get down to building lineups. In baseball, you have ten positions to fill. Two pitchers, a catcher, First, Second, Third, Shortstop, and three outfielders. They give each player a salary based on how good he is or is not. They price pitchers more than most of the position players. Now to build your lineup of 10 players, you have a 50,000 salary cap. So trying to figure out who to play and where to save salary is the hardest thing about DFS. That's where studying the lineups and knowing the metrics of the game come into play.

Learning how and what statistics to study for any sport separates an average player from a skillful player. Nowadays, several DFS content websites will give you a basic breakdown of their pros, ideas, and philosophies. Of course, there is nothing wrong with subscribing to a site to get help. Heck, I worked for a few of these sites. However, when you don't have the time to study all day, some DFS content sites want to help you better.

Because everyone can draft all the same players, another aspect of winning in DFS is ownership percentage. Let's say Trevor Bauer is pitching against the Pittsburgh Pirates. That, in all accounts, should be an easy matchup for one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. If Bauer has ownership of over 80% of lineups, which means 80% of all lineups that are drafted have Bauer in them. Then to be different, fade him and find another pitcher that isn't as chalky. Of course, if Bauer dominates and puts up 40 fantasy points on the night, and you don't have him. Well, then your ship is probably sunk, and you are not winning that night. There is always some give and take in DFS. Knowing what chalky players to play and what not to play will always make a difference in winning or losing.

I don't know that I explained this very well because it's kind of hard to explain. It's one of those things you have to do a couple of times to understand how the process works. Daily Fantasy Sports is a growing, booming business that is fun and hard to master. If you like sports and are up for a challenge, check out Draftkings or Fanduel.