From time to time we like to review new competitors that hit the scene with some momentum. A while back we reviewed SnapDraft. This review will be for FanDuel, and is almost word for word identical to the SnapDraft review with mainly the site name changed. Here we go.
Lets face it, there is tons of competition out there in Weekly Fantasy Football. Although, we were first with Salary Cap based daily fantasy football in September of 2007, there have been numerous other sites that have launched since then. Some have failed, and others continue on. Today the two largest sites in terms of traffic are FantasySportsLive.com and Fan Duel. We always check out new sites when they launch, and below is our comparison of the two sites in some of the more important areas.
Payouts
FanDuel: Pays out 90% of contest fees in prizes.
Fantasy Sports Live: Pays out between 88-100% of contest fees in prizes with nearly all paying 91% and higher.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Overlays (Payouts in excess of 100%)
FanDuel: Rules do not allow overlays.
Fantasy Sports Live: Any multiplayer league may pay an overlay.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Transparency
FanDuel: Public leagues have zero transparency as you are blindly matched with your opponent. Leaderboards are reset monthly.
Fantasy Sports Live. Registered opponents are always shown prior to registering. Leaderboards are all-time and show top 75 players.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Cash Prize Guaranty
FanDuel: No prize guarantees in public leagues unless matched.
Fantasy Sports Live: Always guaranteed if there are 2 or more competitors registered for the league.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Cap Structures
FanDuel: Performance based salary cap draft, that is very loose (too high). Player values are rarely updated. All contests use same cap amount.
Fantasy Sports Live: Pay Based, Performance Based, and No Salary Cap Drafts. Wide variety of cap amounts to choose from. Player cap values are adjusted weekly based on 2009 season performance.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Contest Hogs (Good, experienced players who only play beginners on the site)
FanDuel: Encourages this behaviour by blindly matching you with an opponent in public leagues, and offering a single structure that requires no line-up adjustments. Contest Hogs can enter the same team multiple times in minutes and take most match-ups on the site. All leagues have the same payout percentage giving no incentive for Contest Hogs to play at higher levels.
Fantasy Sports Live: Discourages this behaviour in many ways including: not concealing your opponent(s), not allowing for one click drafting, offering multiple cap types and amounts that require unique teams, and offering higher payout percentages on higher buy-in leagues.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live (Unless you are a contest hog)
Private Leagues
FanDuel: Private Heads-Up leagues offered.
Fantasy Sports Live: All leagues are public. Some semi-private leagues offered.
Advantage FanDuel
Contest Traffic
FanDuel: Off to a decent start in traffic, but leagues are mostly filled by a handful of players at the top of the leaderboard.
Fantasy Sports Live: Has generated a large user base from 2 1/2 years of consistent growth.
Advantage Fantasy Sports Live
Multi-Player Leagues
FanDuel: All leagues are Heads Up winner take all.
Fantasy Sports Live: Offers 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 25, and 50 player leagues with up to the top 5 positions paid.
Advantage: Fantasy Sports Live
Leaderboards
FanDuel: Filters for month, and sport. Wins and cash won shown.
Fantasy Sports Live: Top 75 in all-time wins shown.
Advantage: Fanduel
Contest Leaderboards
FanDuel: Game status indication as well as live scoring.
Fantasy Sports Live: Live Scoring
Advantage: Fanduel
Overall Winner
Is it not obvious? Fantasy Sports Live is still the leader in weekly fantasy football with the highest payouts, most transparency, and widest variety of competitive fantasy structures. If you have not checked us out yet, click on this link to get $10/$20/$30 free with a $50/$100/$200 initial deposit. If you don't think we are better as shown above, just cash out after you use your bonus funds, and use this link for some free bonus cash at FanDuel. Try them out if you prefer private heads up leagues or want to enter tens of leagues daily with the least amount of effort.
3 comments:
Hi Blinders,
Thanks for the review. We appreciate it.
You make some good points about where Fanduel is lacking and where we could improve it. We are planning to address most of these over the next few months.
Keep up the good work at FSL. We hope we can keep you on your toes!
Is FSL planning on offering private leagues?
Nigel,
You guys were good enough to get me to play there with some volume, so thats a big improvement over our past competition where I never bothered for many reasons.
Larry,
Its been in the plans for a while, but the demand has been pretty low so we have been working on other things. We have a pretty cool concept for them when we do roll them out though.
Post a Comment