FanDuel Review
FanDuel is one of the leading websites when it comes to real money daily fantasy sports. The website, established in 2009, now offers more than 12,000 daily leagues, which is probably more than any other fantasy sports website. Their pay-outs are among the highest in the industry. FanDuel cashes out more than $1M per day and they aim to pay out a total of around $400M for 2014. In comparison with $10M paid out in 2011, and $50M in 2012. That's quite a progression! At FanDuel you can play fantasy football (NFL and College Football), fantasy baseball (MLB), fantasy basketball (NBA and College Basketball) and fantasy hockey (NHL). FanDuel was featured in: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo! Sports and ESPN, and they all had words of praise for the website. Fantasy sports is not considered to be gambling, but rather a game of skills and therefore it is legal and people from the United States and Canada can legally play fantasy sports leagues for money at FanDuel, with the exception of the citizens of Washington, Montana, Louisiana, Arizona and Iowa.
Options (duration, draft format, entry fees)
As it was mentioned, FanDuel offers daily leagues and the offered draft format is the salary cap draft. With the salary cap draft you know that you won't have to wait for hours for the other players to create their teams, since there are no rounds in it, you can create your team as fast as you like and then leave. And people love the daily leagues, because with them you won't have to wait until the end of the season to find out whether you've won or not. In the daily format, you pick the players for your team and the result depends on the players' performance on a particular day. There has to be a minimum number of games played on that day for a daily league to be available. Once you pick your players you can track down the progress of your team in real time and with their mobile app, you are able to do that no matter where you are.
The salary cap draft is similar to the draft in some professional sports. Namely, you can pick whatever player you like as long as their total salaries don't exceed a certain fantasy limit. You can keep changing your team up to certain point before the beginning of the first game which features players from your fantasy league. We mentioned that they offer more than 12,000 different daily leagues, but you can also create a private league and compete with your friends. The entry fees for leagues vary from $1 to $1000. With that many options FanDuel is the ultimate daily fantasy sports Mecca.
FanDuel Insider
FanDuel features a "FanDuel Insider" section where you can read interesting news and articles on various sporting events and sports in general, with a particular emphasis on NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. You can also take part in polls and surveys. This part of the website is particularly useful for all the fantasy sports players, since the news and articles are very relevant to fantasy sports and can help player make the right decisions when it comes to the choice of players for their teams.
Deposits and withdrawals
FanDuel is one of the very few fantasy sports websites that offers a money back guarantee if you are not satisfied with them. Deposits can be made via credit card (Visa, MasterCard and American Express) or via PayPal. The minimum deposit at FanDuel is only $10. They tend to cash-out all the winners immediately after the matches in which the selected players participated are over. However, the process can sometimes take a few more hours. Withdrawals can be made via PayPal. After you provide your PayPal email and the amount you'd like to withdraw, it will take up to 2 days (48 hours) for the transaction to go through. If you request a withdrawal on a non-working day, you can expect your money on the next working day. If you don't have a PayPal account, you can request a withdrawal via check, by submitting a ticket. This will take 7-10 days.
Mobile version
FanDuel's website has a mobile version, which allows players to watch how their team is doing while they're jogging, commuting, or standing in the line at the bank. Plus, one can make all the necessary adjustments until the final deadline. And that is pretty convenient. The lobby, the live score and the entry and edit sections are fully optimized for portable devices and if you access the non-optimized sections of the website you will still be able to open the pages, but you will get the PC version.
Promotions and bonuses
Baseball contests
FanDuel organize DFBC- which is a premier baseball fantasy contest with a prize pool of an amazing $3,000,000, with an incredible sum of $1,000,000 for the winner. The 70 finalists will spend one amazing weekend in Vegas, where they can enjoy themselves and meet FanDuel's surprise celebrity host. FanDuel also organizes the World Fantasy Baseball Championship, which has a prize pool of $5,000,000 and the KOTD- a one day fantasy baseball contest, which has a 7-figure prize pool as well - $1M.
Bonuses
New users get a special deposit bonus, which is 4% of their first deposit. For example, if your first deposit is $100, you will get a $4 bonus. One of the best things about FanDuel is that you can earn money even when your team is not playing well. Namely, for each league that you enter, no matter whether you win or lose, you receive FanDuel Points (FDP). Once you have collected a sufficient amount of FDP you can enter real money competitions with your FDP instead of cash. But there's more! According to the number of FDP you earn throughout a course of one month, you can qualify for the FDP Freerolls. The amount of FDP required for entering these competitions may vary from month to month. The important thing is that when you have collected the sufficient amount of FDP, you don't actually spend them in order to enter the Freerolls. You can use them to enter some other competitions; the Freerolls are FanDuel's way of saying "Thank you!" to their loyal players. Furthermore, there are also weekly depositors Freerolls. Finally, you can also earn a bonus by referring your friends to FanDuel. As you can see, FanDuel offers quite a few promos and bonuses and who knows what might they offer in the future.
Rules and Scoring
The "Rules & Scoring" section of FanDuel's website contains all the necessary information that a player needs to know before he can enter the fantasy leagues. It is clear that FanDuel's team is dedicated to make the job easier for the players and they wanted to make sure that there will be no misunderstandings. On top of that, they have an open telephone line for customer support and you can also contact them via email. When it comes to the scoring rules, they are pretty straightforward. For example, when it comes to football, almost all touchdowns are worth 6 points. An Interesting detail about their football scoring table is the fact that the points earned on the field goals depend on the distance. Thus, a field goal from a distance of up to 39 yards, brings 3 points, a field goal from 40-49 4 points, and a goal scored from over 50 yards 5 points.