On the face of it, daily fantasy sports websites like FanDuel and DraftKings are awesome ideas. Instead of having to manage a fantasy sports team throughout an entire season, you can just draft a bunch of players on the day of the game and make money if your team happens to score more points on a given day. And if you lose, well, there’s always next week when you’ll hopefully have a better draft. What’s not to love?
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Well, a lot of things. As John Oliver explained on Sunday, a recent study of daily fantasy sports sites revealed that 91% of all profits won went to just 1.3% of players. What’s more, 85% of all players on daily fantasy sports players were losers.
How is this possible? It turns out that there’s a tiny percentage of FanDuel and DraftKings players who are using sophisticated algorithms to help them draft consistently superior teams. In fact, some daily fantasy sports players are essentially professional gamblers who spend hours a day tinkering with homemade algorithms designed to give them an edge over all the other suckers who are just picking players using their gut instincts.
FanDuel offers a salary cap format for their football leagues, which is probably their biggest draw. They are called weeklong leagues, even though most action takes place on Sundays, just to take into account the Thursday and Monday games since it gives a more complete look at the NFL. Nov 25, 2020 FanDuel is partnered with The Meadowlands racetrack in East Rutherford, just miles from New York City, and DraftKings is with Resorts Casino in Atlantic City (sportsbooks are required to partner.
“Fantasy sports are effectively dominated by numbers nerds with sophisticated algorithms,” Oliver explains. “Which is great news for anyone who wished that Moneyball could be a bit more boring, but it’s not great news for a casual player.”
Oliver also takes daily sports sites to task for insisting they aren’t gambling websites when they absolutely are. Check out the whole segment below.