DraftDay Review

DraftDay offers daily and weekly fantasy sports contests with cash prizes. The company is based in Manhattan. DraftDay is not as large or as popular as its competitors, FanDuel and DraftKings, but the site has perks and options that are unavailable at many competitors.

The site was founded by the owners of Cardrunners, and if you're a poker player, the contests on the site should generate a significant sense of déjà vu. That's because the payout structure and buy-ins are handled in a similar manner to a sit-n-go poker tournament at any of the major poker sites.

In terms of the variety of sports, DraftDay offers slightly more than FanDuel, but not as many as DraftKings. Sports available at DraftDay include NFL and college football, Major League Baseball, basketball, hockey, and golf.

One of the advantages of playing at DraftDay are the multiple different kinds of contests available. They offer the same head to head and 50/50 contests as their competitors. They also offer the larger tournaments. But they also have other, more interesting contests that their competitors don't have. I'll go into more detail about these contest types later in this review.

Below are some additional details on the bonuses and promotions available at DraftDay.

One aspect of the DraftDay website that's a clear win is the clarity with which they explain their signup bonus. FanDuel and DraftKings both offer signup bonuses, but it's hard to find specific information on their sites about how much you can get as a bonus and what the requirements are. DraftDay doesn't have this problem. The information is front and center and easy to find.

American players used to doing business with offshore sportsbooks will be happy to know that DraftDay, being a United States company, does all of its business in United States dollars. You can deposit using any of the following payment methods.

Visa MasterCard

American Express PayPal

You can withdraw winnings via PayPal or via check. DraftDay has some of the best turnaround times in the business for withdrawals. The turnaround time for a PayPal withdrawal is 48 hours, but a check takes 3 to 5 business days to receive.

There are currently five sports available at DraftDay, as follows.

I'll provide some detail on how the contests work for each of these sports shortly, but there are a couple of other things to cover first. To begin with, I should explain how daily fantasy sports contests work in general. Most readers probably already know how fantasy sports work, at least at the season-long level. So I provide only the broadest overview of how the hobby works in this section.

It's also useful to understand about the commissions in daily fantasy contests.

I used poker as a comparison here, and it's a comparison I made earlier too. The way the buy-ins and the prize pools work are almost identical to the way they work in poker tournaments online, and there are some similar skill-sets involved too. One big difference though, is the laws involved.

For Americans, daily fantasy sports are a nice, legal alternative to sports betting or poker. Here's why.

With all of that covered, let's now take a look at each sport available at DraftDay in more detail.

Fantasy Football at DraftDay

You can play in both NFL and college fantasy football events at DraftDay. These events happen over the course of a week's games, in order to get in all the games from the weekend.

You get a $100,000 salary cap with which to recruit your fantasy football team. Your team consists of 9 players, and you can choose from any of the football players who are playing in this week's games. One thing you can't do is choose all the players from one team. You're required to choose players from multiple teams in your lineup. That's to avoid the possibility of placing what would essentially just be considered a sports bet.

Your DraftDay fantasy football team will have the following players on the roster.

The number of points each players gets is tied directly to his performance in the games. The scoring system works like this.

DraftDay shows your score and your opponents' scores in realtime as the games are played. When the official scoring is done, your score becomes final and the winners for the contest are determined.

Fantasy Baseball at DraftDay

Fantasy baseball is an action junkie's dream. You can have money on the line almost every single day. On the other hand, that's a little bit more action than some people can or ought to handle. A season long fantasy baseball league is a huge commitment, but playing the occasional daily contest can be a lot of fun.

As in the football contests, your salary cap is $100,000, with which you put together a roster consisting of the following positions.

Compared to fantasy football scoring, coming up with the scores for fantasy baseball is easy.

DraftDay displays the running total of points for each team in realtime. The winnings are awarded after the official scores come in.

Fantasy Basketball at DraftDay

DraftDay only offers professional (NBA) fantasy basketball contests. If you're looking for college basketball action, you might be happier playing at FanDuel, which offers both.

As with the other games on DraftDay's site, your salary cap is $100,000. You use that money to draft a roster consisting of the following players.

The scoring system is simple enough.

Teams can also earn 2 bonus points for a Double-Double or a Triple-Double.

As with the other sports on the site, you'll be able to watch your score in realtime while the basketball games are taking place. When the official stats come through, the contest winners are determined.

Fantasy Hockey at DraftDay

DraftDay's fantasy hockey games are NHL based. As in their other contests, you get a $100,000 salary cap to play with. Your roster consists of players in the following positions.

The scoring is calculated as follows.

As with all the other sports, you can keep up in realtime on the site, but you have to wait for the official, finalized score to determine which fantasy team won.

Fantasy Golf at DraftDay

In fantasy golf, you get a $100,000 salary cap with which you recruit a team of golfers. They score points as follows.

The biggest opportunity to score points is based on how each golfer finishes.

This might be the most interesting section of the review. DraftDay offers the traditional daily and weekly fantasy sports contests, like the 50/50s and the H2H contests. They also offer tournaments. But they also offer several unusual game types. Here's a full list.

These are what are referred to as tournaments on other sites. If the "standard game" doesn't get a specific number of entrants, it's canceled. Everyone gets their money refunded. This is the opposite of a guaranteed prize pool tournament.

These are also tournaments, but the prize pool is guaranteed regardless of how few entrants they get. DraftDay covers the additional funds for the prize pool themselves.

These are sometimes the best value of all, mathematically. If you can get into a guaranteed game, or GPP, as they're called on other sites, where there aren't enough players, you're in a positive expectation situation.

Here's how that works. Suppose a tournament is supposed to have 100 entrants paying $10 each to play. The prize pool is $900 ($1,000 - $100). But if only 60 players enter, then they each have a correspondingly higher chance of winning some of that prize pool.

This kind of situation is called an overlay. If you can get into an overlay situation, even one that's not as extreme as the example given, you should. It's pure positive expected value.

This is an unusual format. The tournament has a point target. Everyone who hits that point total gets an equal share of the prize pool. All the players who come in short of the target get nothing.

These resemble traditional fantasy sports more than the other contests on the site. Instead of a salary cap, everyone drafts in a random order, but they maintain their place in that order as the draft ensues.

These are for people who want to get into action fast. These contests only use players from the teams playing in the early games.

This is a very traditional type of contest. The players with scores in the top 50% of the field share the prize pool equally.

These games work like the standard salary cap games, but there's a difference. The modified salary cap is either higher or lower than the standard.

This resembles a prop bet in a sportsbook. You choose which players are going to score the most fantasy points. If you get 3 correct, then you win. They also offer a "RapidFire Max" contest, where you have to pick all 5 matchups correctly in order to win. You're only allowed to enter one of these per day per sport.

This is another DraftDay specific contest type, and it also resembles a prop bet at a sportsbook. This contest is specific to the NFL. The great thing about this one is that it requires no entry fee. You choose the players in each position who you think are going to score the most points that week. The top 50 scorers split the prize money.

You can filter the choices of contests by sport and by contest type by clicking on the appropriate boxes in the lobby. The contests are also sortable by column, so you can put them in order from lowest buy-in to highest or vice versa.

The prize structures work the same way at DraftDay as they do at most other daily fantasy sports sites. The prize pool is the total of the entry fees less than 10%. In some of the higher buy-in contests, that percentage goes down a little bit.

DraftDay has a big "help" button on the top right of the screen. It takes you to a pop-up with an email form to submit with your customer support request. It also includes buttons where you can connect with the site's customer service via Facebook, Twitter, and email. There's an FAQ section on the site, too, where you can find answers to common queries.

I was bummed that there was no visible information about hours of operation. I had the same complaint with FanDuel and DraftKings. It seems like posting customer service hours would be a no-brainer, but it looks like this is a standard industry practice.

I also hate it when sites don't offer customer service over the telephone. On the other hand, I understand that staffing a call center with customer service people is an expense that a company might not be interested in adding to their balance sheets. Still, I'd prefer the human touch of being able to make a phone call on an 800 number.

Neither of these minor complaints are deal-breakers. In fact, you should probably think of them as the grumblings of a cranky older person, which I am. I have an account at all of the major sites in the niche, so it's obviously not such a big deal to me that I'd not continue doing business with them.

Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about DraftDay.com:

Is this legal?

Can you make a living playing fantasy sports on DraftDay?

How does DraftDay compare with other sites in the niche?