If you’re new to the DFS game or looking to start playing on a different site, the choice between FanDuel and DraftKings can be quite a daunting one. These are undoubtedly the two biggest sites in the industry, with each one offering its own positive aspects and drawbacks.
Choosing the DFS site you get your start on can be a big decision so it’s important to make the right choice for yourself. Fortunately, we’re here to provide a full summary of each site. We’ll take a look at the differences and similarities between FanDuel and DraftKings to help you decide which site is best for you.
What Should You Look for In a DFS Website?
One of the first things that can draw you to a new DFS site is the signing-up promotions or deals on offer. When we take a look at what each of these two sites has to offer new members, we can quickly and easily identify DraftKings as the winner in this category. Both sites provide a 100% signup bonus deal, but FanDuel’s is limited to a $200 value whereas DraftKings can give new members up to $600 in free money. So, if you’re a big fantasy player, DraftKings has the better deal here.
Taking a closer look, we can see that FanDuel’s bonus money is released to you over time at a rate of 4% per contest fee paid. For example, if you spend $10 on a contest fee then you’ll get $0.40 of your bonus cash released to your account. DraftKings uses a different system based on their “Frequent Player Points”.
Essentially, you’ll unlock a dollar of bonus money for each 100 FPP you earn. Points are accumulated by entering contests, so you can effectively unlock your extra cash at the same rate on DraftKings as you would on FanDuel. Both sites reserve the right to remove any excess bonus cash if you haven’t unlocked it after a certain period of time.
Available Games and Sports
Next, it’s important to look at the options available when you actually play on each site. Both FanDuel and DraftKings are renowned for their huge arrays of leagues and games. Both sites cover a big range of sports including college football, NFL, NBA and more. However, DraftKings does have a few more options by including leagues and tournaments for sports like PGA, MMA, NASCAR and professional soccer leagues.
If you have a special interest in any of these sports then DraftKings could prove to be a good option for you. This site also tends to have a few more options available, with larger player counts in individual contests and more high stakes games than FanDuel.
Let’s take a closer look at how each site handles the most popular type of daily fantasy sports: NFL leagues. Each site uses a salary cap system and offers a range of game styles, from head-to-head clashes to big tournaments with huge prize pools. Playing on each site can be quite a different experience though because of their individual valuation and scoring systems.
Players seem to be valued lower in general on FanDuel, with the biggest stars taking less of your salary cap than they would on DraftKings. This allows you to have more flexibility when it comes to building a roster. DraftKings also has a big bonus points system and offers more points for touchdowns. These simple things can have big impacts on your strategies. Neither site is truly better than the other, but one might suit your specific style of play and offer you more success because of this.
Can You Go Wrong Here?
So overall it’s quite hard to choose between FanDuel and DraftKings, but you can’t really make the wrong choice. Both sites are excellent leaders of the fantasy industry and offer countless options to every member. They each have great sign-up bonuses, with DraftKings slightly exceeding FanDuel by providing a bigger amount of free cash.
They also both run smoothly and have big player-bases, so you’ll always be able to find the sort of game you want on either site. It’s worth remembering that DraftKings does provide games for a larger range of sports, but both sites are constantly searching for ways to improve and signing new deals with leagues and franchises, so the future is looking bright for the pair of them.
One possible conclusion you might decide to draw from this article is to simply make an account on both sites. This actually isn’t a bad idea at all, especially if you like to get involved with multiple fantasy sports. By using both FanDuel and DraftKings, you can examine all of their systems and rules in detail to determine which one is best for each sport. You might find that you prefer playing fantasy NFL on FanDuel and fantasy college football on DraftKings, for example.
If you do decide to choose this method, remember to take full advantage of your sign-up bonuses. If you don’t spend enough time on each site, you’ll end up losing some of the free cash you were entitled to, so it’s important to be careful when making new accounts.
