Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Fan Duel FFFC Is Back, With Outrageous Rake

Fan Duel has been very successful at running the largest tournaments in daily fantasy sports. Their baseball and football events are happenings that attract a lot of press.

This season Fan Duel announced their biggest prize pool yet. The 2012 FFFC will have a finals prize pool of $350,000, with $150,000 going to the winner.

I know these tournies are very popular with the average player. It's kind of a lottery mentality: $10 and a dream. I'm warning you now that if you play these qualifiers heavily, your dream could become a nightmare.

Why?

Because Fan Duel rakes these qualifiers at about twice what they rake the regular tournies.

This season there are two levels of qualifiers: $10 and $270. Let's start with the $270 level, which is capped at 99 entries. Each quaifier awards one seat in the final, with an average value of $14,583. They also award $6,250 in runner up prizes.

That's a payout of $20,833 while taking in $26,730.

Let me do the math for you: $5897 in rake each time. 22.06% rake.

The $10 qualifiers could be even steeper rake, because the tournaments are not capped (while the payouts are identical). There has rarely been an overlay in any DFBC/FFFC qualifier.

I realize it's just fun entertainment for some players to "take their shot". But as I said last year, you are more likely to make a solid profit sticking to the regular NFL tournaments.

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