FanDuel Daily Fantasy Review for 2024

Officially launched in 2009, FanDuel slowly made a name for itself over the year before exploding in popularity and visibility in the last few years. Offering an enticing mix of low-commitment one-day fantasy sports played for real money, prompt payouts, and legal for play in the United States and Canada, it’s not surprising that the site took off the way it has.

New players could potentially receive a welcome bonus, which generally comes in the form of cashback or deposit match bonuses on daily fantasy sites. You may be prompted for a promo code on sign-up in order to be able to claim any offers, but it's more likely you will need to opt-in for rewards to appear and become available to you. Meanwhile, regular players can also find monthly and even weekly free events to join, which would be great as they don't require you to put none of your own money on the line in order to win.

Software and Usability

Due to a lack of prominent third-party software developers in the daily fantasy industry, the two most used operators, FanDuel and DraftKings, utilize proprietary software to offer their topnotch daily fantasy sites. Players can enjoy all the stellar graphics and amazing user interface provided by FanDuel's own software developers.

FanDuel can be played anywhere someone has access to the internet. The desktop version of the website is crisp and clean while still giving players a sense of the many game options available to them. Inputting a team is a quick and easy point-and-click process that can see a player enter a contest, select a team, and be ready for games to begin in a matter of minutes.

Game Types

FanDuel ‘s business model is one-day fantasy sports, which entails users entering a contest, selecting a team that fits under the competition’s salary cap from a pool of players in action that day, and competing against other users to accumulate the most points.

Currently, FanDuel offers this type of play for NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college football, and college basketball competitions with NFL Daily Fantasy dominating in terms of overall players. Once users select the sport they wish to compete in, there is also a variety of game types to choose from. They are as follows:

• 50/50 | This one is very simple, in that players pay the entry fee, select their team, and if they finish in the top 50% of all entrants they win money. Very simple.
• Head-to-Head | Players enter their team and go head-to-head with every other user entered in the contest, with their overall winnings based on how they perform against the other entrants.
• Leagues | A set number of players enter their lineups and compete against one another. Unlike 50/50 games where finishing in the top half is enough to come away a winner, a much smaller number of players can win in these leagues, but the payouts are much, much larger.
• Tournaments | The big draw of tournaments is the ones with guaranteed prize pools, where FanDuel guarantees a set number of prize money will be awarded even if the money collected from entry fees is less than the listed amount. Guaranteed prize money can regularly reach in to the millions for a single tournament. Some tournaments also allow multiple entries, making it tempting to try a number of different strategies to get the big score.

FanDuel also runs special survivor tournaments throughout the year, where 75% of the entrant pool is eliminated each round until only a very small number of players remain, with the lucky winners being flown to Las Vegas to compete for major prizes.

Users can find a competition type that suits them at almost any entry level as well, as the most common entry costs are between $1-50 US dollars, but can range all the way into the thousands on special occasions.

Payment Options and Security

Users can deposit money into their FanDuel accounts using Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or PayPal. FanDuel doesn’t charge a percentage of any deposit amount either, so all charges made to a credit card or PayPal account go directly to the player’s FanDuel wallet.

The site also keeps all user funds in a ring-fenced bank account separate from the company’s operational account to ensure increased security.

As for payouts, FanDuel aims to be very quick. Winnings are deposited back to a user’s FanDuel account within minutes of a game’s completion, and players can typically withdraw funds from the site via PayPal within 24 hours.

Mobile users can access a slightly scaled down version of the site through their mobile browsers, or use the dedicated FanDuel application that is currently only available on iOS.