How To Make A Living Playing Fantasy Sports
To make $50,000 per year, you would need to average about $961.54 per week. Assuming you play an average of 4 days per week over the course of the year (possibly more during baseball/basketball season and less around this time), that would mean that you’d need an average of a $240.38 profit per day. For most players, however, going pro will never be more than a fantasy. Fewer than 2% of college student-athletes ever play professional sports at any level for any amount of time.
This is the second of our Q&A’s with people in the DFS industry, and it’s with msize44, a former sports bettor who has transitioned into the daily fantasy sports market. He was nice enough to answer a few basic questions about his background, his strategy, his process, and where he thinks the DFS industry is heading. We had a great time hearing his responses, and we hope you enjoy as well.
[Note: Also check out our first Q&A with DraftDay’s Scott Redick, an avid daily fantasy NBA player.]
Q: Would you consider yourself a “high-volume professional player?” About how many games are you entering on a daily basis during this MLB season and across how many different sites?
A: “Yes. Obviously ‘high volume’ is a relative term. I enter hundreds of games every day across [a dozen] different sites. I am the head of a small four-person syndicate, and together we put into play around $10,000 per night, more on Tuesday and Friday nights. We have accounts at I believe 14 different sites (StatClash, Fantasy Aces, Swoopt, Wardraft, Star Fantasy Leagues, DraftTeam, DraftDay, Fantasy Throwdown, StarStreet, FantasyFeud, DraftKings, FanDuel, Fantasy Elite and DraftStreet before it was just purchased by DraftKings). We play higher volume during the NBA season and way higher during football season.”
Q: What’s your background? When did you get started with daily fantasy sports (DFS)?
A: “I have been a professional sports bettor for almost a decade and still make some money off of traditional sports wagering. But as the offshore market has gotten increasingly difficult to move money and less efficient markets have dried up in terms of how much you can get down on those inefficient markets, I have switched to DFS. Now, 85 percent of my income comes from DFS and 15 percent from sports betting … When you start winning a lot and get continued positive results, you come to the realization that this is your job.”
Q: How many hours do you spend on this per week? What’s your typical day look like?
A: “I spend 60+ hours a week on DFS. I work basically 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. West Coast time every day.”
Q: Would you consider your approach more numbers-oriented or more feel-oriented?
A: “My approach is 80-percent numbers based and 20-percent feel based. I have spreadsheets for everything with projected point totals, and those point totals are just put into the DFS sites’ different salaries to come up with the most efficient players and most efficient lineups. Spreadsheets in my opinion work best for football, second-best for basketball, and worst for baseball due to the massively high variance for an offensive player’s projected point total in baseball.”
Q: What’s the biggest win you’ve ever had in a single event?
A: “I won $250,000 in Week 16 of the NFL last season … I just worked hard to accumulate tickets for the big events at each site throughout the year, and then cashed in with some nice Peyton Manning to his wide receiver stats combined with LeSean McCoy in everything against the laughable Bears rush defense of the past season.”
[Editor’s note: Manning threw for 400 yards and 4 TDs against the Texans in Week 16 last season, and McCoy had 162 total yards and 2 TDs.]
Q: For someone completely new to DFS but has a good grasp on sports betting, analytic thinking and the sport they’d specialize in, how long do you think it’d take for them to be +EV in DFS?
A: “Sports betting is way different than DFS. Obviously there is overlap in the information, but like anything it takes experience to learn the ins and outs and different strategies. The best DFS players (and the DFS industry in general) have no clue about sports betting. As a whole, they are completely uninformed and novices about sports betting. I don’t really have a feel for the other end of the scenario, but I’m guessing it is the same thing. I feel like I have a good fusion of both worlds, and that is why I have done quite well in both realms. My general sense is that sharp sports bettors have yet to grasp how fast DFS is growing and how big of a market it actually is and will be. If you live in the United States and consider yourself sharp, you should be playing DFS.”
Q: What percentage of the people on one of the big sites like FanDuel or DraftKings truly know what they’re doing, and what percentage could be described as “fish?”
A: “The number of ‘fish’ has decreased dramatically in the past year with the rise of RotoGrinders and other sites that inform new players and veteran players about basic strategy and daily advice. There are very few completely clueless fish out there at this point, but there are a lot of people playing who aren’t what I would call ‘sharp.’
“That being said, I think searching out clueless opponents might have been a viable strategy two years ago, but it is not any longer because no one really plays heads-up games anymore. Everything is large-field double-ups, triple-ups and matrix games; head-to-head produces very little revenue for DFS sites at this point. Also, the real money is made in the large-field guaranteed prize pool (GPP) tournaments where you win an entrance ticket into a destination final or just a final in general. Assembling teams for this type of tournament is completely different than constructing a team for a heads-up game or double-up game (commonly referred to as cash games).”
Q: Which site would you say is the toughest to win at?
A: “Whatever site has the least overlay that you can find is the toughest to win at. [Editor’s note: ‘Overlay’ is generally defined as when a large-field GPP or double-up doesn’t fill enough for the DFS site to make money. If the guaranteed prize pool is larger than the total amount of entry fees, the difference is the ‘overlay,’ and it’s a very +EV situation for the participants.]
“Some sites have sharper pricing, and some have easier pricing to attract more of the common players. Any site that has sharp pricing and team composition of positional flexibility will in most cases give the sharper player more of an advantage. A site like FanDuel with soft pricing might be more difficult for a +EV player, although those factors are mitigated to a degree by the size of the player base of a site, which leads to the ability to get more money down on a daily basis.”
Q: How much are the top players in this industry teaming up?
A: “Not sure how much good it does you to ‘team up’ with another top player. I actually believe not letting anyone know you are a top player is probably the smartest thing to do long term. The only reason a top player would share information is if they are compensated for it, or if they are trying to cultivate a ‘personality’ in case the industry really blows up. (Or the third case would be if you are me and you answer Betting Talk’s questions.)”
Q: Order these three from most common to least common… The people making a lot of money in this industry have a background in A) poker, B) sports betting, C) stock trading/Wall Street/finance?
A: “Most common is none of those. Fantasy sports in more niche than people realize, and DFS is even more niche than regular fantasy sports and has its own game theory and many, many small intricacies. If I had to take a guess I would say Wall Street, poker, and sports betting in that order.”
Q: What’s the next big step the DFS industry has to take to become more mainstream?
A: “The DFS industry simply needs to market and advertise. Watch the World Series of Poker this year, and you will see DraftKings advertising all over the place. It has grown a lot already and will continue to grow. There are a lot of rumors floating around that one of the big boys (Yahoo, ESPN, Google) will enter the DFS market soon, and if they do then it will explode. Also, there is something to be said for dumbing down the game to make it a pick ’em format instead of the somewhat ‘convoluted for the average guy’ salary cap format.”
Q: Following up on that question, what happens when that “big boom” comes? The assumption has to be there would be much more “dead money” coming in, so does that change strategy or outlook at all?
A: “If the ‘big boom’ comes, then there will most definitely be more dead money in games. But, perhaps more importantly, the GPPs will expand and there could be more overlay on a daily basis. The large-field double-ups will definitely become softer, and they are already soft.
“The biggest misconception about DFS is that the rake makes it an unworkable situation, but keep in mind there is overlay every day if you know where to look, and all sites have loyalty programs that further reduce rake. If you can get figure out how to manipulate the affiliate programs, you can even further reduce rake. If you have a large bankroll you have a massive, massive advantage in DFS because in large-field GPPs you have the ability to make multiple teams in big tourneys and take full advantage of all overlay.
“Myself and my group have qualified for at least 20 major championships over three different sports. We already have a DraftKings, FanDuel, and StarStreet ticket for their respective baseball championships this year, which equals over $90,000 in liquidity.”
When the NFL draft takes place, it will represent a professional dream come true for the 224 college football players who get picked.
For most players, however, going pro will never be more than a fantasy. Fewer than 2% of college student-athletes ever play professional sports at any level for any amount of time.
But that statistic often fails to register with many of the thousands of young people across the nation who enter a university, singularly focused on the rare chance that they will join the ranks of professional athletes. I know this because I worked as a volunteer with Division I football players for the summers of 2015 to 2017 to help develop their leadership skills and build unity among team members. In that capacity, I learned directly from the football players that most of them were focused on going pro and that going to college was just a means to that end.
My impressions are consistent with a 2015 NCAA survey – the latest available – that shows 64% of Division I football players believe it is “somewhat likely” that they will become a professional.
Given that only 1 in 4,233 high school players go from high school to college to the pros, there is a giant gap between college players’ dreams and reality. In baseball, for instance, only 2.1% of all college players transition from college to the pros. Most other sports have lower rates of going pro than that.
For student-athletes who do not earn college degree, whether it’s because they’re no longer eligible to play, ran out of money for college or declared themselves as eligible for the NFL draft but didn’t get drafted, the end game is the same. They find themselves at the proverbial finish line without a degree or a professional contract. Clearly, this is not the goal.
Why a degree matters
While only one college football player wins the coveted Heisman Trophy each year, a college degree, on the other hand, is attainable by every player on every team. More importantly, a college degree enhances a person’s ability to get a job and earn a living. New research, however, shows that many college football players are not earning their degrees.
The troubling statistics can be found in “Black Male Student-Athletes and Racial Inequities in NCAA Division I College Sports,.” The report, by USC’s Shaun Harper, points out how at Power Five schools, black men make up 55% of their football teams and 56% of their men’s basketball teams, but just 2.4% of the overall undergraduate population.
Are the student-athletes being brought on campus to earn a degree or play sports? Harper’s research reveals that only about 55% of black male student-athletes graduate within six years. That’s significantly lower than the 60% of all black undergraduate men, 69.3% of all student-athletes and 76.3% of all undergraduate students who graduated within that time frame.
How To Make Money Playing Daily Fantasy Sports
Clash between academics and sports
It’s not hard to see why graduation rates are lower for players at schools where football is a priority. Being a college athlete is a demanding and intense full-time job. An NCAA survey, for example, revealed that practicing and playing college football alone required 43.3 hours per week. This practice time doesn’t include the time it takes to attend class, complete assignments and study for exams.
How To Make A Living Playing Fantasy Sports Cards
The lower graduation rates for student-athletes are troubling for many reasons, particularly for those who don’t get drafted. As the NCAA acknowledges in one of its ads, “there are more than 380,000 student-athletes and most of them will go pro in something other than sports.”
The best bet for student-athletes to realize their full potential, then, is to make sure that they stay dedicated to earning their degrees, while continuing to work on becoming professional athletes. This will enable student-athletes to continue to dream the illustrious dream and at the same time, finish the attainable degree.
But student-athletes cannot be expected to do this on their own. They also need the support of people at their institutions – from administrators to coaches to faculty – to help make reaching their academic goals just as important, if not more, as reaching their goals on the field.