Introducing FanDuel

A huge name in US Fantasy Sports, FanDuel arrives on these shores with a game built specifically for a UK audience.

The game has been created from the ground up over the past 18 months, at times involving members of the Fantasy Football Scout community, who were part of a beta test during Euro 16.

FanDuel has launched today and we’re very proud to announce that we’ll be supporting the game throughout the new season, running tips and weekly articles to help guide those of you who get involved.

FanDuel will be hosting custom Fantasy Football Scout contests, including free entry options, and will also be devising tournaments over the course of the 2016/17 campaign.

What is FanDuel?

FanDuel should sit perfectly with the Fantasy Football Scout community.

The concept will be very familiar – you have £100 million to build a team of 11 players and you can enter this selection in as many of the available contests as you choose. You can, of course, create multiple teams and enter numerous contests to increase your chances of winning.

The player prices change week-to-week based on player performance and, as with many of these games, there’s real appeal in attempting to exploit value options within the player list.

That’s certainly what we’ll be trying to help you achieve with our Weekly Shop and dedicated FanDuel articles.

The contests allow you to tinker with your selection right up until kick-off, so if you’re able to monitor team sheets and react quickly to opportunities, these can sometimes offer an advantage.

For now squads for the Gameweek will be locked when the first match gets underway.

This single-deadline rule is soon to be addressed, though. Typically, squads will be locked as the kick-offs go by, so your players involved in the early fixture will be locked first, allowing you to continue to swap out the players in your starting XI who are due to play later.

There are various contest formats to enter and, while those with higher entry fees will typically offer the bigger prizes, there will be large pots available for the smaller entry fee contests, depending on the number of entrants.

Each week, there will always be at least one free entry contest for those looking to get involved.

Why Should I Play?

FanDuel ignored the option of importing their US game mechanics and instead invested in building something new and fresh.

Not only does this mean that the game is tailored to us as Fantasy Football managers, it also ensures that every player starts from scratch.

FanDuel begins as a level playing field.

You won’t be up against veteran players armed with proven methods and complex spreadsheets – even those who have played Daily Fantasy Sports for years will come into this game with little or no experience of the scoring.

That means that the Fantasy Football Scout community and other experienced Fantasy Football managers have the opportunity to become established and successful FanDuel players.

When you delve into the scoring system, you’ll see that it sits well with us all.

FanDuel use a rich variety of match actions, all devised from Opta data, to power their scoring.

Uniquely, clean sheets are only a scoring factor for goalkeepers.

Instead, all players are rewarded for tackles, clearances, blocks and interceptions. Those scoring methods obviously favour defenders, whilst ball-winning midfielders also come to the fore – a rarity for Fantasy Football.

Of course, our Members have access to a five-year archive of all the key data and we’ve already created custom tables to help FanDuel players with selection.

You can view the full FanDuel scoring matrix here.

Our short experience in the Beta over the summer told us that it’s a very well balanced scoring system; there is no single dominating statistic and FanDuel have reacted to feedback to tweak the scoring for the final release.

The game will have you considering players that you’ve never looked at before, building teams that look very different to traditional Fantasy Football lineups. That can only be a good thing.

How Do I Start?

You can register for a free account via this link.

When you sign up, enter the promocode “SCOUT” and FanDuel will refund your first paid entry fee, up to £10, as free entry credit if you don’t win cash

After that, you can begin creating your first lineup and then choose to enter any of the opening weekend’s contests.

There’s a free-for-all contest available in the lobby and we’ve already set up a Fantasy Football Scout contest that offers a total of £200 in prizes.

This costs just £1 to enter and is available for 230 entrants – the top 57 places will collect at least £2, with the winner earning £25 and runner-up collecting £15.

This week and on several occasions over the season we’ll be offering special contest options.

Look out for our full strategy guide to the game next week and also our regular Weekly Shop and FanDuel Focus articles over the course of the season.