Photo by Andrew Harrer

The home screens of the popularly played fantasy football leagues, FanDuel and DraftKings.

The number of fantasy football participants has skyrocketed over the past few years. With new companies like FanDuel and DraftKings, fantasy football has impacted the popularity of football. Some students at Dreyfoos have invested a lot of time and money, and gained little reward.

“I’ve been using FanDuel every week since football season came back,” strings junior Andrew Barrett said. “So far I have put in around $300 and won back around $60.”

The idea behind FanDuel and DraftKings that is tantalizing to sports fans is simple. On the website, it will bring you to a screen and give you a $60,000 salary cap.From here, you are your own general manager. You have the option of purchasing players to mesh together a team while also balancing how much money you have, and it puts you in the shoes of a general manager.

“With FanDuel I’m able to use what I know about football and make any type of team I want,” band junior Derrek Brown said. “I can pick my favorite players and watch football while cheering them on, it’s really enjoyable.”

DraftKings and FanDuel both have weekly gameplay options to choose from. One style of gameplay, would be head to head tournaments, which is 1 on 1 and gives the players a 50 percent chance of winning money. The most popular type of gameplay is tournament, where the greater the risk people take, the higher the reward. In tournaments, the amount of people playing ranges in the thousands to hundred of thousands with entry fees usually around $5 to $25.

Every Tuesday, FanDuel and DraftKings will file your winnings into your account, which can be withdrawn at any time. If you make over $600 you will be charged a tax on your withdrawal. While this may incite some, the reality is these odds are near impossible to win. According to a study conducted by the Sports Business Journal, 80 percent of participants will end up losing money.

“The money-losing players tend to get lucky, win a few times, reinvest the prize money, and eventually lose even more,” Bloomberg writer Joshua Brustein said.
This has been controversial topic as of late, and many people think FanDuel and DraftKings just branches off from gambling and should be illegal for underage players. On Thursday, Oct. 15 the Nevada Gaming Commission ruled daily fantasy leagues could no longer be played in its state.

“Daily fantasy sports involves wagering on the collective performance of individuals participating in sporting events,” The Gaming Control Board said. “Daily fantasy sites must obtain licensing from the Nevada Gaming Commission to continue operating.”

The reason daily fantasy sports are legal is because they are considered to require skill. When creating your team, you gather statistical facts and knowledge about players and put the facts to the test. In 2006, the federal government passed a law called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act that established fantasy sports as a game of skill and not a game of chance. Congress is currently reviewing the legality of online fantasy sports.

However, the real issue at hand is the amount of money students are wasting on fantasy football. Communications senior Joshua Lawrence started getting into FanDuel at the beginning of this football season.

“You never know what’s going to happen and I think that excites people,” Lawrence said. “A good friend of mine and I made a team with a high entry fee, and everything was going great. Then suddenly our running back tore his ACL and we lost all our money.”

Students are easily deceived by countless advertisements and famous spokesmen into thinking they have a chance to win serious money. If they become more aware of the slim chances they have of winning, maybe they will think twice before spending so much money online.