Giving Yahoo DFS it's Due...

The biggest news in the world of DFS is Yahoo entering the marketplace.  I haven't heard enough opinion on it, which I believe is because most podcasts & websites, simply aren't allowed to talk about it.  Draft Kings & Fan Duel have strategic partnerships with virtually everybody.  And smart sponsors don't like you talking much, if at all about the competition.

I gave my initial impression on Yahoo DFS the day it rolled out.  I've got a few games under my belt both in Head to Head and Tournament Style.  It's hard to pass judgment before really getting to know the site.  But from what I seen so far, I like it.  My initial impression was a little negative, not because Yahoo DFS was poorly designed, but because I was expecting an awful lot from them, because their Fantasy products have been so good for so long.

Yahoo's Game Lobby

Honestly, Yahoo DFS is as good as anything out there.  Not better, certainly not worse, but as good. I heard someone on the Tony Cincotta podcast describe them as "Taking the best ideas from both Fan Duel and Draft Kings," which I think sums it up pretty well.  The Yahoo site basically takes the clean, almost oversimplified web presence of Fan Duel, which more people are familiar with; overlays it with a game that is more reminiscent of the better baseball experience one gets on Draft Kings, with a Game Selection Lobby that looks just like Victiv.  This being said, I can now revisit my opinion.

Things I knew I'd  Like

What A Yahoo Lineup card Looks like

• They use the much more playable two pitcher format.
• They allow interday player substitutions before the start of the actual baseball game.
• The interaction between my daily and season long play

Things that grew on me.

• The 8 points for a pitcher win.

At first it seemed like two much for such an unpredictable stat category, but in reality it normalize the over scored strikeout stat versus the good pitcher who gets a Win more often than a loss but doesn't have the K's.

• The $200 salary system.

I thought you wind up paying a larger percentage of your budget on Pitching. Take today's Max Scherzer, he's $62 on Yahoo (31% of budget), $14K on Draft Kings (28%), and $12K on Fan Duel (34%), certainly on par.  And the cheapest player on Yahoo is $7 (.035%), while FanDuel's $2200 (.063%) and Draft Kings $2K (.04%) are actually higher.  It just looks worse simply because it's different.

Things I hope will change for the better.

What a Yahoo head to head match looks like

• Site service fees are still high.

I hoped they're power in the industry could move the service fee to something more reasonable.  I would gladly trade the deposit bonus for better winnings, which brings with it a better chance of noticeable profitability.

• Lack of deposit bonuses.

I've been scared to deposit any money and have only played the very small amount I already had on credit with Yahoo (less than $7).  I fear that when they roll this out, it will be a first time depositor bonus, and I don't want to not be a first time depositor when that time comes. 

• Some innovation in the DFS game

I was hoping for something smart and new, and what they gave me was an amalgam of the best DFS offers so far.  I still think this is coming.  I see the mid-season baseball launch as a "soft" opening to get the bugs out before Football Season.

Objectively, speaking, I think the site is just as playable as Draft Kings, and jumps immediately into my number #2 spot for DFS baseball.  I hope that it enhances competition to birth innovation and drive down costs.  Yahoo, having the player retention part of the game already won, has the capacity to be everything we hoped.

Ranking the DFS Sites by Popularity

In my last post, I basically ranted about my displeasure with Fan Duel and their daily baseball game.  I posed the question, "How do they keep winning awards?" with a clearly inferior baseball product.  Having access to the internet, I decided to google the question.  I stumbled across a listing for the Alexa rankings for each of the DFS sites.  The article tabulated the data for each site in December, right at the peak of Football Season,  With a few handy taps on my keyboard I was able to recreate that list for today, smack dab in the middle of the baseball season.  Yahoo isn't in the mix, partly because it didn't exist back in December, but partly because it doesn't parse out Yahoo DFS from Yahoo proper, but for reference Yahoo is the 5th most visited website today.

US Alexa Ranking	December 2014	July 2015	Change
Fan Duel	274	1716	-1442
Draft Kings	668	1789	-1121
Victiv	14477	46388	-31911
Fantasy Aces	37718	52524	-14806
Draft Day	17779	67845	-50066
Fantasy Feud	67868	98546	-30678
Fantasy Score	60703	197433	-136730

Fan Duel
I love a good statistical table and the trends it can reveal.  Fan Duel's 274 ranking during Football Season is formidable.  And something that should be noted.  I mused that maybe their DFS Football is awesome.  Well, if people flocking to the site is any indication, and it probably is, their Football game is something I deeply look forward to playing come September.  Let this serve as a public apology to the good folks at Fan Duel for any thing I may have done to offend.

Draft Kings
During baseball season, second place Draft Kings basically runs neck-and-neck with the market leader Fan Duel.  I think this means that the typical DFS player knows what I generally have hinted at elsewhere on this site.  Draft Kings lays out a really good product for DFS baseball, arguably the best out there.  The 668 ranking during Football Season shows strong performance and hints at what I perceive to be the Draft Kings strategy:  To be strong across the board at all games.  As they have rolled out sports like Soccer, NASCAR, and Golf into the DFS world, all with very playable systems, I think this assumption is accurate.

Football Numbers vs. Baseball Numbers
The huge dropoffs for DFS baseball versus DFS football, may make me rethink my opinion on the importance of longer year long sports like Baseball and Basketball.  When Fan Duel jumps from 1716 to 274, it does not translate to 6.25x as many hits, but a number far greater.  And the drop off for baseball is pretty staggering across the board.  If this DFS football boost brings 10x the players to your site in the fall, then a 17 game season plays out function like a 170 game season.  In other words Football is probably more important than Baseball within the DFS universe.  Fan Duel's strategy of focusing on the Football Marketplace may not be visionary, but certainly is sound.

There's more to be gleaned here, but these the big ideas.

So who has the best DFS site out there?  I am reminded of a similar question I was asked a decade ago.  As a whiskey drinker, I was asked do you prefer Bourbon or Scotch?  Both of them being separate apexes in the domain of dark spirits, I was perplexed.  I finally answered, "I love them both, and I find myself more drinking Bourbon in the Summer and more Scotch in winter, as it just seems right to do it that way."  I don't know yet, but maybe Draft Kings is my Summer Love, and Fan Duel rules my Winters.  And maybe it will just seem right to do it that way.  And maybe my dabbling into other sites is my occasional romance with Tequila or Rum or Irish Whiskey.  I don't know how Yahoo fits this metaphor, It may very well be the more universally loved Beer & Wine of DFS.

The Clayton Kershaw Effect....

Noticed something going into today's games.   I wasn't looking forward to playing DFS baseball today and I isolated the cause.

Clayton Kershaw

I love the guy.  One helluva a hurler.  But you face the dilemma of paying a boatload of money for him and fielding a mediocre batting roster; or not fielding him, having a decent lineup otherwise, and facing the guy in way to many games.  He was $13,000 on Fan Duel!!! Out of $35,000.  You get on $22,000 to field 8 batters.  You are not getting any good hitters with him on your roster.  Even his $12,400 on Draft Kings isn't easy to swallow and field a roster you can go into the day's games confident in.

And then as I listened to the CBS fantasy baseball podcast in my car, they basically said you have to field Clayton Kershaw today.  And they only play FanDuel.  They tagged him a "slam dunk."  How could a Fan Duel player love expensive Kershaw days?

Then it hit me, it's the big problem with Fan Duel.  With it's one pitcher format and scoring system that gives average pitchers as many points as a hitter who goes 2-5 with a Home Run and 3 RBI (8.25 pts), the advantage of Kershaw is that everybody takes him.  So that Pitcher is taken out of the pitcher making the game, not single position dependent for a change. You can actually look forward to a game where a single less than stellar pick doesn't sink your whole fleet.

It makes the game a fair fight.  A situation where you might have an interesting matchup for the night. Your scrub hitters versus my scrub hitters.  Not something I really want to put money on, but more interesting than normal.  Which kind of explains why I haven't got too excited about my time on Fan Duel.  It's setup leads to far too many uninteresting nights (as dull when I lose or win because of the Pitcher score spacing). How do they lead the marketplace? How do they win awards from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association for best product?  Such is the mysteries of our faith.  Their DFS Football must be awesome, I guess.

Clayton Kershaw did not disappoint versus the hapless NY Mets.  He went 9 inning for the win, with 3 hits allowed, no walks, and 11 strikeouts.  He scored 24 points on Fan Duel, 4 points more than the next best guy there (Franscisco Liriano's 20).  Kershaw racked up 49.45 on Draft Kings 14.05 ahead of the #2 guy (again Liriano).

I didn't really play today.  I did toss out $7 on the late slate, but my heart wasn't in it.  It looks like I'll get $3.60 back, but I probably should have sat the day out.