NFL fantasy betting has exploded over the past couple of years. It has been around for longer, but it’s only recently become mainstream practice, with FanDuel and Draft Kings ramping up advertising and commandeering national attention. Some of the popularity has toned down a bit in recent months. Legal battles in certain states arguing that this wasn’t a skill game, but another form of gambling being peddled as something else, turned off certain users or prohibited them form playing altogether.

Still, it remains really popular by any standard—and for good reason.

Today’s sports fans and gamblers don’t have the attention span they used to, because they don’t have to. Many other people just don’t want to go through push and pull and grind that is playing season-long fantasy football. It ties you to one set of players for an entire schedule. If your team is bad, you’re stuck. Most people cannot even make enough trades to salvage super slow starts.

Fantasy betting lets you pick a new team each week. That forces you to stay up on current events, in order to be in the know before each and every slate of games, but it also doesn’t chain you to one roster for weeks at a time. You get a fresh start in every league—an opportunity many before you have turned into a lucrative venture.

Check out the latest odds for the Super Bowl LVIII. The odds were last updated on August 10, 2023:

2024 Super Bowl Bovada BetOnline BetUS
Kansas City Chiefs +550 +600 +550
Buffalo Bills +850 +850 +900
San Francisco 49ers +850 +900 +900
Philadelphia Eagles +900 +900 +900
Cincinnati Bengals +900 +950 +900
Dallas Cowboys +1500 +1500 +1400
Los Angeles Chargers +2200 +2200 +2200
Jacksonville Jaguars +2200 +2200 +2200

Best Online Fantasy NFL Leagues

There are only a few NFL fantasy betting sites, which is the complete opposite of how it is when you’re betting on actual games. The market is still considered a niche one, so you’re not going to have a bunch of options at your disposal. Most notably, as of now, there is Draft Kings, FanDuel, DraftDay and Fantasy Draft. Give each of those sites a look to see if which, or how many, are right for you.

How To Win Fantasy NFL

Bargain buys are the key to successful NFL fantasy betting.

As we already discussed, spending a bunch of money on one particular player diminishes the quality of the rest of your roster by default, because you won't have as much coin to invest in the remaining slots. If you target players who don't cost as much, the average quality of talent you have at each position is going to increase, and that's more important than acquiring one or two superstuds. After all, it's the total score of your team, not any one individual player's score, that matters in the end.

Finding these bargain buys is also important because you want unique points—an aspect of NFL fantasy betting that often goes overlooked.

It's great that you picked up Drew Brees while his New Orleans Saints were playing the San Francisco 49ers. But do you really think you're the only one who thought of that? Of course not. A crap ton of people will have him on the roster as well.

All of a sudden, then, you spent a huge fraction of your budget on a player who doesn't technically stand out, because his score is pinned to so many rosters. By targeting players who won't be on as many rosters, you're bound to not only increase your chances of winning, but save money in certain spots—which, in the end, might allow you to add one of those common superstars as a stabilizing force, just with a more unique, and therefore valuable, supporting cast around him.

Finally, pay attention to the scoring rules for each league. How many points are touchdowns worth to quarterbacks? How about receivers and running backs? How many points per yards thrown do quarterbacks pick up?

Things like that are important, because they allow you draft players with those numbers in mind, thus allowing you to pick up those who are most likely to collect the most possible points.