It's been interesting to see the migration of online poker players over to daily fantasy sports (DFS). It definitely feels like the early days of online poker - tons of new sites popping up, heavy TV advertising, lots of new money coming into the "sport". I just started playing DFS this season and it's pretty addictive. Obviously, I don't think I'll be getting rich off it (the "I turned $5 into $50k" stories are just lottery winners essentially), but it's been fun (and a bit scary...) to get into the world of gambling without having to "know a guy". I've always played fantasy football for "fun" so it's been exciting to have a bit of cash on the line.<p>Daily fantasy is a whole new beast - it's at the intersection of data science, predictive modeling, quants, poker players, sports guys, Vegas, startups (FanDuel and DraftKings are killing it), bootstrapped entrepreneurs (RotoViz). You can make some serious money, put down $5 to make your Sunday afternoon more exciting, or play around with a new data modeling library on some interesting data.<p>There's a whole industry built around fantasy sports if you look just past the surface of ESPN Fantasy leagues. There are subscriptions sites offering premium content, people willing to sell you their Baynesian prediction models, ebooks about strategy, weekly video shows talking about the best plays. I read somewhere that fantasy football was actually worth more as industry than the NFL!<p>PS: If you want to try it out, here's a shameful affiliate link because I'm turning into a gamling degenerate: <a href="https://www.fanduel.com/?invitedby=swan3788&cnl=da" rel="nofollow">https://www.fanduel.com/?invitedby=swan3788&cnl=da</a>
This is a tough business to win as a player. The house is taking 8 - 10% rake meaning you have to have a 60% winning percentage just to break even. Much better business to be the house. Even if 30% of the players are highly skilled handicappers it's going to be very hard to consistently win this game. Sounds like fun to play, but as in all gambling enterprises, the real money comes from operating the casino, not playing there.<p>When I heard the fan duel ads on the radio and then saw it on ESPN, I couldn't believe that it was legal. Then I saw the law with the exception for fantasy sports and I was just super jealous of these legal sports book operators. Running an online sports book is like having a free money machine.
I have a lot of knowledge of advanced baseball statistic analysis, and played about $100 per day this year during the season, making a profit of ~$2000. This is my third straight winning season, but the first where I actually wrote code that spat out lineups.<p>I spent no money on data, everything you need is available for free.<p>If anyone has advanced knowledge of other sports and wants to collaborate, send me an email or tweet. Contact info in profile.<p>Here are my 2014 MLB results from Fanduel, the site I spent the majority of my time on:<p><pre><code> Entered $15,128.00
Won $17,022.04
Profit $1,894.04
ROI 12.52%
</code></pre>
Data:
<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rN8vhO1nZlojF-wiFSgqsH4Tapw2-s8dRjepN3ahdlM/edit#gid=1969450444" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rN8vhO1nZlojF-wiFSgq...</a>
I have never understood why daily games are legal. The outcomes can be determined by random events like injuries or the weather. How is this not gambling?
I've always wondered, do you need a licensing deal to use individual player stats etc. to run a site like this? If not, it seems like the barrier to entry would be quite low and you wouldn't even really need the network effects that poker requires.
I've been thinking about this recently. A developer could do so much better (he's still copying from spreadsheets). Who wants to put this guy out of business with me?