Where can you play Underdog Fantasy?
If you’re involved in season-long fantasy football leagues or play daily fantasy sports (DFS), you have likely heard about best ball. Best ball is a draft-only fantasy format that removes the tiresome in-season management that is a hallmark of most season-long fantasy leagues.
Many sites now offer best ball contests in both season-long and DFS formats. These sites, like Underdog Fantasy, offer contests across several major sports. One best ball player, Pat Kerrane, took home $2 million last season for winning Underdog’s Best Ball Mania III contest (BBMIII), which had a $25 entry fee and and over 450,000 entrants.
As a site, Underdog offers the most comprehensive and wide-ranging menu of best ball contests. At the moment, Underdog has best ball season-long and playoff tournaments up for the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB.
They already have the $500,000 guaranteed Big Board: Superflex contest up for the coming 2023 NFL season, and you can expect another massive Best Ball Mania tournament (BBMIV) to open sometime soon as well.
You can get a 100% deposit match of up to $100 by signing up for a new Underdog Fantasy account to make sure you get into each of these tournaments. Click below to start drafting today!
Where is Underdog Fantasy legal?
Underdog has shown a lot of growth over the past few years. It’s initial Best Ball Mania event had just 43,200 entrants in 2019-2020 and a $1 million prize pool, but the most recent BBMIII contest last season had a total of 451,200 entrants and a $10 million prize pool.
Part of Underdog’s growth story has been the platform's ability to expand their reach into new states and districts.
As of now, best ball contests on Underdog are legal across all of the United States and Canada except for the following states and provinces:
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Louisiana
- Michigan
- Montana
- Nevada
- Washington
- Ontario (Canada)
Underdog also offers Pick’em contests, which are a form of single-player DFS. In pick’em contests, users build prop-based parlays with payouts that grow as additional legs are added. There are two different types of pick’em contests, Higher/Lower and Rivals.
Since single-player DFS and pick’em contests are a little more nuanced in terms of legality, many states treat them more like gambling and hence have different rules and regulations attached to them.
As of now, Underdog Pick'em contests are legal across all of the United States and Canada except for the following states and provinces:
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Michigan
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Tennessee
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Ontario (Canada)
In total, Underdog best ball and fantasy drafts are available in 40 states (and Canada). Additionally, Underdog Pick’em contests are available in 32 states (and Canada).
In the future, with sports betting and DFS becoming more prevalent, expect the list of ineligible states to shrink. For the latest in news and announcements on the legal front, be sure to follow Underdog Fantasy on Twitter.
What is Underdog Fantasy?
Underdog Fantasy is a DFS platform that is known for having some of the largest best ball contests in the industry. In particular, Underdog is known for large-field NFL best ball tournaments such as their flagship event, the Best Ball Mania tournament. As mentioned above, last year's BBMIII had a top prize of $2 million.
Unlike traditional DFS sites such as DraftKings or FanDuel, Underdog's fantasy contest offerings are almost exclusively snake draft formats.
While best ball and snake drafts remain their core offerings, Underdog also offers users the ability to wager on player props in parlay-style formats via their pick’em contests. Much like in sports betting, Underdog's Pick’em contests allow users to parlay player props offered by the site for big payouts.
Underdog’s mix of prop and draft-based contests are available for a variety of sports and make them unique to the daily fantasy space.
Underdog has two core offerings.
The first is best ball contests, both large-field tournaments as well as smaller DFS best ball contests.
Underdog's larger regular season and playoff best ball tournaments allow users to submit up to 150 entries each. Contestants enter snake drafts, which are offered over a lengthy period (sometimes months) until the contest fills and closes. The smaller DFS best ball contests are more fast-paced, shorter snake drafts that pay out at the end of each nightly slate.
The second is Underdog's Pick'em single-player fantasy contests. These are player prop-based contests where users build a parlay of props with a specific payout attached. The payouts go up as the player adds additional props to their parlay.
What is best ball?
Best ball is a relatively new type of contest in DFS and season-long fantasy sports. In a season-long best ball league or tournament, there is no in-season management, and your involvement with the team is done after completing the initial draft.
Every week during the season, the best combination of scores from your team (based on the league’s roster settings) will be automatically determined and added up to give you an overall score for the week.
At the end of the regular season (or playoff round), the team that has accumulated the most points is the winner. Many of the larger best ball tournaments on Underdog will have multiple rounds of playoffs.
Daily best ball contests use the same kind of drafting and automatic scoring format. However, in a daily best ball contest, the contest for that slate typically ends at the end of that single day's game or games.
With best ball growing in popularity, there is now a huge variety of leagues offered across many major sports. The most popular best ball format to date has been large-field tournaments, which have grown to include massive prize pools of up to $10 million in recent years.
What is Underdog Pick'em?
Underdog also has a Pick’em feature, which allows users to build prop-based parlays with specific payouts attached. There are two different prop options to choose from under Underdog's Pick’em game type, Higher/Lower and Rivals.
The Higher/Lower pick'em game type essentially asks contestants to make over/under prop bets on specific player stats. These bets are offered on several different statistical categories across many different sports.
The Rivals pick'em game type is a bit different, as it asks contestants to pick between two players on a slate. Often times, these bets will include a handicap attached to one of the players.
The payout options for Underdog's Pick'em contests are set for players beforehand and quite simple to understand. They use a ladder format where more plays will lead to a bigger payout.
- Two-play cards (pick two) = 3x payout
- Three-play cards (pick three) = 6x payout
- Four-play cards (pick four) = 10x payout
- Five-play cards (pick five) = 20x payout
Underdog fantasy and best ball drafts are available in many of the same states where their DFS contests are legal, as best ball is considered a pure DFS offering.
However, as mentioned above, Underdog's Pick’em contests don’t fall under the same umbrella and are considered more like sports betting, and so the pick'em contests are not available in certain states where best ball is legal.
How to download Underdog Fantasy
Underdog fantasy has both desktop and mobile capabilities. You can download the Underdog app on all Apple mobile devices in the app store.
To download the Underdog app on the Apple app store, follow the directions below:
- Go to the Apple app store and search “Underdog Fantasy Sports”, or simply click this link here.
- If the app is legal in your state or district, you can download it. If you can’t find the app, it's possible that Underdog is not currently legal in your state or district.
- Once on the Underdog Fantasy Sports app page, click “download” and then follow the directions to set up your account.
- You can fund your account with one of several different payment methods, including via PayPal or credit card. There are several withdrawal methods available as well depending on your location.
By signing up with the offer below, you can double the deposit that you make in step number four with a 100% deposit match of up to $100 on Underdog Fantasy. Click below to get started!
Current Underdog Fantasy and Pick'em contests
Underdog offers best ball contests across all of the major sports, including NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and PGA. The following best ball contests are currently featured in the Underdog Lobby
NFL
The Big Board: Superflex contest is already up and running for the upcoming 2023 NFL season on Underdog. The event takes place over Weeks 1 to 17 of the NFL season with a total of 56,200 entrants and a $500,000 prize pool.
Like most of Underdog’s best ball offers for the NFL, The Big Board: Superflex contest has four rounds. The qualifiers round runs from Weeks 1 to 14, the quarterfinals are Week 15, the semifinals are Week 16, and the championship round is Week 17.
One of the main features of the Big Board: Superflex contest is its distinct roster makeup, which replaces a WR starting position with a superflex starting position that allows each team to play two starting QBs each week.
The superflex starting position can be a QB, RB, WR, or TE, which adds massive value to the QB position. Whereas a typical roster strategy in a more traditional format may see most teams draft only two or three QBs, the addition of a superflex spot means that rosters should be emphasizing QBs early and possibly roster four or more QBs in total.
Look for many more NFL contests to be dropping on the Underdog app and website soon, including another large-field Best Ball Mania tournament, BBMIV. If you want to read up on Underdog’s largest event, you can see the rules and regulations for last year's BBMIII here.
NBA
Underdog is running best ball contests through the NBA playoffs. They have daily NBA contests for upcoming slates in the lobby through their battle royale best ball format.
In the battle royale format, there are no leagues or groups. Every contestant who completes a snake draft competes on a slate against every other snake draft entered into the contest. The NBA nightly battle royale contests consist of six superflex positions (PG, SG, SF, PF, and C).
Underdog also has larger tournaments in their lobby for the NBA playoffs. The Dance and The Waltz had $500,000 and $50,000 prize pools, respectively, and featured larger roster sizes. These events closed once the NBA playoffs began.
MLB
Much like their NBA contests, Underdog offers daily MLB contests for upcoming slates in the lobby through their battle royale best ball format. The daily best ball MLB rosters on Underdog consist of the following:
Underdog also ran large-field MLB best ball tournaments prior to the start of the season and may offer more large-field tournaments later in the season.
They also offered playoff best ball tournaments last season for MLB. The Pennant was a $100,000 best ball tournament that offered round-by-round action with each leg of the MLB postseason.
NHL
Underdog offers daily slates for the NHL as well as two best ball tournaments for the 2023 NHL playoffs. The Warmup is a $3 entry contest that features 5,580 entrants and a $15,000 prize pool. The Zamboni is a $10 entry contest that features 11,200 entrants with a $100,000 prize pool.
The rosters for Underdog's NHL tournaments consist of the following:
PGA
Underdog also recently began offering best ball contests for PGA events. The PGA best ball contests are focused on the major championships: the Masters, US Open, PGA Championship, and the Open Championship, also known as the British Open.
For 2023, Underdog featured the Albatross, a massive PGA best ball contest with a $100,000 top prize. The contest is now closed, but expect Underdog to run something similar next season.
Underdog Pick’em Contests
Underdog Pick'em contests are also available across a wide range of sports whenever there is a daily slate. On every slate, Underdog will put up a variety of player props and rivals offerings from which contestants can choose.
As of now, Underdog Pick’em offerings are available for the following sports:
- NFL
- NBA
- MLB
- NHL
- Soccer
- Tennis
- Esports
- PGA
- MMA
- Racing
- XFL
Get a 100% deposit match of up to $100 on Underdog Fantasy just for signing up! Follow the offer below to claim your deposit match.
