Fantasy football is a fast-growing pastime and a big-money industry nationwide, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will cost money for you to play.
While the majority of fantasy football leagues have a cost associated with playing in the form of an entry fee, there are still many outlets that offer the chance to play in public leagues for free. The largest and most popular fantasy football sites offer thousands of free options, which can be a chance for people to get an introduction to fantasy football and have fun without the risk of losing money.
Frequently Asked Questions
While there are many sites that offer chances to play fantasy football for free, the majority of leagues include an entry fee that can range from $20 to $1,000 or more for a given season. Players often spend more money on things like draft parties, league prizes and even unique punishment gifts for last-place finishers.
The most common cost associated with fantasy football is an entry fee, which is put into a prize pool that is paid out to the top-performing teams that season. There can be other costs as well, including draft parties, league prizes and draft kits to aid in the selection of players.
All of the largest and most popular fantasy football sites — including ESPN and Yahoo — offer plenty of free options for those who don’t want to pay an entry fee for their fantasy football teams.
Types of fantasy football leagues
Fantasy football leagues share a basic format, with participants selecting NFL players for their teams and amassing points based on the stats that these players accumulate that week.
Beyond this common format, there are endless variations ranging from standard leagues where participants match up against each other head-to-head every week to guillotine leagues that eliminate the lowest-scoring team every week until one winner is left.
Within these formats, there are chances to play in free leagues or paid leagues that involve a monetary entry fee. While there are a few exceptions — auction fantasy football leagues require participants to bid on players auction style and generally need a pool of real money to do so — nearly every variation can be played for free.
Playing fantasy football for free
There are some major benefits to playing fantasy football for free, especially for those just getting into the sport. Playing for free is a good way to learn basic gameplay and strategy without the added pressure of having to put money on the line. For veteran players, jumping into a free league offers a chance to try out new drafting or lineup strategies that can be used in other pay leagues.
Nearly all of the major fantasy football platforms offer free leagues, including some that cater to beginners. ESPN’s fantasy football platform lets people join ready-made public leagues, with the option to jump immediately into a draft. Yahoo Sports has a similar option.
There can be downsides to playing fantasy football for free. Participants can lose interest and leave the league, especially if they are out of contention to make the playoffs. That can create a competitive imbalance late in the season if some teams are no longer entering lineups.
Playing fantasy football for money
There are a range of options for those who want to play fantasy football for money. Most costs associated with the league are paid upfront in the form of annual buy-ins, with the money being kept together in a prize pool that is distributed to winners.
While there are a number of different types of payout structures, most leagues reserve the biggest prizes for the championship winner and team that scores the most total points during the regular season, with smaller prizes for second and third place.
Some leagues offer smaller weekly payouts to teams that score the most points that week or win some kind of other weekly challenge. Below is an example of a payout structure for a 12-player league with a $150 buy-in.
Daily fantasy football (for free or money)
Daily fantasy football is an option for people who don’t want to commit to an entire season. In daily fantasy football, competitors select a different team each week based on a pre-set budget or from a specific pool of players. Daily fantasy contests can be for the entire week or even within a single game.
These contests can have tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of competitors, with entry fees starting at $.25 and prizes as large as $1 million for the winners.
Daily fantasy football has grown in popularity through sites like FanDuel and DraftKings. While daily fantasy football is most commonly played for money, these platforms also offer many free tournaments.
Costs to play fantasy football
The most common cost associated with fantasy football is the annual buy-in fee, which is held by the league and distributed out to winners of regular-season titles and playoffs. Many leagues choose a low-stakes entry fee, with a poll of fantasy football commissioners conducted on Reddit’s Fantasy Football subreddit finding that $20 was the most popular price for low-stakes leagues.
In these leagues, the entry fee is mostly meant to add a bit of extra competition.
“I play mostly for fun and bragging rights so $20-50 is the sweet spot for me,” one commissioner wrote. “It’s enough to keep people generally invested and not so much to prohibit people from joining.”
On the other side, there are leagues with entry fees that can cost thousands of dollars. National Fantasy Football Championship, for example, hosts high-stakes leagues with entry fees up to $20,000 that pay as much as $160,000 to winners.
