How To Pick The Best Yahoo! Fantasy Football Contest To Enter

Not All Fantasy Football Contests Are The Same!

Presumably when you play fantasy football, your goal is to add some excitement to NFL game days, place a little wager and win some cash or at least not lose too much cash. The lineup you choose is, of course, very important but the contest you enter and the structure of the contest may be even more important unless you can regularly snag one of the top prizes. The big fantasy football sites provide all kinds of commentary on the players and the apps and interfaces for the different sites. Those things are important but they don’t help you choose the best contests to enter. In this article, we’ll look at how to pick the Yahoo! Fantasy Football contests that give you the best chance to win money or at least not lose as much!

There Are Specific Things To Look For On Yahoo! Fantasy Football To Increase Your Chances Of Winning.

All fantasy football sites are in business to make money. They make money by taking a portion of the contest entry fees. This is typically 10% to 15% of all entry fees for any given contest. For every $10 the site takes in in entry fees, they usually keep $1.00 to $1.50. This is known as the “rake”. If you look carefully at the fantasy football contests on Yahoo! you will find some contests where there is effectively no rake. Some Yahoo! Fantasy Football contests actually pay out more than they take in in entry fees. Is there anyone who likes to wager that wouldn’t prefer to place a bet where the house pays out more than it takes in?

What Should You Look For When Entering Yahoo! Fantasy Football Contests?

When looking for a paid fantasy football contest, there are a number of things to look for and include:

The “rake”, how much money if the site charging to run the contest? This is typically 10% to 15% but can be lower than that and may even be negative meaning the site pays out more in prize money than it takes in.
Is the contest guaranteed to run? If the contest has 100,000 entry slots and only 50,000 people signup and pay, will the contest still run or will it be cancelled?
Does the prize pool depend on the number of entries the contest receives?
Are there any incentives or promotions offered if you enter a given fantasy football contest? Sometimes a site will have a contest that costs $15 enter and give you $15 in site credits for a future bet whether you win or not. This is at least a buy one get one free bet and greatly increases your odds of coming out ahead.

During the 2021 football season, Yahoo! Fantasy Football offered many contests that paid out more than they took in or essentially offered “free” bets.

Let’s Look At The Yahoo! Fantasy Football NFL $1 Million Big Game Baller [$150K to First] Contest For The 2022 Superbowl.

First let’s look at the setup of the contest:

Yahoo! accepts 55,555 entries at $20 each
The contest is guaranteed to run even if it does not fill. The contest runs if 1,000 people enter. It runs of 55,000 people enter.
The total prize pool is 1 million dollars regardless of how much is take in in entry fees.
The top 14,000 places get prizes that are set before the contest starts.
Yahoo! collects $1,100,000 if they sell every single entry spot for the big Superbowl contest.
They pay out $1,000,000 in prizes. The rake is 10% of the pot. Yahoo! takes $100,000 right off the top IF every entry spot is filled. If less than 50,000 entries are received then Yahoo! pays out more in prize money than they take in.
For every $20 entry fee, Yahoo! pays out $18.00 IF they get 55,000 entries.
The top 14,000 places win $35.00 or more while everyone else wins nothing.
If there was no “rake” and Yahoo! paid out everything they took in

If Yahoo! fills all 55,000 of the $20 entry spots, this is a decent contest to enter because the rake is only 10%. 10% is fairly low overall. This Superbowl Fantasy Football contest becomes a much better contest to enter if it does not sell out since it is guaranteed to run and the prize pool is set before.

How did this fantasy football Superbowl contest play out?

Out of the 55,000 available entry spots only 38,295 spots filled.
Yahoo! only took in $765,900 (38,295*$20).
Because the contest was guaranteed to run and did not fill, Yahoo! took in $765,900 in entry fees but still paid out $1,000,000 in winnings.
For every $20 entry fee Yahoo! received, they paid out $26.11 in prize money.
Since only 14,000 prizes were paid out and there were 38,295 entries, 24,295 people paid $20 to enter and lost their $20.
While Yahoo! paid out more in prize money than they took in, plenty of people still didn’t win despite much improved odds.
Had the contest filled, it would have been slightly better than average. Since the contest was guaranteed to run with a fixed prize pool and did not fill, it became an excellent contest to enter. Entrants got back more in prize money than they put in the pool.
Look for contests guaranteed to run on Yahoo! that do not fill!

What Other Things Should You Look For To Increase Your Odds Of Winning (Or At Least Not Losing) On Yahoo! Fantasy Football?

If You Want To Maximize Your Chance Of Winning Look For Contests That Have [No Fee] or [Site Credit] In The Listing For The Contest.

Sometimes Yahoo! does run contests (and large ones) with no “rake” and they label these [No Fee] in the contest listing headline. During the 2022 Conference Championship games they ran the “NFL $500K Sunday Baller [$100K to 1st][No Fee]“
If you like to play for money when you play fantasy football and like to increase your odds of winning, these [No Fee] contests on Yahoo! are good ones to look out for! Yahoo! doe snot take a percentage of the prize pool.
Sometimes Yahoo! offers what amounts to “free” contests. These typically have an entry fee between $3.00 and $15.00 and contain [$X.XX Site Credit Single Entry] in the listing.
On Sunday, January 23, 2022 Yahoo! ran a two game slate for the NFL division championships “NFL $50K You Play, We Match [$15 Site Credit Single Entry]“
This contest had a $15 entry fee, accepted $3,800 entries and a prize pool of $50,000 with a 12.3% rake.
Regardless of whether you won anything in this contest, you got a $15.00 credit to use on Yahoo! for future fantasy football contests.
Yahoo! offered these at least a few weeks in a row. If you spent $15.00 one week and kept getting a $15.00 credit each week you could play every Sunday for $50,000 in prizes for a one time cost of $15.00. The odds of winning and coming out ahead by the end of the season would be quite good. Mathematically, Yahoo! loses money on this contest every time they run it! Of course that doesn’t mean that you will win but you’re odds of coming out ahead will be pretty good.

If You Want To Play Fantasy Football For Money, Pay Attention To The Contests You Are Entering To Maximize Your Chances Of Winning!

If you like to dabble a little bit in fantasy football and wager a few bucks on your lineups, you can increase your chances of winning and not losing by looking at the structure of each contest. If there are credits equivalent to the entry fee, you’ll be able to enter a future contest for free whether or not you win the one that offers the credit. Look for those contests and enter all of them to minimize your risk.
When you see large contests that are guaranteed to run, prepare some lineups and wait to see if the contests look like they will fill up. If the number of entries is well below the number of possible entries, the contest may pay out more than it takes in in entry fees. This isn’t as good of a deal as the matching site credits mentioned above but it does improve your chances of winning. Even if you don’t win you can take comfort knowing all the entry fees (and possibly more!) were paid out to other participants.
Look for contests that say [No Fee] in the listings. This indicates that there is no “rake” and the site is not taking any fee for running the contest. Every dollar paid in entry fees will be paid out to contest participants.

Look To Yahoo! For Your Best Fantasy Football Odds.

As competition in the fantasy football market heats up and more companies enter and fight for market share, their advertising budgets heat up. Most of them have deals with the big fantasy football sites that provide commentary lineup creation tools and related information. These fantasy football information sites get paid to get people to signup for the fantasy football and ports betting sites. They provide all kinds of information about how to pick lineups, player recommendations and projections.

Fantasy Football information sites don’t help you pick the contests to enter that help you increase your chances of winning. They don’t get paid to do that. They make more money steering you to sites like DraftKings that often have larger “rakes”, take more money off the top and have HUGE top prizes and fewer smaller prizes. That makes their fantasy football and other fantasy sports contests more like buying lottery tickets than playing games of skill. It minimizes your chance of smaller wins to stay even or make some money over time and greatly increases your chances of losing everything you bet. Next we’ll look at the Draft Kings big Superbowl contest and see how your odds of winning anything are much worse than the Yahoo! Superbowl contest dissected above.