Underdog Fantasy Review

The short version: if you want quick over/under player-prop entries with fixed multipliers, Underdog’s pick’em is direct competition for the pick’em contests at PrizePicks. If you want season-long drafting with no waiver-wire management, Underdog’s best ball is the category leader and the reason many serious fantasy players keep an account. Very few sites do both well, which is what separates Underdog from single-format rivals and from salary-cap operators like the classic DFS lobby at DraftKings.

Underdog was launched in 2020 by Jeremy Levine along with several colleagues from DRAFT, the daily fantasy company Levine had founded and sold. That DRAFT sale is the key to understanding Underdog’s DNA. In 2017, Paddy Power Betfair (now Flutter) acquired DRAFT in a deal reported at up to $48 million, roughly $19 million up front with the rest tied to performance. The Paddy Power Betfair executive who drove that acquisition was CEO Breon Corcoran. Nearly a decade later, the two men are back in business together, which we will return to below.

Underdog raised money in stages rather than through one giant round. It pulled in about $10 million in 2021 from a group of high-profile backers including Mark Cuban, Kevin Durant and NFL quarterback Jared Goff. A 2022 Series B of roughly $35 million, with participation from funds tied to BlackRock and Acies, valued the company at about $485 million. In March 2025 a Series C of about $70 million led by Spark Capital pushed Underdog past a $1.23 billion valuation, making it a fantasy-sports unicorn. Total outside funding sat around $140 million.

The defining ownership event came on July 31, 2026, when London-listed online-trading firm IG Group agreed to acquire Underdog in a deal worth up to about $1.3 billion. The structure is an upfront enterprise value near $1.1 billion, paid through a mix of new IG shares and roughly $380 million in cash, plus an earnout of up to about $200 million tied to Underdog’s 2026 revenue. Underdog’s management team is eligible for a separate incentive plan that could pay out as much as $850 million over time. The transaction is expected to close in late 2026 or early 2027, and Jeremy Levine is set to report directly to IG Group CEO Breon Corcoran, the same executive who bought DRAFT from Levine years earlier. IG’s stated motivation was less about fantasy contests than about Underdog’s newly built prediction-market exchange, discussed later in this review.

On the legal and policy side, Underdog hired Nicholas Green as its first in-house general counsel in 2022. Green came from a role as head of public policy at Skillz and was previously a partner at law firm Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, and he has been the public face of Underdog’s argument that its games are contests of skill rather than sports wagering. Underdog also runs a notable content and media arm, producing sports podcasts such as “Gil’s Arena,” “Section 10” and “Baseball is Dead,” which feed its audience and marketing funnel.

Everything runs through a single account and a single wallet. You can move a balance between pick’em, best ball, the sportsbook (where available) and the prediction market without separate deposits. Functionally, though, the two fantasy products are worlds apart:

• Pick’em (Higher/Lower) is a fast, sit-down-and-play prop game. You choose two or more player stat lines, call each Higher or Lower than Underdog’s projection, and win a fixed multiplier if you are right. It is closest in feel to a prop parlay.
• Best Ball is a season-long or event-based draft game. You snake-draft a roster, then never touch it again — Underdog automatically starts your highest-scoring players each week. There are no trades, waivers or lineup decisions after the draft ends.

Because the two games appeal to different players, Underdog effectively competes on two fronts at once. Sites such as the drafts-and-picks lineup at Sleeper also run both formats, but Underdog’s best-ball prize pools and pick’em liquidity are among the deepest in the category.

Pick’em is the product most casual users open first. Underdog posts a projection for a player stat — Patrick Mahomes 238.5 passing yards, a guard’s 24.5 points-plus-rebounds-plus-assists, a pitcher’s strikeouts — and you predict whether the real result will land Higher or Lower. You combine multiple picks into one entry, and every pick has to reflect your read on that projection. Individual selections can carry a difficulty multiplier: an easier-looking pick might apply a 0.7x adjustment that shrinks your potential payout, while a tougher line might apply a 1.5x boost that increases it. That per-pick weighting is a meaningful difference from flat pick’em apps, because two five-pick entries do not necessarily pay the same amount.

A Standard entry, which Underdog has marketed as a Power play, is all-or-nothing: every pick must hit for the entry to win, and the reward for that risk is the top multiplier. The baseline payouts scale with the number of legs:

Underdog has adjusted these baseline numbers over time and applies the per-pick multipliers described above, so your actual quoted payout can differ from the table. Treat these as the anchor values, then read the payout the app shows before you submit.

Flex entries trade top-end multiplier for insurance. A Flex entry of three or more picks still pays if you miss one leg, and larger entries are double-flexed so they can survive two misses. The reduced payouts look roughly like this:

The trade-off is clear at the top of the ladder: a clean eight-pick Flex can pay 80x, but you accept a much lower multiplier than the theoretical parlay math because you are buying the ability to whiff once or twice. If a pick is voided or ends in an exact tie, Underdog recalculates the entry as though that leg was never there — a five-pick Flex with one void settles as a four-pick Flex.

Rivals is a head-to-head variation of pick’em. Instead of judging one player against a projection, you compare two players in the same statistical category, often within the same game, and pick which one comes out ahead after a spot adjustment. Rivals entries slot into the same multiplier structure as standard pick’em, so a Rivals slate of two to five matchups pays on the same scale. It is a useful format for game environments where you have a strong read on one player relative to another but are unsure of the absolute number.

Pick’em Champions is Underdog’s answer to the regulatory pressure that hit the “against the house” model. In Champions, you still choose Higher or Lower on player stats, but you are competing against other users rather than against Underdog. Each entry earns Champions Points based on how difficult and how accurate your picks are, and a shared prize pool is divided proportionally among the field. This peer-to-peer structure is what allows Underdog to keep a pick’em-style game live in several states that prohibit the traditional house-banked version. It is the same regulatory workaround that competitors have leaned on, and it is worth knowing which version your state actually offers before you build an entry, because the payout dynamics are different.

Bettors comparing prop-style fantasy apps often line Underdog up against the pick-based contests at Boom Fantasy and PrizePicks. Underdog’s edge is that the same account also gives you access to the best-ball product below, which those pure pick’em apps do not match.

The projection is the whole game in pick’em, so understanding where it comes from helps. Underdog sets each line as its own estimate of a player’s median outcome, not as a betting-market price with juice baked in the way a sportsbook total is. That has two practical consequences. First, lines can move as news breaks — a backfield injury, a starting-pitcher scratch, a change in a team’s projected pace — and Underdog can remove or resettle picks when a player’s role changes materially before lock. Second, because there is no traditional vig on a single line, the house edge lives in the payout multipliers rather than the number, which is exactly why the per-pick 0.7x to 1.5x adjustments exist: they nudge the effective price of each selection. Sharp pick’em players hunt for lines they believe are mispriced relative to their own projections and avoid stacking too many correlated legs that all depend on the same game script.

Pick’em and best ball draw from Underdog’s full sports menu, though the mix of available markets shifts with the calendar. Core coverage includes:

Stat settlement follows official league and stat-provider data. Underdog grades a pick as it stands when the relevant game or slate concludes, and a projection line ending exactly on the number is treated as a tie or void depending on the rule for that market, which is why the void-adjustment mechanics above matter.

Best ball is where Underdog earned its reputation among serious fantasy players. The concept removes the most tedious part of season-long fantasy. You draft a full roster in a snake draft, and from that point forward you make no decisions at all — no lineups to set, no injuries to react to, no waiver claims. Each week, Underdog automatically counts your highest-scoring eligible players at each position, so your “best ball” lineup is always optimal in hindsight. It rewards drafting well and punishes nothing about your weekly attention span, which is exactly why it scales to hundreds of thousands of entries.

Drafts come in two speeds. Fast drafts use a 20- or 30-second pick clock and finish in well under an hour, ideal for filling large tournament fields quickly. Slow drafts give each manager up to an 8-hour clock per pick, stretching a draft across days and rewarding research. A standard NFL best-ball draft runs 18 rounds and produces this roster:

• 1 QB
• 2 RB
• 3 WR
• 1 TE
• 1 FLEX
• 10 bench

Entry fees span a wide range, from a few dollars up past $100 for the marquee events. Underdog has become known for a menu of dog-breed-themed best-ball tournaments at escalating stakes, historically including the Chihuahua at $4, the Puppy at $5, the Golden at $10, the Chow Chow at $50, the Dalmatian at $101, the Bulldog at $500 and the Mastiff at $2,500. The naming is whimsical, but the tiers let players pick a stake that matches their bankroll while playing the same underlying game.

Best Ball Mania is the centerpiece of Underdog’s calendar and the single largest guaranteed-prize contest in fantasy sports. The edition for the 2026 NFL season is Best Ball Mania VII. It carries a $25 entry fee and allows a maximum of 150 entries per user. For Best Ball Mania VII, Underdog structured the field at roughly 672,336 total first-round entries spread across about 56,028 twelve-person draft groups.

The prize scale is set by the immediately preceding edition, Best Ball Mania VI, which guaranteed a $15 million total prize pool with a $2 million top prize, a $1 million second-place prize, and a minimum of about $70,000 for reaching the top 20. Best Ball Mania VII returns at the same $25 entry and 150-entry cap and the same flagship, eight-figure guarantee scale. If you want the exact final guarantee for the current edition, confirm it on the Best Ball Mania VII rules page in-app, since Underdog finalizes the number as the field fills — but the multi-million-dollar top prize and $15 million-class pool are the benchmark this event has held.

The tournament plays out over the full NFL season with a bracket-style playoff. The regular season runs Weeks 1 through 14, with cumulative scoring. The top finishers from each 12-person draft group advance into the playoff rounds across Weeks 15, 16 and 17, the field narrowing through pods until a small championship round decides the top prizes in the final week. In Best Ball Mania VI, that structure sent two advancers per draft group into a Week 15 round, progressed through larger pods in the semifinals, and left several hundred entries alive for the Week 17 finale. It is a format that rewards drafting a roster built to spike in one huge week, not just to be steady.

Because best ball removes in-season management, the entire skill of the game lives in the draft. A few structural features of Underdog’s format drive how experienced players approach it. The 18-round, 20-man rosters with only one starting quarterback and one tight end push most drafters to wait on those single-slot positions and load up on running backs and wide receivers, where the three-WR-plus-flex requirement creates the most weekly scoring volume. Underdog publishes average draft position (ADP) that updates constantly, and third-party analysts build rankings specifically for the platform, because a player’s value is tied to Underdog’s exact roster and scoring settings rather than to generic fantasy value.

Two concepts dominate tournament play. The first is stacking — drafting a quarterback together with his own pass catchers so that a big passing game lifts multiple roster spots at once, which is especially valuable in the single-week playoff rounds of Best Ball Mania where you need a ceiling outcome, not a steady one. The second is diversification across many entries: with up to 150 lineups allowed in Best Ball Mania, serious players spread exposure across different player combinations and draft slots rather than cloning one roster, so that no single injury sinks their whole tournament. Cash-style and smaller-field best ball plays reward the opposite instinct — safer, higher-floor rosters — since the goal is to finish in a broad money pool rather than to spike one championship week.

Best Ball Mania is a large-field tournament, but it is not the only shape best ball takes on Underdog. Alongside season-long tournaments with big top-heavy payouts, Underdog runs smaller-field drafts and weekly-scoring events. Tournament-style contests concentrate prize money at the top and reward a boom roster, while flatter, smaller drafts pay a larger share of the field and reward consistency. Weekly best ball compresses the same draft-and-forget idea into a single week of scoring, giving players a faster loop than a 17-week season. The common thread is that once your draft ends, the software does the rest.

Beyond the NFL flagship, Underdog runs best-ball drafts for other sports and events: NBA best ball, MLB best ball, golf best ball around the majors, a World Cup best-ball product for the 2026 soccer tournament, and college-focused events such as Best Bowl Mania tied to the bowl season. The shared appeal is the same no-management format, so a player who likes the draft-and-forget rhythm of Best Ball Mania can stay engaged year-round.

State availability is the single most important thing to check before signing up, and it is also the most volatile. The prop-style pick’em market was hit hard by regulators in 2024 and 2025, so what is offered in your state depends on which product you mean. Underdog splits into three buckets by state, and the map changes often.

Underdog’s fantasy products are available in roughly 40 states. The list has recently included Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Within that group, not every state gets every product.

Traditional house-banked pick’em is offered in a subset of the available states — on the order of 34. In several states that restrict “against the house” contests, Underdog substitutes Pick’em Champions, the peer-to-peer version described earlier, so residents can still make Higher/Lower entries but against other players rather than the platform. College Pick’em faces tighter rules still and has been unavailable in states including Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee and Vermont even where the pro pick’em game runs. In states where no pick’em variant is allowed, best ball frequently remains available on its own, because season-long drafting is treated more favorably under most state fantasy laws.

Underdog has not been available in Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nevada and Washington. These are generally states with restrictive fantasy statutes or entrenched sports-betting regimes that leave no room for the DFS model.

The reason for all this fragmentation is a wave of state pushback. Florida’s Gaming Control Commission sent cease-and-desist letters to Underdog, PrizePicks and Betr on January 31, 2024, and the operators pulled their against-the-house pick’em from the state around March 1, 2024. In March 2025, Underdog settled with New York regulators over a dispute tied to the fantasy license it had operated under, withdrawing its pick’em product from the state and covering back taxes, while keeping the door open to a future permanent license. Additional states, among them Massachusetts, Arkansas, Maryland, West Virginia and Wyoming, have either issued warnings or written rules that constrain the prop-style format. A federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of New York in February 2025 argued the pick’em product functions as an unlicensed sportsbook rather than a fantasy game. This pattern is not unique to Underdog; the whole class of “DFS 2.0” prop-style operators came under coordinated regulatory scrutiny in 2024 and 2025, with several state gaming boards concluding that against-the-house player-prop contests looked like sports betting without a betting license. Underdog’s consistent response, argued publicly by its general counsel, is that its contests are games of skill, and its shift toward peer-to-peer Champions play in contested states, followed by its move into federally regulated prediction markets, is part of the same strategy of finding a durable legal footing for its games. The practical takeaway for players: always confirm in the app what is offered where you live, because availability can change between seasons.

Underdog is no longer only a fantasy company. It launched Underdog Sportsbook in North Carolina on March 11, 2024, entering the licensed online sports-betting market. To secure market access it partnered with McConnell Golf, operator of Sedgefield Country Club near Greensboro, home of the PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship. What made the launch notable technically was that Underdog built the sportsbook on its own core technology stack rather than licensing a third-party platform, which CEO Jeremy Levine described as a first for a U.S. sportsbook. The book offers the wager types fantasy rules do not permit, including game outcomes, team markets and player props, all inside the same app and wallet as the fantasy products. Underdog also held market access in Ohio, and it withdrew a Missouri sports-betting license application in late November while remaining a licensed DFS operator there. The sportsbook footprint remains far smaller than its fantasy footprint, which reflects a deliberate choice: rather than race into every regulated betting state behind DraftKings and FanDuel, Underdog concentrated on products where it could differentiate. The North Carolina book gave it a real, regulated betting license and proof that its own technology could run a full sportsbook, but the company’s growth energy shifted toward fantasy and, later, prediction markets rather than a state-by-state sportsbook rollout.

The bigger strategic move came on July 18, 2026, when Underdog launched its own federally licensed prediction-market exchange. Underdog obtained the full regulatory stack from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — registering as a Designated Contract Market, a Derivatives Clearing Organization and a Futures Commission Merchant — which it described as the first time a sports company held the complete prediction-market license set. The exchange, wholly owned and operated by Underdog, lets users trade contracts on sports, culture and other events directly inside the app. Before building its own venue, Underdog had acted as an intermediary partner routing to exchanges such as Kalshi and Crypto.com. This CFTC-regulated exchange is widely seen as the asset that most attracted IG Group, a firm rooted in online trading and derivatives, in the acquisition announced two weeks later.

Prediction markets differ from both fantasy and traditional sports betting. Rather than paying a fixed pick’em multiplier or a sportsbook price, you buy and sell event contracts that settle at a fixed value if the outcome occurs, with the price between trades reflecting the market’s live estimate of probability. Because these markets fall under federal CFTC oversight rather than state gaming law, they can reach residents in states that do not permit sports betting or house-banked pick’em, which is a large part of their strategic appeal. Underdog’s path to running its own exchange ran through partnerships first: it acted as an intermediary channeling users to established venues before securing the full contract-market, clearing and merchant licenses needed to operate independently. That vertical integration — owning the exchange, the clearing and the customer relationship — is what made Underdog attractive to a derivatives-focused acquirer like IG Group.

Part of what has made Underdog’s customer acquisition cheaper than rivals is an in-house content and podcast network that doubles as a marketing engine. The company produces and distributes sports podcasts including “Gil’s Arena,” the basketball show hosted by former NBA guard Gilbert Arenas, “Section 10,” a Boston-sports show, and “Baseball is Dead,” among others. These shows build a direct audience of exactly the kind of engaged sports fan Underdog wants as a customer, and they let the company promote drafts, pick’em slates and seasonal contests to that audience without buying it from a third party. It is a strategy borrowed from the broader media-plus-gaming playbook, and it helps explain how a company that raised only about $140 million in outside funding grew into a business valued past a billion dollars.

The standard new-user welcome offer is a “Play $5, Get $50 in Bonus Entries” promotion. To claim it you deposit at least $10 and submit at least $5 in paid entries, after which Underdog credits $50 in bonus entries you can apply to future contests. Various media partners advertise the same core deal under different promo codes, but the mechanics are the same and no code is strictly required for a new account to trigger the offer. In some markets Underdog has instead run a first-deposit match worth 50 percent of your deposit up to $1,000 in bonus entries, subject to a 1x play-through requirement before withdrawal; that match version has been excluded in states including Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Read the fine print on expiration. Bonus entries generally must be used within a set window, and any site credit or bonus funds tied to an entry have carried a 14-day expiration, so this is not money to sit on. Ongoing promotions rotate around the calendar — deposit boosts, draft-entry giveaways, and special guaranteed contests tied to big sporting events — and Underdog leans heavily on its podcast network and marketing to push seasonal offers.

The minimum deposit is $10. Funding methods include Visa and Mastercard debit and credit cards, PayPal and Trustly, with Google Pay being rolled out to Android users. Deposits post instantly in most cases. On the payout side, Underdog supports PayPal, Trustly, Paysafe and Interchecks, the last of which covers direct deposit, physical check and e-check options. The minimum withdrawal is $10 or your full account balance, whichever is lower.

Overall, most withdrawals clear within one to five business days depending on method and any identity or anti-fraud checks on larger cashouts. Underdog does not advertise fees on standard withdrawals, though your bank or payment provider may apply its own timing rules.

First-time withdrawals typically trigger identity verification. Underdog, like every regulated real-money operator, must confirm your name, date of birth and location before releasing funds, which can mean submitting a photo ID or answering knowledge-based questions. Completing verification early, rather than at the moment you want to cash out, avoids a delay on your first payout. Geolocation checks also run in the background to confirm you are physically inside an eligible state when you play, which is why a VPN or a trip across a state line can block entries or withdrawals.

The minimum age to play is 18 in most states, but it rises in several: 19 in Alabama and Nebraska, and 21 in Arizona, Massachusetts and Virginia. Always confirm the age rule for your specific state during signup, since the sportsbook and prediction-market products can carry their own thresholds.

Underdog provides standard responsible-gaming tools, including the ability to set deposit and entry limits and to self-exclude, along with links to problem-gambling resources such as the 1-800-GAMBLER helpline. As with any real-money game, the practical advice is to treat entry fees as entertainment spending, set a deposit limit before you play rather than after, and be aware that pick’em’s fixed multipliers can encourage chasing bigger parlays than your bankroll should support. Best ball’s fixed, up-front entry fee makes it easier to budget, since you know your total exposure the moment you enter.

Underdog occupies an unusual middle ground in daily fantasy. Against the pure pick’em apps, its distinguishing feature is best ball; against the classic salary-cap sites, it is the pick’em game and the drafting focus.

• vs. PrizePicks: the closest pick’em competitor. Both run Higher/Lower player-prop entries with standard and insured formats and both leaned on peer-to-peer versions to survive state crackdowns. Underdog’s advantage is its best-ball ecosystem and its sportsbook and exchange; a player who only wants prop pick’em may find the two apps broadly similar on the core game.
• vs. Sleeper: Sleeper also pairs draft-based leagues with a pick’em product, making it the most structurally similar competitor. Underdog’s best-ball prize pools, led by Best Ball Mania, are larger and its tournament ecosystem is deeper.
• vs. DraftKings and salary-cap DFS: the classic model has you assemble a lineup under a salary cap and compete in single-slate contests. That is a fundamentally different game from either Underdog product — there is no salary cap in best ball, and pick’em is a fixed-multiplier prop game rather than a salary-cap tournament.

Real-money fantasy winnings are taxable income, and Underdog issues tax forms to players who cross reporting thresholds during the year, typically via a 1099 for net winnings at or above the applicable limit. Keeping your own record of entries and payouts is wise, since the platform’s reporting reflects net activity across all products in your unified account. This review is not tax advice; consult a professional about your specific situation.

Underdog fits two clear profiles. The season-long drafter who loves building rosters but hates managing them will find best ball, and Best Ball Mania in particular, close to unmatched for prize scale and product quality. The prop player who wants quick Higher/Lower entries with a shot at a 20x or 80x payout gets a polished pick’em game with both risky Standard and insured Flex options. Players who want both formats from a single, well-designed account get the most value of all, since few competitors deliver both at this depth.