Last updated on March 19th, 2025
Credit – https://pixabay.com/illustrations/lawn-football-soccer-grass-game-1335365/
Introduction
Fantasy football is one of the most popular markets that has splintered off from professional sports—the EPL version is a game that has achieved global popularity. Initially, the game was launched before the internet, and people who entered would do so via newspapers, radios, and media outlets.
Newspapers and radio stations would pay out prizes for the highest point scorers that week as well as at the end of the season, but once the internet started to impact fantasy football, it became much easier to set up a fantasy football team, manage your team and for companies and newspapers to offer prizes for the top players. But is there much correlation between the top fantasy football players and those who know how to navigate the football betting market?
Similarities Between Fantasy Football & Betting
While there’s definitely a skill to putting together a high-scoring fantasy football team, browsing the football and sports betting markets requires an entirely different set of skills. There are similarities between both markets, though, the most obvious one being that they have both grown significantly since the rise of the internet.
While it might seem an obvious point, not all businesses grasped and adapted to the rise of the internet in the same way betting platforms and fantasy football competitions did. By utilizing the rise of the internet and then channelling this toward mobile devices like iPads and smartphones, betting sites offer the full scope of sports betting options that are out there.
It marked a significant change in the dynamics of the betting world. Football betting followed the same pathway as other prominent betting competitions. By the early 2010s, most gambling companies were spending the bulk of their marketing and research on trying to expand into the expanding digital ecosystem that was beginning to dominate every aspect of our lives.
The design of fantasy football means that every player across the league gets a rating and a point-scoring system. Many of these points are devised from events you can bet on, too – including yellow and red cards, goals and assists, keepers making a specific number of saves, and clean sheets. Your captain, of course, nets you double points, so there’s an art to picking your captain, too.
So, there are similarities, and while identifying these players can help you score points throughout a season or specific individual weeks, it doesn’t mean that there’s a betting strategy you can devise that will allow you to make money from shrewd fantasy football management, either.
Distinct Differences
So, while you might have a fantasy football team that is running away with the league between you and your friends, and you might be closing in on some of the highest point scorers in your region or country, depending on how good your team is – this does not correlate with a betting strategy that is going to put the odds in your favour.
Firstly, fantasy football constitutes a complete set of players. Every player in your team will rarely pull their weight. If your captain is like Mo Salah, his phenomenal performance in the 24/25 season will single-handedly carry your team.
But betting on Mo Salah to score will not net you double your money. In fact, in some games, he goes in with odds of less than evens, or 1/2 – which is astonishing for a sole goalscorer market. He also doesn’t score every week, surprisingly. However, it might feel like he is at the moment.
Let’s say one week, your strikers might be doing most of the legwork, and then the next week, it’s your two central defenders. Then, your keeper saves a pen the following week, and you happen to have him captain.
But suppose it’s a penalty-saving specialist like Jordan Pickford. In that case, you also have to factor in that he faces more shots than other top keepers and has a much leakier defence in front of him compared to somebody like Ederson for Man City.
Final Thoughts
While your fantasy football team might be performing well overall, if you use this same strategy in betting, you’d bet on each outcome multiple times before they come in. For fantasy football, this fleshes out throughout the season and might provide you with a prize at the end of the 38 games, but as a week-by-week betting strategy, there’s nothing you can do that will tilt the bookies’ odds in your favour.
So, you could have the bragging rights amongst your friends, but fantasy football is a different beast from football betting. While fantasy football can involve prizes, and some friends might chip in money each to throw money in the pot for the eventual winner to take home, that’s really where the comparisons end between football betting and fantasy football leagues.
Sure, fantasy football knowledge can help bolster your overall football knowledge, but knowing the sport in detail doesn’t guarantee you will be able to make money from the betting markets, and that’s the bottom line.
