Article Image

The Fantasy Elite app features both a snake-draft and salary cap element, merging them into one format. While the first pick in a draft is still a nice bonus, in this format it’s not about simply taking the player who you believe will finish with the highest scoring night, because you still have salary constraints to consider. Instead of guys like Kevin Durant and Kevin Love going in the top of every draft, you’ll find injury replacements/under-priced players to be the guys that go off the board first. It’s definitely a format that benefits the better and more informed fantasy players, but newer players can succeed here as well, especially on short game slates when there isn’t as much research to be done.

Game Offerings

The game offerings at Fantasy Elite are still rather limited, but that is to be expected with any site still getting its feet wet. The snake-draft format is the only game type currently offered, but it has a unique twist that isn’t available anywhere else in the industry; you still have to work on a salary cap. With this type of game, it doesn’t make sense to simply pick who you believe to be the night’s top scorer, but instead you are looking for the best value. For example, let’s say Chris Paul suffers an injury the day before your draft, and Darren Collison (the Clippers new starting PG) is still priced like a bench player. Since Collison is primed for a big game and costs very little to roster, he’ll typically be the first or second player drafted, in part because he will outperform his salary and also because he’ll allow you to roster higher priced players later on in the draft. I would advise starting with a free draft to get the hang of how things work, but it’s something that can be picked up quickly. In addition to “standard” drafts which consist of 8 players per team (2 G’s, 2 F’s, 1 C, 3 UTIL), you can also participate in “Quick 6” leagues (2 G’s, 2 F’s, 1 C, 1 UTIL) where each team selects just six players. The drafts don’t take as long and you don’t have to dig too deep to find extra value plays, so the format is great for newer players or people who just like to draft quickly.

Fantasy Elite also offers a “Pick 3” format, which is a six-man league where each team consists of just three players (1 guard, 1 forward and 1 utility spot). It is the most casual game format on the site and the drafts tend to go really quickly.

In the main lobby, you’ll see that you can draft heads-up against another user, enter 3-man drafts (where 1st place triples up), and they’ve also added 6-man drafts to the lobby that fill daily. The draft runs just like your typical season-long league snake draft, and the draft clock is set at two minutes per pick. If you’re the first person to join a league, you don’t have to worry about hanging around until it starts; you can just go about your day and when the league fills, you’ll get a notification on your mobile device alerting you that the draft is about to get underway. If you step away from your device during the draft, you’ll also get an alert when it’s your turn to pick! Buy-in levels now range from free to $525.

For those that don’t know, Fanium is the company that provides our Player News feeds on profile pages. Their first mobile product was a season-long commissioner product for football leagues. Fantasy Elite (which is currently NBA-only, but they hope to have MLB up and running by opening day) is their first venture into the Daily Games space. Player salaries are updated much quicker then on a site like FanDuel or DraftKings, but it might not be quite as rigorous as a site like DraftStreet, which is a happy medium. It’s certainly not a place where you can fill a roster full of studs, you’ll have to dig deep to have long-term success on Fantasy Elite. A minimum of about 3-4 value players are needed to build a well-rounded team, which suits the regular NBA grinders more then it does casual users.

Software & Interface

The software used at Fantasy Elite is clean and easy to use, which is what you want from a mobile app. There’s not much clutter and there aren’t banners full of ads, and you can navigate through the entire site from one tab. The drop-down menu can bring you to any of the features listed below:

During drafts, the page updates quickly but does at times seem to delay when the pick is switching between you and your opponent. You’ll at times need to refresh the page in order to get it to update, but it’s never cost me too much time where it put my picks in jeopardy. Even if you leave the draft page while a draft is ongoing, you’ll get an alert when it’s your turn to pick. The process of drafting is very smooth and you can sort through the entire player pool in a matter of seconds. While Fantasy Elite does have player cards you can access by clicking on a players name, they aren’t all that informative just yet. For each player, you can see his fantasy point total from the past few games, as well as his salary on those days (which is helpful because it shows you if a player is trending up or down), but that is something that still needs to be improved. Although changes need to be made, there are some nice aspects to the player cards; you can view each players fantasy point averages for the season, as well as home/road splits, but the best part is the individual twitter feed for news associated with that player, which comes in handy when you’re trying to make a quick decision between players.

The founders at Fantasy Elite have been listening to player feedback since the app launched, and have been trying to implement changes recommended from the community. In the near future, they hope to add a more thorough player card, which will hopefully consist of game logs and a deeper history then just the players past few performances. Especially on a mobile app, you don’t want to have to open up multiple pages to adequately research, so this would be a really nice improvement.

For as great as the draft experience is on Fantasy Elite, it’s not always possible for people to be in the draft room when it’s actually occurring, especially users who joined the league before it was full. However, it is possible to set up a draft-queue through the player research tab. If you tap on the star on the right side of a player’s name (check out the lineup photo at the top of the page for an example), they will move into your draft queue in case you can’t be around your device to make the pick yourself. This also allows people to increase their volume of play, since each drafter doesn’t actually need to be in the draft room to get the players they want.

I’ve heard some people say that this type of format won’t draw the “sharks” of the industry into play, but I can see reasons why the industry’s best players would want to get in on the action at Fantasy Elite. Let’s consider typical salary cap formats: Every member of the field has access to the entire player pool, so the “must plays” are rostered by most of the field. With the Fantasy Elite format, there is no roster overlap. Once you select a player, he’s yours (unless you opt to drop him after the draft and add another player which fits into the cap). Being able to block an opponent from taking a player provides an opportunity to get a far larger edge in this format then on any other platform. Eliminating overlap on short slates/late-game schedules is also a nice benefit that makes Fantasy Elite appealing on slower nights in the NBA.

Deposit Bonus

Fantasy Elite is offering a deposit bonus that is much different then what you typically see from a new site trying to grow the player base; high rollers get a free iPad or iPod, all new Grinder referrals get a free $5.50 draft. Here’s the deal for HighRollers:

That’s pretty hard to beat, right? Obviously Fanium has a lot of risk in offering a bonus like this. The decision is up to Fanium CEO Grant Gurtin, who is going to vet each applicant through a Private Message or Email conversation. Grant is well known within the industry already – if you have met him at any of the Live Events you probably won’t have much trouble getting the bonus. If you haven’t met him before he may have a few more questions for you. He doesn’t have set criteria, but he will obviously be looking for players he trusts will be long term customers.

Click here and follow the step to sign up and get your free $5.50 draft.

To apply for the iPad or iPod bonus, click here, enter your screen name, and make your deposit. If you’d like to talk with Grant about the iPad before making your deposit, send him a Private Message from his RotoGrinders profile page here

Rules, Rosters and Scoring

There are two roster formats available on Fantasy Elite; the “Quick 6” format and standard eight-man teams. The bigger rosters benefit the more seasoned DFS veterans due to pretty rigorous salary constraints, and you’ll need to fill at least half of your eight-man team with value plays unless you can build a roster full of mid-range players (trust me, it’s harder then it sounds). Quick 6 is better for newer users because you can roster a few of the night’s popular value plays with a few mid to top tier players, and you’re good to go.

Note: Contests that do not finish drafting before the start of the first game for the associated day will be marked as disqualified, and buy-ins will be returned to contestants. Try to begin your last draft of the night at least a half-hour before tip-off in case you need to make any roster changes. Following a draft, if you realize that you selected a player who is inactive, you can drop him and pick from any of the players who went undrafted (as long as the player you select fits under the salary cap). This feature is also nice because if you draft early in the day and a potential value play emerges, you can add that player and drop another as long as you beat your opponent to it.

Check out the Scoring Systems Tab at the top of this Fantasy Elite Review to see all scoring systems and roster breakdowns

Rake and Bonuses

Fantasy Elite H2H Total Prizes Total Buy-Ins Rake %
$1.10 $2 $2.20 0.1
$2.75 $5 $5.50 0.1
$5.50 $10 $11 0.1
$11 $20 $22 0.1
$22 $40 $44 0.1
$55 $100 $110 0.1
$109 $200 $218 0.09
$270 $500 $540 0.08
$525 $1000 $1050 0.05

In the short time that I’ve played at Fantasy Elite, I’ve already seen them offer some nice bonuses to the player base. They randomly will add bonus money to head-to-head drafts, which certainly draws people in. For example, on the night that I completed just my second draft on the site, they offered increased payouts at every level, so instead of winning $3.60 from a $2 H2H draft, I walked away with $5. In addition, they were very generous in consistently offering freerolls to their beta testers, and I would expect that to continue as they grow their player base (which has been growing rapidly thanks to some solid marketing). If you’re a high stakes grinder, this is the place for you; FE is going to maintain 5% rake for games above $500! You can expect them to continue to provide users with different promotions and bonuses as they try to carve out their niche in the industry, so get over to Fantasy Elite ASAP!

About the Author

SBK
Stephen Keech (SBK)

Stephen Keech (aka SBK) is a Penn State graduate from the city of Champions. He is a Projections & Alerts Manager at RotoGrinders, monitoring player news, projections, and lineups for NFL, MLB, and NBA. He is currently the #1 ranked NBA expert on the Action Network app. Follow SBK on Twitter – @StephByronKeech