Bang for Your Buck: A Look at DFS-Industry Rake

by Ethan Haskell (Ethan) Last Updated 2013-07-30 20:09:18

There’s no better time than the All-Star Break to take a good hard look at your bankroll and try to figure out how to either increase your profit margins or decrease your losses. Part of better understanding your profits and losses is through bankroll management, but understanding site rake is equally important. Each site excels in rake in different areas so no matter what type of player you are you should be able to find a site that best fits you.

Last week, BriPC23 looked at qualifier tournaments and the rake from those and this week I’ll go through the rake levels for standard H2H games as well as GPPs and then walk through some of the adjustments that come with the rakeback programs most of these sites offer.

But first, a quick tutorial on how you calculate rake:

RAKE = (Total BuyIns – Total Prizes)/(Total BuyIns)

• Total BuyIns = BuyIn Amount * Number of Entrants

So if you buy into a $25 GPP with 180 entrants and $4000 in prizes, your rake would be calculated as follows:

$25 * 180 Entrants = $4500 Total BuyIns
$4000 Total Prizes

Rake = ($4500-$4000)/$4500 = 11.11%

Head to Head Rake By Site: Low, Medium and High Buy-Ins

As you might expect, the sharpest drop off in industry standard rake is between the medium and high buy-in levels. For the purpose of this article I wanted to keep everything concise so I confined buy-ins into 3 separate categories.

GPP Rake By Site: Low, Medium and High Buy-Ins

Rakeback Programs and Analysis

FanDuel

FanDuel offers FanDuel Points at a rate of 10 FDP per dollar spent in buy-ins. You can then use those FDP to buy into tournaments. A $10 tournament is 24,000 FDP which can be reached after spending $2400. Similarly, a $25 game can be bought into after spending $6000 in buy-ins. Occasionally, tournaments earn you higher rates of FDP at multipliers as high as 5x, 10x, or 15x.

• One of FanDuel’s best rake back/rewards features is their monthly freerolls that can be reached by earning FDP as well. There are 4 freerolls that can be reached at different levels of volume. Also, if you reach a higher level you can still enter all of the lower levels as well.

The freerolls change a bit depending on how many sports are ongoing, but generally are around these numbers:

1) Bronze – $1500 freeroll – need 1,000 FDP to play ($100 played)
2) Silver – $2500 freeroll – need 5,000 FDP to play ($500 played)
3) Gold – $4000 freeroll – need 15,000 FDP to play ($1500 played)
4) Platinum – $7000 freeroll – need 50,000 FDP to play ($5000 played)

So if you play $5000 in a month on FanDuel you can play for around $15K in freerolls at the end of the month.

DraftStreet

DraftStreet offers a similar structure as FD for their rewards program. Instead of rewarding pure volume though, they reward with freerolls for the top players on their leaderboard each month.

• The top 200 players on their leaderboard earn their way into a freeroll each month. These freerolls are also sport specific. Again these numbers vary but for February NBA it was:

1) 1st – 10th on Sport Leaderboard – $1500 Freeroll
2) 11th – 25th – $750 Freeroll
3) 26th – 50th – $750 Freeroll
4) 51st – 100th – $750 Freeroll
5) 101st – 200th – $750 Freeroll

DailyJoust

DailyJoust offers rakeback in the form of monthly freerolls as well. Throughout a month you earn badges for various accomplishments. Typical badge-earning accomplishments include your first time winning a game at a specific buy-in level, setting up and filling a private league, referring a friend or having the best score on a given day. Some of the badges are really easy to achieve, and can push you towards one of those freerolls.

• Other ways to earn badges towards these freerolls is by being in the Top-10 on any given night in either total winnings or Jouster Rating. Full badge details can be seen here

• For May the freerolls looked like this, and are typically around this value:

1) 3+ Badges – $100 Bonus Buck Freeroll
2) 6+ Badges – $200 Bonus Buck Freeroll
3) 9+ Badges – $300 Bonus Buck Freeroll
4) 12+ Badges – $400 Bonus Buck Freeroll

You can enter all freerolls beneath your badge total. So if you earn 10 badges in a month you can enter freerolls 1, 2 and 3 above.

DraftDay

DraftDay has one of the better rakeback programs in the industry by combining both rakeback rewards along with monthly freerolls. They separate their rakeback into different levels and when you reach a given level you can’t go below that level for that month AND the next month. Basically if you have a big month and reach a high level you get the rake back and freeroll access for 2 months (or longer if you keep up that volume).

Level 1) Bronze – $100 in buy-ins. No rake back. Access to $500 freeroll.
Level 2) Silver – $500 in buy-ins. No rake back. Access to $1000 freeroll.
Level 3) Gold – $1000 in buy-ins. Access to both freerolls. 20% rake back.
Level 4) Platinum – $2500 in buy-ins. Access to both freerolls. 25% rake back.
Level 5) Diamond – $25000 in buy-ins. Access to both freerolls. 40% rake back.

FantasyFeud

FantasyFeud offers straight rake back each month that increases as you go higher up in buy-ins. The four levels are minor league, major league, all-star and hall of fame. The level you reach is based on rake spent on the site each month and not specific buy-ins. So if an $11 contest rakes $1 to FF, that dollar goes on your monthly rake spent total.

1) Minor League: Between $50 and $99.99 in rake spent on FF. 5% rakeback rewards.
2) Major League: Between $100 and $200 in rake spent on FF. 8% rakeback rewards.
3) All-Star: Between $200 and $499.99 in rake spent on FF. 12% rakeback rewards.
4) Hall of Fame: Over $500 in rake spent on FF. 17% rakeback rewards.

StarStreet

StarStreet offers 5 levels of rewards that make their program one of, if not the best in all of daily fantasy. As you go higher up in the rewards program, you earn a higher rate of points towards your total. So there are five sections; bronze, silver, gold, platinum, black.

1) Bronze – 100 total points to reach this level. You get 10% rakeback rewards and can enter bronze monthly freerolls. You also earn 10 points for each dollar you enter.

2) Silver – 10,000 total points to reach this level (1,000 spent). You begin earning 2x the points per dollar spent (20 points per dollar), can enter Silver freerolls and get 20% rake back.

3) Gold – 100,000 total points to reach this level. You get access to monthly gold freerolls as well as 3x the points (30 points per dollar) for each dollar entered and 30% rake back.

4) Platinum – 500,000 total points to reach this level. You get 40% rake back, earn 4x the points per dollar spent (40 points per dollar)

5) Black – 1,000,000 total points to reach this level. 50% rake back rewards, access to black only freerolls, access to all freerolls, exclusive StarStreet gear, 4 tickets a game (after 3 months of being at black), flight and weekend reservations in Vegas + $1K spending money after 1 year of being at black,

FanThrowDown

Rakeback at FanThrowDown is rewarded based on volume played and your highest level reached stays with you for both the current month AND the following month. There are five levels of rakeback offered and the percentage you get back in rakeback is based on the month prior’s volume played.

1) Rookie – Spend $100. Earn 5% Rakeback.
2) Veteran – Spend $1000. Earn 20% Rakeback
3) All-Star – Spend $2500. Earn 25% Rakeback
4) MVP – Spend $25000. Earn 40% Rakeback
5) Hall of Fame – Spend $100,000. Earn 50% Rakeback.

Alright well that’s the rake and rewards program summary. I hope this can help you sort out and decide on which sites are best for your style of play. There are some really solid programs