It's been a bleak two months for sports fans. But if you're looking for a reason to be bullish on the future of sports speculation, look no further than the DFS lobby on DraftKings.
The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) will return Saturday, May 9, for what will be the first major live sports event since the sports world shut down in early March following Rudy Gobert's positive coronavirus test in the NBA.
And DraftKings is hosting the biggest UFC fantasy contest for the sport ever, with $1 million guaranteed in prizing and $200,000 to first place. It costs $20 to enter a lineup, and the max number of entries per person is 150.
The size of the contest highlights a thirst for live sports, fantasy contests and sports speculation, but it also shows the continued success of lottery-style tournaments in which users can win a big chunk of change for a small buy-in.
DraftKings, FanDuel and other DFS sites have for years offered big prizes for one-day contests, but in the infancy of the industry they were usually tied to "championships," in which users had to win an entry to an exclusive weekend. But in 2014, DraftKings launched its "Millionaire Maker" series and offered $1 million to first place in a regular NFL week.
Since then, you can regularly find $1 million up top for most, if not all, NFL weeks, and DraftKings has even offered prizes that big for other sports, including PGA and MLB. But $1 million guaranteed in prizes for a more niche sport like UFC is a different story — and a big deal. And it will continue, as next weekend DraftKings will also host a $1 million prize pool for NASCAR.
If you're looking to get into UFC — or maybe you're just interested in DFS and sports betting — you're in the right place. We're breaking down all the betting action leading up to the fights tomorrow night, and we also just launched brand-new (and FREE for a limited time) DFS models for UFC, which include projections from none other than our in-house oddsmaker, Sean Koerner.
More UFC 249 Betting and DFS Content
- UFC 249 Betting Odds: Tony Ferguson Favored in Interim Lightweight Title Bout
- UFC 249 Odds, Picks & Early Predictions: Best Bets for Greg Hardy vs. Yorgan De Castro
- UFC 249 Odds & Promotions: How to Get $2,000+ in Bonus Offers for Ferguson vs. Gaethje & More
- UFC 249 DFS Models and Projections
- Track and Sync Your Bets for UFC 249 on The Action Network App
