How Fan Duels Are Similar To Gaming

Prague Gaming & TECH Summit 2025 (25-26 March)

 

Recently, the craze of fantasy gaming has taken the sports world by storm, especially over the past few years of the pandemic. People may not have been able to see their friends or watch live sports, so fantasy gaming bridged the gap between the two. Fantasy gaming has also evolved, with many providers offering regular sports betting as well. For instance, FanDuel introduced a Maryland sportsbook, enabling players to make bets on real-life games too. If you’re not familiar with fan duels within fantasy sports, but you’re an avid game player, keep reading and find out just how similar the two actually are.

Pick Your Characters

The biggest perk of fantasy sports is getting to build your own team and pick your favourite players. This is very similar to gaming as a lot of games allow you to either create or choose your own character. Having the freedom to choose gives both of these an extra level of fun that can’t be achieved while betting on sports regularly. It also means you don’t have to choose the weaker players on a team. Much like in video games, you wouldn’t want to choose the weakest character to play as otherwise, you might not perform as well. Fantasy sports are the same, so you can feel in control of how well your team will do.

Play With Your Friends

Similar to gaming, fan duels allow you to play with your friends. Regular sports betting doesn’t allow you to enjoy it with friends and it doesn’t create as much excitement. But fan duels and gaming both generate anticipation and fun between friends, allowing you to share your passions with them and possibly earn some money too. They both also allow you to connect with people you might not see regularly or perhaps live far away. This bond will strengthen as your games, both fantasy and video, progress.

Requires Skill

Fantasy sports actually require a lot of skills and knowledge compared to simple sports betting. Typically, fan duels aren’t won through luck, but they’re won through careful planning and well thought out execution. The same can be said for video gaming too. You don’t go through the gameplay, beating the villains with only luck on your side. Instead, you’ve learned how to play the game and figured out the best strategy to win. Fan duels also need you to think about your gameplay and follow a strong strategy, otherwise, you won’t be very likely to win.

Play As Long As You Want

Video games typically allow you to play for as long or as little as you want. The same can also be said for fan duels. You can decide how long you want your tournament to be, so if you don’t want to play for very long, you could just do a couple of days. But, if you really want to get properly into it, you could play a whole season. It all depends on what you like, which is what makes it similar to gaming. You can essentially play until you don’t feel like it anymore and just leave it there, but you always know you can come back to it.

Earn High Scores

In gaming, you probably focus on how many achievements you’ve unlocked or what high score you’ve just beaten, and fan duels are exactly the same. When you choose your fantasy team and players, you’re working your way up through the leagues, gaining points as you go. The more points you get, the higher you’ll be on the league table. So, if you’re competitive in gaming, why not bring some of that streak over into fan duels too.

Although you may not think it, fan duels and fantasy sports are very similar to video games. They cross over in so many ways that if you like one, you’ll probably enjoy the other too. Why not give fan duels a go and see how much fun you can have by creating your own team? You’ll be able to watch them rise up through the rankings and maybe earn some extra cash too!

 

After starting out as an affiliate in 2009 and developing some recognized review portals, I have moved deeper into journalism and media. My experience has lead me to move into the B2B sector and write about compliance updates and report around the happenings of the online and land based gaming sector.