The best way to enjoy the excitement of betting on the NFL without having to deal with the risk of losing any of your own real money is sign up to play a free NFL picks, predictions, survivor or fantasy football game.
As interest in wagering on the NFL grows, so too does the number of introductory games being offered by sportsbooks and other websites (including the NFL itself) allowing NFL fans to get some skin in the game.
NFL PICK ‘EM
A number of sportsbooks and other sports websites, including the official NFL website, will offer free entry to compete in a pick ‘em pool.
NFL pick ‘em involves you selecting the winner of a series of NFL games each week (usually every game on the slate). In most cases, there are minor prizes up for grabs for the most correct picks each week, as well as a major prize for the most correct picks at the end of the season. In sports betting terms, it’s like placing a moneyline wager on every NFL game of the season.
Some NFL pick ‘em games will require you to allocate a certain number of ‘confidence points’ to each of your picks or make certain picks worth more than others.
Sportsbooks can be a really helpful resource when competing in an NFL pick ‘em pool. On top of showing you odds to indicate who the favourite and underdog is for each game, many sportsbooks will also show what percentage of public betting money is coming in for each team. This is known as NFL consensus picks and is a great way to gauge sentiment on which teams the gambling community thinks are likely to win.
The great thing about NFL pick ‘em games is that you can make sure you and your friends are in the same pool and you can compete against each other on a weekly basis. This often leads to some awesome banter back and forth between buddies.
NFL PREDICITIONS
NFL prediction games are free games generally ran by sportsbooks that require you to make predictions on NFL matches not involving the final result.
A great example of an NFL prediction game offered by a sportsbook is FanDuel’s NFL Hi Lo competition. This game requires you to predict the highest and lowest-performing NFL teams across varying stat categories. You can play free for a chance to win $5,000 every Sunday, and if you manage to get every pick right you have a chance to win the $1,000,000 bonus prize!
The BetMGM King of the Weekend predictions game is another free, exciting NFL prediction game. Each week throughout the NFL season, anyone with a BetMGM account can win $50,000 if they correctly pick the six highest-scoring teams, in order, from a pool of five NFL games.
NFL SURVIVOR
NFL survivor games (also sometimes referred to known as suicide, eliminator, knockout, last man standing, or king of the hill) are growing in popularity every season. In a standard NFL survivor pool, you pick one NFL team per week, and you are eliminated from the pool if your pick loses. You can only pick each team once per season.
The final surviving player wins the entire prize pool or it may be split if there’s more than one survivor at the end of the season.
Some NFL survivor games will allow a participant a ‘strike’ or ‘mulligan’, which means their pick can lose once. It’s also not uncommon to require participants to submit multiple picks per week (usually only later in the season) inn an effort to whittle down the competition to one remaining survivor.
NFL FANTASY
NFL fantasy football is a game in which the competitors serve as owners and general managers of virtual NFL teams.
You select your rosters by participating in a draft featuring NFL players and your team competes against others in your fantasy league. You and score points based on the real in-game stats of your selected players and the fantasy team that scores the most points wins the game for the week. Just like in the NFL, a league champion is crowned at the end of the season.
Playing NFL Fantasy is similar in a lot of ways to placing player prop bets as you find yourself cheering loudly for strong individual performances rather than a particular team or game result.
DraftKings and FanDuel are among the top sportsbooks with NFL fantasy football offerings and great prizes up for grabs for participants.