The College Football Playoff begins Friday night when Notre Dame and Indiana face off in South Bend. The four-game, two-day first round will be one of the biggest betting events of the year in the U.S. — but if you're in states like California, Georgia or Texas, you don't have access to prominent platforms like DraftKings, ESPN BET or FanDuel, which can't operate in those states.
Instead, you have two options to get in on the action — a sweepstakes sportsbook lilke Fliff, available in 40+ states, or a DFS pick'em platform like Underdog Fantasy, which requires you to pick multiple player statistics and is available in 30+ states.
CFP Gaming Options if You Don't Have DraftKings, FanDuel
Sweepstakes Sportsbook
Sweepstakes sportsbooks seem a lot like traditional sportsbooks once you're inside them, but the financial mechanism is different. You make a purchase for one currency, then you're given another currency. When you win with the gifted currency, you can exchange it for cash.Unsure about social/sweepstakes betting? Read more up on how they work and their legality here.
Several of these platforms, including Fliff and Rebet, are available in 40+ states, including many of the biggest states without traditional online betting, like Georgia, Texas and California.
More and more sweepstakes platforms seem to be popping up every month, but here are four we recommend:
- Fliff: Fliff is the biggest sweepstakes sportsbook in the U.S. and offers tons of markets for CFP games, including main markets like sides and totals, plus tons of player and game props.
- Rebet: Rebet is a newer player in the space, and doesn't have quite the depth of markets that Fliff does.
- Thrillzz: Thrillzz is available in fewer states than Rebet or Fliff, though still 30+ states.
- ProphetX: Prophet is a betting exchange, meaning you're wagering against other users, so you're often getting the best price on main markets. They have Notre Dame -245 and Indiana at +230 on the moneyline as of Friday morning, compared to FanDuel, which has a much wider market at -235/+190.
DFS Pick'em Contests
"DFS pick'em" as it's now referred ot is not like traditional DFS, where you build a lineup of players while staying inside a salary cap. Instead, you're choosing player stats and putting them together to create bigger payouts.
PrizePicks and Underdog are the two biggest apps in the space, but more and more pop up every year.
Here's how it works — pick at least two player statistics, and tie them together. On PrizePicks, you can take up to six player statistics. On other platforms, you can add more.
Not every DFS site offers boxing stats, but PrizePicks has them for bigger bouts like this one.
- PrizePicks: At PrizePicks, they loads of stats — yards for every key player, touchdowns, passing and rushing attempts, kicking points, fantasy score and more.
- Underdog: Underdog has many similar options, but one key difference is you can't take multiple stats from the same player — so if I wanted to take Riley Leonard more than 181.5 passing yards and more than 51.5 rushing yards, I can't do that.
- Sleeper: The fantasy football app also offers pick'em now, and they've got plenty of options for the CFP.
