Fantasy Football fanatic Goncalo Pires is so good with statistics that people just call him Opta Gonz. In this article he looks at the differences between the official FPL tournament and the tournaments of FanTeam.
If you are reading this, you have come to the right place for news, tips and statistics about Fantasy football and especially leagues where there are betting involved. Most of the content on FPLOL.com obviously aims to be funny, but the main aim of my articles is to provide the most relevant statistics when it comes to Fantasy betting.
Maybe you are a serial FPL winner?
At this point I think it’s statistically probable that you are an avid Fantasy football fan and find yourself anxiously waiting to be able to start playing around with your team, ahead of yet another season. Maybe you are seeking ’revenge’ against family members, co-workers, your next-door neighbour or that friend who always seems to get the better of you when the odds seem to be stacked in your favour. Maybe you are a serial FPL winner and just want to keep your competitive edge so that, come May 2021, you clean up another handful of leagues and can feel that, once again, your research and dedication to the game has borne fruits.
Whichever the case, what you may not know is that you can now use all that accumulated knowledge and fantasy expertise to improve your Fantasy betting results.
FF fanatic meet FanTeam, FanTeam meet FF fanatic
Let me introduce you to FanTeam, the biggest European online sports fantasy platform where you can play against other users for real cash. In particular, I am interested in the season long, €1M Fantasy PL Season 20/21 tournament, which guarantees €1,000,000 in prizes, with 1st place taking home a cool €200k, and with the first 5,659 players (over 7. 5% of the maximum allowed number of players of 75,000) all getting paid.
What is the catch, you say? You ‘just’ need to be good at English Premier League Fantasy Football and be willing to spend about £0.60 per Gameweek (€25.00 upfront fee), to be in contention for the prize.
In fantasy terms, you do not need to be a Kevin De Bruyne or a Salah (although that would certainly put you in a very good position for those €200k!!), but being a Grealish or an Ings can take you far or even all the way, just like Vardy and Mahrez in 2015/16.
Same Same FPL But Different
The risk/reward proposition is too good to snub and you don’t want to miss out on a big payday if you do have a very strong fantasy EPL season, as the scoring on both platforms is very similar. Similar but not identical, so here are a few differences that I’m about to highlight:
- Goalkeepers accrue points in a slightly different way: rather than getting 1 extra point for each set of 3 saves, a GK will get 0.5 points for each save made (thereby achieving 1.5 points every 3 saves vs 1 point in the normal game). This effectively means a GK will score an extra 25 to 35 points in FanTeam (FT) vs Official Premier League Fantasy (EPL) on the back of saves made.
- For a midfielder or attacker who plays a full match, an extra 1 point is gained in FT (3 points in total) vs. the usual 2 points in EPL. This puts players who play the full 90 minutes week in week out, in a relatively better position in FT.
- A player guilty of conceding a free-kick or a penalty-kick that leads to a direct goal will be penalized with -2 points in FT.
- There is an extra 1 point on offer for any player whose team wins during the period he is on the pitch. Likewise, there is also a 1 point deduction for any player, if his team loses during the period he played.
- Goals scored by a goalkeeper are worth 8 points in FT as opposed to 6 in EPL. Unless you want a story to tell your friends (‘remember that time Begovic scored against Southampton? – I had him in my Fantasy team!!!’), or Pep finally puts Ederson on penalty duties at City, this is not something worth worrying about.
- No BPS or bonus points system equivalent in FT.
- In FT, the price you get from selling a player is the same as the price it costs to buy him, unlike in EPL where you need prices to rise in increments of £0.2 to be able to monetize half of that (£0.1).
FanTeam Bonuses and FPLOLympics
And that covers the full set of differences between both platforms. In general, if you are doing well in EPL Fantasy tournaments, you will be doing well at FanTeam’s tournaments.
At the time of writing this article (August 27), 3255 players had signed up for the €25 tournament at FanTeam. You can join them by clicking this link.
This year FPLOL is also offering an alternative to playing against your friends. We have created the FPLOLympics where you join together with two friends from your country (hence the Olympics). All you need to do is to sign up your team on the €25 season tournament on FanTeam and email the team names and email addresses of you and your friends to roy@fplol.com. In the regular tournament you are fighting for your share of the €1,000,000 prize pool on your own, but in the FPLOLympics we combine the points of all three teams and give double points to the player amongst you which is registered as the captain. FPLOL will give out great prizes to the best teams, more info to come.
Let’s stat soon!
Opta Gonz
