Football League and Pool Host Sites

Every place you can actually put a lineup, a ticket, or an entry fee (legally). Four different games with four different rulebooks, listed in one place. I don’t have an affiliate relationship with anyone below, and I’m not ranking them — this is a map, not a recommendation.

One thing to check first: availability varies by state for almost everything on this page except free fantasy leagues. Verify what’s legal where you live before you deposit anywhere.

Fantasy Games

Free League Hosting

Where most home leagues live. All free, all with mobile apps.

  • ESPN Fantasy Football — The largest user base in season-long. Flexible commissioner tools for a free platform, and easy for new managers.
  • Yahoo Fantasy Football — The most customizable of the big free hosts, with a mobile app many managers still consider the best of the bunch.
  • Sleeper — Mobile-first with league chat baked in. The default choice for dynasty and for leagues that live in a group thread anyway.
  • NFL Fantasy — Official league host with NFL Network content attached.
  • CBS Sports Fantasy — Free and premium league tiers; strong commissioner controls.

Advanced & Custom League Hosting

For leagues that outgrew the defaults — deep rosters, weird scoring, contracts, devy.

  • Fantrax — The most configurable host in the game. Redraft, dynasty, keeper, best ball, and a college player database for campus-to-canton leagues.
  • MyFantasyLeague — The dynasty veteran’s platform. Nothing you can’t customize, if you’re willing to learn it.
  • Fleaflicker — Clean interface with flexible scoring and structured commissioner controls.
  • RT Sports — Long-running host with free and paid league options.
  • Reality Sports Online — Salary cap and multi-year contract leagues. The closest thing to actually running a franchise.

High-Stakes Season-Long Contests

  • FFPC — Fantasy Football Players Championship. Entry fees from modest to eye-watering, TE-premium scoring, and a live Las Vegas main event. Sharp fields.
  • NFFC — The other major high-stakes home; national contests, Elite private leagues, and ADP that the industry treats as the sharpest available.
  • Apex Fantasy Leagues — Money leagues with their own format and a strategy blog attached.

Best Ball

Draft and walk away — no lineups, no waivers, optimal score counted automatically.

  • Underdog Fantasy — The center of gravity for best ball. Best Ball Mania is the flagship tournament, and Underdog ADP is the most-cited draft data in the industry.
  • DraftKings Best Ball — Large-field best ball tournaments inside the DFS app.
  • FFPC Best Ball — Higher stakes and tougher fields, including superflex and “slim” (no K/DST) formats.
  • NFFC Best Ball — Best ball tournaments alongside the high-stakes managed leagues.

Elimination Formats

  • Guillotine Leagues — Eighteen teams, no head-to-head matchups. The lowest scorer each week is eliminated and their entire roster hits waivers. Free and paid contests.

Daily Fantasy

  • DraftKings — The largest DFS operator; salary-cap contests from single-entry to milly-makers.
  • FanDuel — The other half of the DFS duopoly, with its own scoring quirks and softer late-swap rules.

Pick’em & Player Props

Pick two or more players to go over or under a projection. Regulatory treatment of these products differs sharply by state, and some operators now run them as prediction markets rather than fantasy contests in certain jurisdictions.

  • PrizePicks — The largest pick’em operator.
  • Underdog Fantasy — Pick’em alongside its best ball business.
  • Sleeper — Pick’em contests built into the same app that hosts your league.

Sportsbooks

Legal, state-regulated US operators. Availability differs state by state — our betting info page lists sources that track exactly where each one is live.

  • DraftKings Sportsbook — One of the two market leaders; deepest NFL and college prop menus.
  • FanDuel Sportsbook — The other market leader; originated the same-game parlay builder most books now copy.
  • BetMGM — Tied to MGM Rewards, which matters if you spend time in Vegas.
  • Caesars Sportsbook — Heavy daily odds boosts; Caesars Rewards integration.
  • Fanatics Sportsbook — Rewards paid in FanCash redeemable on merchandise. Fast withdrawals.
  • bet365 — The global operator; strongest in-play betting and live streaming in the US market.
  • BetRivers — Rush Street’s book; known for quick payouts and a straightforward loyalty program.
  • Hard Rock Bet — Seminole-backed, and the only legal online sportsbook in Florida.
  • theScore Bet — PENN Entertainment’s book, relaunched in December 2025 after the ESPN BET partnership ended.
  • Circa Sports — Nevada-based and famous for posting early, high-limit NFL lines rather than restricting winning bettors.

Pools: Pick’em, Survivor & Confidence

Strategy tools for pools live on our pools info page. This is where you run or join one.

Pool Hosting Platforms

  • Splash Sports — Private pool hosting plus very large public survivor and pick’em contests. Now the parent of RunYourPool.
  • RunYourPool — Long-established host for pick’em, survivor, confidence, and margin pools.
  • OfficeFootballPool — Deep format library: pick’em, survivor, confidence, margin, squares.
  • PoolHost — Pick’em, survivor, and golf pool hosting.

Free Public Pools

Big-Money Contests

Collecting the Money

  • LeagueSafe — Escrow for league and pool entry fees, so the commissioner isn’t holding everyone’s cash in Venmo until December.

Prediction Markets

Prediction markets let you buy and sell contracts on an outcome at a price between 1¢ and 99¢, where the price reflects the market’s implied probability. Winning contracts settle at $1. Unlike sportsbooks, these are regulated federally by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than by state gaming boards, which is why several operate in states with no legal sportsbook.

Caveat worth taking seriously: this is the fastest-moving corner of the industry. Several states have brought challenges over sports event contracts, and access has been paused or restricted in some of them while litigation plays out. Check your state’s status on the platform itself before you fund an account.

Exchanges

  • Kalshi — The largest US sports prediction market by volume and market breadth.
  • Polymarket — Deepest liquidity on marquee markets; the US app operates through a CFTC-regulated exchange.
  • ProphetX — Peer-to-peer sports exchange; received CFTC approval in June 2026.
  • Novig — Zero-vig peer-to-peer exchange; licensed by the CFTC in June 2026.
  • Sporttrade — Sports trading built to feel like a brokerage rather than a bet slip.
  • Robinhood — Event contracts inside the brokerage app, running on Kalshi’s exchange.

Sportsbook-Operated

  • FanDuel Predicts — Launched December 2025; event contracts inside the FanDuel ecosystem.
  • DraftKings Predictions — Launched December 2025, with DraftKings’ own exchange (DKeX) added in mid-2026.

Before You Sign Up

Legal online sports betting, DFS, pick’em, pools, and prediction markets each have their own state-by-state rules, and those rules change. Age minimums are usually 21 for betting and 18 or 19 for fantasy, depending on where you are. Read the terms.

Please play responsibly. If it stops being fun, help is free, confidential, and available 24/7: call or text 1-800-GAMBLER, or visit the National Council on Problem Gambling.

I plan to update this directory through the season. Missing a site that deserves to be here? Tell me.

Note: Some of this compilation was assisted by Claude AI.

Last reviewed: August 2026.