How to Become a Fantasy-Sports Millionaire

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rielle Herzig is a regular individual. She does pilates, avoids gluten, works in tech, and lives on a quiet cul de sac in Florida together with her husband, Justin. Justin appears regular, too. He’s 36, tall and slender, and wears a backward baseball cap most days that offers him the look of a slacker teen. However for a sure subset of individuals, Justin is way from a regular individual. 

When one among Arielle’s brother’s buddies discovered he was associated to Justin, the good friend freaked out. When Arielle was as soon as at a firm occasion with Justin, somebody approached her for an introduction to him, and couldn’t comprise their pleasure. “I can’t consider I’m assembly Justin!” they exclaimed. He isn’t a celeb, however to these amongst us who’re significantly obsessive about fantasy , he’s type of a massive deal. Justin Herzig is kind of presumably the perfect fantasy-football participant on the earth. 

How, you might marvel, might anybody know who’s the perfect fantasy-football participant? There isn’t a single event that crowns a world champion (there are literally not less than three). There isn’t even one universally acknowledged league or scoring system. Fantasy soccer is a sport performed by greater than 50 million soccer followers all over the world, principally in small leisure leagues with their buddies. Every league has its personal guidelines and conventions. Every league yearly has its personal champion who probably believes they’re the one true Greatest Participant within the World. 

But when there have been a method to qualify somebody as the perfect, maybe it’s this: There may be one event that has by far the most important prize on the earth — Underdog Fantasy’s Greatest Ball Mania. Since 2020, Greatest Ball Mania has set information for the variety of entries yearly, and 2024 was one other finest: 672,672 totally different entries (particular person gamers are restricted to a most of 150 entries) and a prize pool of $15 million. Of these, solely 56,056 superior to the Greatest Ball Mania playoffs, and solely 539 made it to the competition’s remaining spherical in week 17. Just one participant might win first place, which paid $1,500,000. To perform that, somebody would wish not just some actual talent at taking part in fantasy soccer, but additionally a lot of luck. Over the previous 5 years of this occasion, there isn’t any participant who has extra of each than Justin Herzig.

FANTASY SPORTS IS A MASSIVE piece of the sports activities industrial advanced, with tens of tens of millions of gamers and billions of {dollars} in income. In America, soccer is the preferred, accounting for 75 % of the full fantasy-sports market. The 2 largest firms to spring from the fantasy-sports increase, FanDuel and DraftKings, additionally paved the best way for the explosion of sports activities betting throughout america. It’s no exaggeration to say that fantasy soccer has essentially modified the best way many followers take into consideration the sport, the best way broadcasters current soccer on tv, the best way the league markets the game, and has presumably even ruined a few co-worker or neighborly relationships alongside the best way. Herzig has performed fantasy soccer for almost his complete life, driving this wave all the best way to the crest. To him, it’s greater than a sport. It’s his ardour. And it has made him tens of millions of {dollars}.

Week 15 of the 2024 NFL season is the canine days of the common season for most individuals, however in fantasy soccer it’s when issues simply begin heating up. Fantasy soccer ends when the common season ends, so the playoffs in most leagues happen throughout these previous couple of comparatively meaningless weeks of the common season. For Greatest Ball Mania, week 15 is the primary week of the playoffs, and solely roughly eight % of the full entries get in.  Of these entries, 90 % gained’t advance to week 16.  

On Monday evening, many of the NFL video games have already been performed the day earlier than, and solely a Monday Evening Soccer double-header stays to decide who advances in fantasy and who will get left behind. Herzig has a lot on the road, however as an alternative of stress-watching the video games at residence alone, he chooses to watch the Vikings play the Bears whereas taking part in poker with a group of his civilian buddies, all of whom have their very own fantasy groups in pleasant leagues, however none of whom have something almost as giant of a sweat as Herzig.

Late within the sport, the Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold throws a deep cross to Jordan Addison that’s intercepted. The refs throw a flag and name it cross interference. It units the Vikings up on the 1-yard line, and so they rating a landing that basically seals the sport. One in every of Herzig’s buddies asks him why he appears so disenchanted. 

“Effectively, if Jordan Addison would have caught that ball as an alternative of him getting the cross interference,” Herzig says nonchalantly, “I feel I’d have had $132,000.” 

The penalty knocks Herzig out of some high-roller fantasy leagues, together with a few with $10,000 buy-ins, the place he had already defeated the likes of Barstool Sports activities founder Dave Portnoy (Portnoy had bragged that he “kicked everybody’s ass inside out” after week one, however failed to make the playoffs by season’s finish). And of Herzig’s 150 Greatest Ball Mania entries, it eliminates all of them however three. To ensure that Herzig to make it to the finals, one among his three remaining groups would wish to be among the many prime 539 groups out of the remaining 8,624 that will survive the next week. The chance of that occuring was about one in six. Massive deal, you might say. 

However Herzig has made the finals of this event yearly, and he even gained the inaugural occasion again in 2020. If he have been to make the finals once more for the fifth 12 months in a row, he’d accomplish one thing no one in fantasy soccer has ever finished earlier than. The chance of that occuring? One in 23,108. 

FANTASY FOOTBALL’S ORIGINS CAN BE traced again to the early Nineteen Sixties with the creation of the Larger Oakland Skilled Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL) by Invoice Winkenbach, an Oakland Raiders minority proprietor. The sport unfold within the Nineteen Seventies by phrase of mouth, most notably by Andy Mousalimas, an Oakland sports-bar proprietor who’s now referred to as the “godfather” of fantasy soccer. His league required gamers to present up to his bar and draft in individual, and thru the early years of the sport, bar leagues have been a main supply of progress.

One such bar league in 1989, on the Scholz Gartenden in downtown Austin, was raided by the native vice squad and eight individuals have been arrested on felony organized-crime fees. It was the primary arrest in what would grow to be a nationwide fantasy-football crime wave.

The legislation that fantasy soccer supposedly broke was the prohibition on playing on sporting occasions, a line that was blurred by fantasy leagues’ use of money entries and prizes. In 1991, Florida Legal professional Common Bob Butterworth issued an opinion that fantasy leagues have been unlawful and punishable by jail time. The NFL did all it might to distance itself from fantasy leagues, and despatched cease-and-desist letters to fantasy-league operators who used the NFL’s identify and logos of their branding. However regardless of the crackdown, most followers have been undeterred, and fantasy soccer continued to develop.  

The rise of the web within the Nineteen Nineties made it simpler than ever to monitor statistics and coordinate leagues. By 2003, the Fantasy Sports activities Commerce Affiliation estimated that 15 million individuals have been taking part in fantasy sports activities, up from fewer than a million in 1988. 

Fantasy had grow to be mainstream, and the NFL realized that fantasy-football gamers have been amongst its most passionate followers. Research confirmed that fantasy followers attended extra video games, purchased extra workforce attire, and consumed extra media. In 2002, the league surveyed its followers and located that whereas the common fan watched 6.6 hours of soccer a week, the common fantasy participant watched 8.4 hours. To cater to these die-hards, the NFL created a channel referred to as RedZone, which might solely present the scoring performs in every NFL sport dwell as they occurred, constantly for seven hours every Sunday. (Immediately, fantasy gamers on common eat greater than 20 hours of sports activities media each week.) 

By 2006, when Congress handed the Illegal Web Playing and Enforcement Act, a legislation designed to criminalize on-line playing in all of its numerous varieties, from poker to sports activities betting, the NFL had utterly deserted its objections to fantasy. The league lobbied Congress to write in an exception to the ban for fantasy sports activities. 

It was round this time that Herzig bought severe about fantasy soccer. He’d been taking part in since center faculty in Florida, the place he and his buddies would use the computer systems at college to draft their groups and set lineups. Herzig was all the time a sports activities nut, and even a little bit of an athlete. He performed aggressive tennis till an harm sidelined him. He went to school at Wake Forest and spent most of his nights taking part in on-line poker till the UIGEA shut all of it down his sophomore 12 months. He used his newfound additional time to put extra work into his fantasy-football groups. To present himself an edge in his league along with his buddies, Herzig would be a part of giant leagues on Yahoo and ESPN that allowed anybody to enter, simply so he might get a glimpse at what gamers different individuals have been selecting up and dropping so he might use that info in his personal league, leveraging something he might discover to get a bonus. It grew into a main endeavor, regardless of solely having $5 or $10 at stake amongst his buddies. “If I used to be going to be taking part in, I’ve by no means been the sort to half-ass one thing like that,” he says. “So I put within the time.” 

All through school, Herzig needed to work in sports activities, maybe as an agent. He interned as a baseball scout for a sports activities company, touring by Florida and dealing as an adviser with highschool and school prospects. The work concerned participant analysis and was his first foray, nonetheless rudimentary, into projecting athletes’ future efficiency. By the point he completed school with a diploma in political science, he had job gives to work full time as a scout. It could have been his dream, getting paid to work in sports activities, however the work would have stored him on the highway and the cash wasn’t nice. “I thought of it, however ended up type of promoting out a bit.” He deserted his plan to go to legislation faculty and grow to be a sports activities agent and as an alternative utilized for and was accepted into a improvement program for latest school graduates at Capital One, studying information analytics. 

At Capital One, he rapidly made buddies with a group of like-minded sports activities followers, and so they began their very own fantasy-football league. They traveled to Las Vegas to make an occasion out of their draft, reserving a suite on the MGM Grand. 

Most of them went to Vegas to celebration — Herzig was there to win. Herzig had finished his homework earlier than the journey. He knew what state his buddies have been from, the place they went to school, who their favourite gamers have been. The plan? Make everybody overpay for gamers he knew they needed, and to hold the costs low on those he needed for himself. 

“You’ve bought to be paying consideration all the time,” Herzig tells me. Not all of his opponents have been up for the duty. “One of many guys had a little an excessive amount of enjoyable hanging on the pool and knew that he was not match for the draft.” He spent all of his cash on the primary two gamers, then went to sleep. 

After that first 12 months, Herzig’s Capital One co-workers stored their fantasy league going, annually collectively getting higher and higher. As a result of all of them had technical backgrounds in information analytics, they took fantasy soccer severely in a entire new method — they didn’t simply select gamers based mostly on their common sense of whether or not a participant was “good” or “dangerous.” They constructed laptop packages to analyze participant statistics that mirrored the type of fashions they constructed at work. “We type of began pondering, ‘Hey, can’t we apply these similar methodologies?’” Herzig says. 

Herzig wrote code to undertaking individual-player performances based mostly on information units of previous statistics, and used a solver program in Excel that took Herzig’s projections and spit out an optimum fantasy lineup. His projections have been rudimentary by as we speak’s requirements, however on the time have been forward of the curve. Yahoo was publishing its personal projections of what every participant ought to count on to rating in fantasy every week. Herzig examined his outcomes towards Yahoo’s fantasy scores and located his have been extra correct. He knew he was onto one thing.

Round this time, a new method to play fantasy soccer was rising in recognition. Day by day fantasy sports activities (DFS) web sites began cropping up, permitting gamers to construct a new fantasy workforce each single day, and have that workforce compete in large-scale tournaments on-line. Reasonably than drafting one workforce that competed all season lengthy, DFS gamers put collectively a number of new groups each week. Better of all, DFS gamers didn’t want to wait till the top of the soccer season to accumulate any cash they gained. They might win cash each week. 

The rise of DFS was facilitated by the UIGEA, thanks to the fantasy-sports exemption. The exemption didn’t require a minimal size of time for a contest, so enterprising firms discovered a method to develop a fantasy contest that will really feel extra akin to sports activities betting, whereas nonetheless working inside the pointers of fantasy sports activities. The primary vital DFS websites appeared in 2007, however the DFS {industry} gained traction with firms like FanDuel and DraftKings, which launched round 2009. Development was explosive. Herzig and his buddies began taking part in DFS on these early websites, making use of their participant projections and predictive fashions, and it didn’t take Herzig lengthy to construct up a five-figure bankroll. 

One in every of Herzig’s buddies at Capital One, David, moved to San Francisco to be a part of a tech startup in 2016. “I used to be on the market visiting him and met his sister, who he had beforehand finished a nice job of hiding from his buddies.” The sister’s identify was Arielle, and two weeks after assembly her, Herzig flew again to San Francisco — this time to see Arielle. Three months later, Herzig packed his luggage and moved to San Francisco.

After Arielle and Herzig moved in collectively, she started to discover his stress stage going up when he watched soccer. She requested him about it, and he instructed her about how a lot cash he had driving on the outcomes of the video games. She was shocked. “Are you, like, playing?” she requested him. “I construct prediction fashions,” he instructed her, and he confirmed her how he was beating the competitors along with his fashions. That put her comfy. “If Justin was going to lose cash at one thing, he wouldn’t be doing it,” she tells me.

Arielle says ultimately she even got here to take pleasure in Herzig’s fantasy-football contests. “I’ve discovered some pleasure in it,” she says, “however I feel what’s totally different about how I used to watch soccer versus now could be earlier than I used to cheer for a workforce, whereas now it’s extra in regards to the particular person gamers.” That is a widespread conundrum for soccer followers within the age of fantasy sports activities. When Arielle’s mom tried to watch a sport with them and requested Justin what workforce to root for, he paradoxically replied “each.” 

“Lots of people would possibly actually like a workforce,” Herzig says, “however their fandom for his or her fantasy workforce comes first.” 

By 2017, Herzig certified for the first-ever main DFS event on a web site referred to as Fantasy Drafts. It held 12 qualifying tournaments, every with 2,000 individuals placing up $500 and the winner transferring on to a remaining occasion. Herzig entered, gained, and made the finals. Fantasy Drafts introduced him to Charlotte, North Carolina, the place the ultimate 12 competed dwell for a million-dollar first prize. Amongst these finalists have been Alex “Awesomo” Baker and brothers Tom and Martin Crowley, three of probably the most profitable DFS gamers at the moment. Herzig completed ninth. “Though I did poorly, I nonetheless felt like I’m on the appropriate web page,” he says. 

Finally Herzig grew weary of DFS, and went in search of a totally different sport, maybe with softer competitors. “I don’t need to simply go swim with the sharks,” he says, “however I do want to improve how a lot I’m keen to play.” In 2018, he found Greatest Ball, the place gamers draft a workforce and depart it for the entire season. They don’t commerce or drop gamers as they get injured or carry out higher. There’s a draft, then 17 weeks of sweating. 

Since you’re caught with whoever you choose, the sport entails extra luck than DFS — however nonetheless requires talent to win. “It’s type of the candy spot,” says Peter Jennings, a two-time DFS world champion and one among Herzig’s earliest opponents. “Identical to poker.” Whereas it had grow to be almost unimaginable for an unskilled participant to get fortunate and win at DFS, somebody might sometimes win at Greatest Ball based mostly solely on luck, which stored extra leisure gamers within the pool. However a expert participant like Herzig might outperform the fortunate gamers over the long term. “We have been in all probability the highest two guys within the early Greatest Ball days,” says Jennings of himself and Herzig. “That’s simply because the talent hole was huge.” 

Herzig found a small startup referred to as Draft that ran Greatest Ball contests for small buy-ins, round $1 to $3 per contest. He entered as lots of them as he might. The proprietor later instructed him that for the primary three years of the corporate’s existence, Herzig was their largest participant, each by way of the variety of contests he entered in addition to how a lot he gained. For the 2019 season alone, he drafted 31,000 groups. He gained $164,000. 

“You don’t have an edge with Justin. You’re simply hoping he doesn’t have an edge on you.”

Peter Jennings, a two-time DFS world champion

IN 2019, HERZIG WENT TO WORK FOR Accenture, a main tech-industry consulting agency, main analysis into rising know-how. Regardless of spending hours daily engaged on fantasy soccer, he held on to his day job. With the wage he was at, and the monitor that he was on, giving up his profession to focus solely on a sport the place his wins (and losses) have been by no means assured, didn’t appear smart. “I had golden handcuffs with the company life,” he says.

He continued to have success taking part in fantasy, nonetheless. As he gained more cash, he’d make investments extra into his fantasy leagues every season, ultimately reaching about $100,000 in entry charges per 12 months. One 12 months, he made greater than $800,000. However a lot of that was from event wins the place he had to get by giant fields. “I can’t say that was repeatable. There’s nonetheless a lot luck concerned.” 

In 2020, he gained the primary ever Greatest Ball Mania contest for $200,000, and donated a portion of his winnings to Son of a Saint, a charity that helps boys in New Orleans who’ve misplaced their fathers to loss of life or incarceration. The donation was a method to say thanks: It’s the charity of alternative for New Orleans Saints operating again Alvin Kamara. “Alvin Kamara bought me six touchdowns,” he says. “I wouldn’t have gained it with out Alvin Kamara.”

That 2020 win cemented Herzig as one of many prime fantasy gamers on the earth. He backed it up with a string of different wins and prime finishes over the following few years. He’s remained on the head of the curve by being impartial reasonably than simply copying what different profitable gamers are doing. “He’s been ready to obtain one in 100 to one in 10,000 outcomes persistently, which simply reveals the extent of talent that he has,” Jennings says. “We now have a very comparable technique, and I’ve drafted hundreds of leagues towards Justin.… Justin’s not going to make errors. You don’t have an edge with Justin. You’re simply hoping he doesn’t have an edge on you.”  

In 2023, Herzig made it to the finals of a DraftKings Greatest Ball occasion, the place first place paid a million. The ultimate sport fell on his birthday, which was additionally New Yr’s Eve. He and Arielle had simply moved into a new home on a bayou close to Tampa Bay, Florida, and she or he organized a celebration to have a good time the vacation, his birthday, and their new residence. The celebration was not meant to be an event to sweat Herzig’s potential million-dollar win. The friends have been principally Arielle’s buddies and colleagues, not Herzig’s soccer crowd. “I clearly knew that he did these sorts of issues,” Arielle says, “however nobody else did.”

Because the celebration went on and the friends all watched fireworks from the veranda overlooking the bayou, Herzig began to obtain frantic texts from his fantasy-football buddies. Inexperienced Bay Packers huge receiver Jayden Reed, who was on Herzig’s workforce, was having a massive sport. Herzig turned on the sport in time to see Reed catch a landing cross proper earlier than halftime. He realized he wanted solely a single 20-yard catch or a pair of 11-yard catches from Reed to safe the win and the million bucks. 

He instructed Arielle about what was taking place. She instructed a couple of her buddies on the celebration. Earlier than lengthy, all the celebration was standing across the tv peppering Herzig with questions. “Individuals simply didn’t perceive in any respect. They have been like, ‘How did you get this?’ and, ‘Did you make, like, a $100,000 guess?’” 

As halftime dragged on, Herzig and his friends agonized ready for the sport to come again on. A textual content appeared in his fantasy soccer group chat. It solely stated, “Oh no.” Herzig knew immediately what it meant. 

Reed had damage himself through the landing catch. The sport was a blowout for the Packers, so the workforce had determined not to danger a worse harm to its huge receiver. He wouldn’t return to the sport. Herzig would end in second place and “solely” win $150,000.  His friends have been crestfallen. “Now I’ve bought individuals feeling dangerous for me. Why ought to they really feel dangerous for me?” he says. “I’m nonetheless profitable $150,000. It’s nonetheless fairly superior.” 

If Arielle’s buddies felt dangerous for Herzig, they have been equally in awe of his expertise. A whole lot of them performed fantasy soccer, too. “All my buddies began reaching out to Justin about soccer,” Arielle says. No relaxation for the weary. 

HEADING INTO THIS YEAR’S BEST BALL MANIA finals, Herzig felt relieved to simply make it that far. His life was altering in ways in which made it tougher for him to prioritize fantasy soccer. Years at Accenture serving to tech entrepreneurs with their startups had sparked in him a latent envy — he was prepared to begin his personal enterprise. He co-founded a startup with one among his buddies from his Capital One days that produced fantasy video games. He invested a few of his cash into actual property. Arielle was pregnant with their first little one. 

As I drive up to his home to watch the finals with him on a Sunday afternoon in late December, his neighborhood was in shambles after hurricanes Helene and Milton. Herzig’s residence remained standing and in good condition regardless of having been flooded. It overlooks a bayou simply off of Tampa Bay, and he and his friends sit exterior on a veranda watching a TV mounted on the skin of the home. 

Whereas Herzig is hoping to win a million {dollars}, his friends are all anxious about their very own numerous fantasy groups, principally competing for a few hundred bucks. They every inform me some model of the identical story: They’d been of their league for a few years, with the identical individuals. There was cash concerned, however it was secondary to the glory of profitable, the bragging rights, the overcome their closest and dearest buddies. “It’s way more the delight than it’s the cash,” Arielle’s good friend Cory Brandfon tells me. “The delight will make me lose sleep.”

Herzig, too, has one among these leagues he performs in yearly. He used to handle about a dozen of them. Now he performs in just one, with a group of buddies from his baseball-scout days he has performed with for greater than a decade, none of whom do high-stakes fantasy sports activities like he does. No matter edge Herzig will get from all of his projections and modeling, they haven’t borne a lot fruit in his good friend league. Final 12 months was the primary 12 months he gained it. To lastly win towards his buddies who solely performed “for the enjoyable of it,” “I bought a lot delight out of that,” he says. 

Whereas the Tremendous Bowl looms giant for followers of the NFL, the comparatively insignificant week 17 of the common season is equally massive for fantasy-football gamers. It’s the next-to-last week of the season, however it’s the final week for fantasy, as a result of the ultimate week of the common season is commonly a week that groups select to relaxation their beginning gamers. 

To take care of this, Herzig spends a lot of time eager about week 17 matchups initially of the season when he’s drafting his groups. He seems to be at issues just like the chance of their workforce being in rivalry, a participant’s contract scenario, their age, the gamers behind them on the roster who is perhaps competing for minutes late within the season. 

He additionally does some counterintuitive drafting, like selecting up two gamers on the identical workforce — a quarterback and huge receiver combo, for instance — in order that when one has a massive sport, they each do. In week 16, this technique helped him advance to the finals, when Baker Mayfield, the quarterback of his hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers, related with huge receiver Jalen McMillan for 2 touchdowns in a 34-point sport. Each have been on Herzig’s workforce. 

The Buccaneers wanted to beat the Carolina Panthers in week 17 to make the playoffs, and most of Herzig’s friends needed to watch that sport, reasonably than the NFL RedZone channel. The Buccaneers performed all of their starters, and Mayfield put up a staggering whole of 5 touchdowns and 359 passing yards for the highest fantasy rating of the week. It vaulted Herzig’s workforce into the highest 100. He went from being glad simply to be right here, to a glimmer of hope. 

The sensation wouldn’t final. Because the day’s video games wore on into evening, Herzig might do nothing as he watched his fellow finalists leapfrog over him within the standings as all of his lively gamers completed and different gamers continued to put up unimaginable stat traces all day. The Buccaneers have been within the playoffs. Herzig’s buddies have been home-league champions. However Herzig fell to one hundred and twenty fifth place out of 672,672. It wasn’t first. It wasn’t a million {dollars}. However he took some solace in realizing that in merely making it this far, on this giant of a discipline, for the fifth consecutive 12 months, he had finished one thing no one had ever finished earlier than, and presumably won’t ever do once more. “If you happen to max out the competition, you need to solely make the finals as soon as out of each 10 years,” he says, referring to getting into Greatest Ball Mania with the utmost of 150 entries. “There’s been tens of millions of entries. Just one individual has made all 5 finals.” 

Just a few weeks later, the Buccaneers would play their first-round playoff sport, and Herzig deliberate to be on the sport. Arielle was due any day to give delivery, so she stayed residence, and insisted Herzig plan forward a quick-exit technique in case she went into labor through the sport. 

The Buccaneers appeared to be on the verge of victory, however Mayfield fumbled the ball in his personal pink zone, and so they by no means recovered. In soccer, as in fantasy soccer, talent alone isn’t sufficient to win. You want a little little bit of luck, too. “I’m a agency believer in the best way the universe works,” says Jennings. “You possibly can create your personal luck by working laborious and being good. I feel that’s evident with Justin.” 

As a result of the universe is each amusing and sort, a few hours after the Buccaneers sport, Arielle went into labor and gave delivery to their daughter, Riley. Herzig already had his route residence all discovered, and made it with loads of time to spare. One other fortunate break — made attainable by a little little bit of talent.