Underdog Fantasy is back with its extremely popular Underdog Best Ball Mania 4 (2023) with a $15 million prize pool. Simply put, this isn't your father's fantasy football league---especially the pre-internet version that featured the painstaking task of combing through newspaper box scores.

Underdog, a new daily fantasy sports provider, is back with the biggest NFL contest yet again. In recent years, Underdog has rolled out its NFL Best Ball Fantasy contests with prize pools in the millions of dollars.

Better yet, it's simple to play.

Fantasy Football players draft a roster of NFL players for the upcoming season and compete in the best ball format all season long. This equates to low maintenance and high exhilaration over the course of an NFL season.

Ahead of the 2023 NFL season, Underdog has raised the stakes yet again.

This year, the contest has a $15 million prize pool with first place winning $3 million! The huge contest every year is one of the reasons why Underdog Fantasy is ranked as the top daily fantasy app by Saturday Down South.

Underdog Best Ball Mania Details (Image Credit: Getty Images, Graphic Credit: Robby Sabo) Underdog Best Ball Mania Details (Image Credit: Getty Images, Graphic Credit: Robby Sabo) Getty Images

What is Underdog Best Ball Mania 4 (2023)?

Here are the key points and how the contest works:

  • The entry fee is $25. You can enter as many as 150 times. Each entry will cost you $25.
  • You'll draft a roster of 18 NFL players against 11 other teams in snake draft format. Once you draft your roster, you're done. There are no trades, waiver wires, etc. throughout the season.
  • Best ball means that Underdog automatically selects your highest-performing players each week. No stress over who to sit and who to start! Or, in other words, you don't have to set your lineups each week.
  • Your roster will accumulate points in each round and the top performers of each group will advance to subsequent rounds. You can read the details about how each round works below.
  • There are two rounds of prizes available! The regular season prize pool will pay out some big money simply based on your roster's performance in NFL weeks 1 – 14. The tournament prize pool will pay out based on performance for the full best ball tournament. Details on the prize pool are below.

Use Our Underdog $100 Deposit Match to Maximize Your Entries

By utilizing Newsweek's Underdog Fantasy Promo Code, you can take advantage of a 100% deposit match of up to $100 when signing up.

With the $25 entry into the contest, this equates to four additional entries that you can get for free.

Want to maximize your shot at the big prize for this contest? Consider signing up now by taking advantage of the deposit match to increase your number of entries without increasing your total cost.

How the Best Ball Tournament Rounds Work

Best Ball Mania IV is a season-long contest. You have to make it through multiple rounds of competition.

Here are the rounds and how they work:

Round 1

Round 1 is the longest round and is made up of NFL Weeks 1-14. Your roster will compete in a group of 12 teams.

The top two performing teams in the group of 12 will advance to Round 2. If the full tournament slate of entries is filled (677,376 total entries), then there will be 56,448 12-person groups competing in the first round.

Also, there is a separate prize pool available for the top performers in Round 1 since it makes up the bulk of the NFL season. (Check out the regular season prize pool details below.)

Round 2

Round 2 will consist of the participants that advance from Round 1. Like Round 1, participants will compete in 12-person groups.

Round 2 will include 112,896 entries in 7,056 12-person groups. Round 2 will consist of NFL week 15.

Only the top performer from each 12-person group will move on to Round 3.

Round 3

Round 3 will take place during NFL Week 16 and consist of 7,056 entries across 441 16-person groups. The top performer in each 16-person group will move on to the final round, Round 4.

At this point, all entries in round 4 will win at least $1,000. (See details on the prizing by scrolling down further.)

Round 4

Round 4 is the final round and takes place during NFL Week 17. It is a single, 441-person group. The top performer in Round 4 will win the grand prize of $3,000,000.

All participants will be awarded various winnings based on the prize pool breakdown below.

Prize Pool Details

Now we get to the good stuff, the pot at the end of the rainbow and reward at the end of an arduous football season.

The tournament Prize Breakdown is as follows:

  • 1st place: $3,000,000
  • 2nd place: $1,000,000
  • 3rd place: $300,000
  • 4th place: $150,000
  • 5th place: $100,000
  • 6th place: $80,000
  • 7th place: $60,000
  • 8th place: $50,000
  • 9th place: $40,000
  • 10th place: $30,000
  • 11-50th place: $15,000
  • 51-100th place: $5,000
  • 101-200th place: $3,250
  • 201-300th place: $2,000
  • 301-400th place: $1,578
  • 401-441st place: $1,000
  • 442-882nd place: $465
  • 883-2205th place: $200
  • 2206-3528th place: $85
  • 3529-5292nd place: $75
  • 5293-7056th place: $65
  • 7057-35280th place: $30
  • 35281-112896th place: $25

Moreover, the regular season prize breakdown is as follows:

  • 1st place: $500,000
  • 2nd place: $200,000
  • 3rd place: $150,000
  • 4th place: $125,000
  • 5th place: $100,000
  • 6th place: $70,000
  • 7th place: $50,000
  • 8th place: $32,500
  • 9th place: $25,000
  • 10th place: $20,000
  • 11-15th place: $15,000
  • 16-20th place: $10,000
  • 21-30th place: $7,500
  • 31-50th place: $5,000
  • 51-100th place: $3,000
  • 101-150th place: $2,000
  • 151-250th place: $1,400
  • 251-500th place: $1,150
  • 501-1000th place: $1,000
  • 1001-10000th place: $250

Underdog's History with Big NFL Best Ball Tournaments

Of course, this is Best Ball Mania IV; but what has the contest looked like in past years?

Let's take a look at Underdog's progression with this huge contest.

Underdog Best Ball Mania IterationTotal Prize PoolFirst-Place Prize
Underdog Best Ball I$1 Million in Prizes$200K to First Place
Underdog Best Ball II$3.5 Million in Prizes$1 Million to First Place
Underdog Best Ball III$10 Million in Prizes$2 Million to First Place
Underdog Best Ball IV$15 Million in Prizes$3 Million to First Place

Tips for Competing in Best Ball Fantasy Contests

Best ball daily fantasy contests are different from other DFS contests. As such, you'll want to consider the various approaches and strategies that players often employ.

Let's take a look at some of these strategies:

1. Take a hard look at high-upside players

You might be willing to consider drafting players that represent significant upside even at the cost of consistent production. Why is that? Well, in the best-ball format, you don't have to set your lineup.

You don't need to guess which players will deliver during a given week. The system will automatically use your highest-scoring players each week; therefore, having a few high-upside players can be quite useful.

2. Depth can be important

Best ball contests are unique in that once you draft your team, you do not make any changes to your roster. No trades. No mid-season pickups.

As such, make sure you have enough depth at each position to handle a situation where a player gets injured or has a historically bad performance.

3. Remember the bye weeks during an NFL season

Understand how bye weeks can factor into your roster's performance. If you have a concentration of bye weeks for a given week, it could end up being a tough week for you.

Make sure you understand the rules and elimination points throughout the season to make sure you don't have an adverse effect as a result of too many byes during a given week.

4. Consider the late NFL season weeks or playoffs when drafting

In the best ball contests, you'll likely have to consider the playoffs. If you have a high concentration of players who are no longer playing, it'll be difficult in the later rounds of the best ball contest.

For Best Ball Mania IV, Rounds 2, 3, and 4 in the tournament span the NFL regular season Weeks 15-17. You'll want to consider what NFL teams are likely to still be playing their top players during this week.

This could be when bottom teams are possibly tanking for better draft position. So, make sure to draft accordingly.

5. Consider waiting on positions that start just one player

Some best-ball participants consider waiting on positions like quarterback and tight end since you only play one player at each of these positions during a given week. This could allow you to beef up and find the upside in other positions and take a quarterback or tight end later in the draft.

Note that for Underdog's Best Ball Mania 4 contest, Underdog will score your best QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 TE, and 1 FLEX position each week. That's eight of your total 18 players.

Best ball will automatically score your best players according to the positions available. You do not have to set your lineup or figure out who to play each week.

There you have it folks. Underdog Best Ball Mania IV is a super fun way to add some excitement to the upcoming NFL season.

Take advantage of the Underdog deposit bonus promotion, score some additional entries into this huge contest, and see if you can compete and get into this massive prize pool.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

");jQuery(this).remove()}) jQuery('.start-slider').owlCarousel({loop:!1,margin:10,nav:!0,items:1}).on('changed.owl.carousel',function(event){var currentItem=event.item.index;var totalItems=event.item.count;if(currentItem===0){jQuery('.owl-prev').addClass('disabled')}else{jQuery('.owl-prev').removeClass('disabled')} if(currentItem===totalItems-1){jQuery('.owl-next').addClass('disabled')}else{jQuery('.owl-next').removeClass('disabled')}})}})})

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7r7HWrK6enZtjsLC5jq6lnZ2imbyoecGeqq1lkpa5rXnMmqWimV2js615xZqlrGWTna6vr8RmaG6lXaW%2FqsbErGRqcGBlgXiB