11 year subscriber here. I found great value in the paid content for season long content for my redraft leagues and it's paid off multiple years winning leagues/money. When DFS exploded on the scene, I added that to my season long leagues and quickly migrated to spending more time and energy on DFS games for various reasons which is outside the scope of this thread. I stopped doing my season long games and just focused on DFS only last year and again this year due to time constraints with family, kids, and life outside of NFL. I read every post on this thread so far and was a bit surprised to see very little talk on DFS content so I figured I would chime in on that with some thoughts of my own. I've spent a stupid amount of time and energy into creating a fully interactive Lineup Manager using Microsoft Excel with a crap ton of VB scripting baked in. Over the years, I've collected a ton of data points that matter (to me at least) to help me craft up my own lineups. FBG content in both the season long sections and the DFS sections were used for many data points. With that said, I'll move onto my thoughts and opinions for this 2020 season based on DFS content.
Right off the bat this year I noticed some key missing pieces that use to be in the DFS section compared to last year and beyond.
1) As mentioned over in the DFS specific forum, @David Dodds Value Chart is simply missing this year! I know he handed off the Cracking Fanduel Article off to
@Devin Knotts last year but we still at least had the Value Chart from Dodds. This was a major piece of data that I had included in my own personal Lineup Manager App and placed a high value to that data within my own custom algorithm I used to come up with my own "Value" figure for every player that given week. This is a huge downgrade in DFS content this year.
2) The other key piece I'm not seeing this year is the "Wisdom of The Staff". This was another treasure trove of information for DFS content and more importantly, it weighed in on multiple staff members thoughts/voted on the various different criteria of information that was in that article each week. I used several of those topics that were in there as key pieces of information in my own program which also weighed heavy into my algorithms to come up with my own "Value" on each player each week. Take a look at all of this information that we're not getting this year from this one specific DFS article alone!
QB - Which quarterback $7900 or over are you most willing to pay up for?
QB - Which quarterback $7000 or under is the safest cash-game play?
QB - Which quarterback from $7100 to $7800 will be the best value?
QB - Which quarterback has most the potential to throw for 3-plus touchdowns?
RB - Which running back $7800 or over are you most willing to pay up for?
RB - Which running back $5600 or under has the most upside for use in tournaments?
RB - Which running back from $5700 to $7700 will be the best value?
RB - Which running back will have the highest cash game ownership percentage this week?
RB - Which running back with the lowest salary has the potential for 15-plus touches and/or one or more touchdowns?
WR - Which wide receiver $7600 or over are you most willing to pay up for?
WR - Which wide receiver $5600 or under has the most upside for use in tournaments?
WR - Which wide receiver from $5700 to $7500 will be the best value?
WR - Which wide receiver will have the highest cash game ownership percentage this week?
WR - Which wide receiver with the lowest salary has the potential for 10-plus targets?
TE - Which tight end $6000 or over are you most willing to pay up for?
TE - Which tight end $5000 or under has the most upside for use in tournaments?
TE - Which tight end from $5100 to $5900 will be the best value?
TE - Which tight end will have the highest cash game ownership percentage this week?
TE - Which is the cheapest tight end you think will score a touchdown?
TD - Which defense has the best chance to score a D/ST touchdown?
TD - Which team will score 31-plus points? (Not a defensive question.)
REC - Which wide receiver or tight end is in your favorite QB-REC stack?
RB - What running back stacks best with a defense this week?
Which player do you think will have an ownership percentage lower than 5% who will hit 3x value for tournament play?
Who is your cash game must-play?
Who is your biggest fade of the week?
3) Another item scaled back this year which has been mentioned in here (or somewhere else I forget) is the write ups on every game in the Passing/Rushing Matchup content in favor of doing it just for the top 5 and bottom 5. I'm glad they still rate all matchups (and improved the layout this year to put it in chart/column form) but this too was a very valuable tool used when making lineups. When it came time to comparing 2 similar priced players to fit on a lineup at the same position and similarly projected points, I would go to that games rushing/passing matchup writeup on the teams involved for the players. Many times this key writeup ended up being a major factor in choosing one player over the other based on this information. This is another major downgrade of information I personally used for DFS purposes.
4) Sigmund Bloom's Weekly Sleepers write up is only included in the season Long package and not available to the DFS package. This has never been an issue for me because I've been an all pro subscriber for the last 6 years when the "3 Year Offers" were presented and I jumped on it both times I saw it available. That ran out/no longer offered (unless I just missed it this year?) and I had to subscribe again this year. Now that I'm only doing DFS and moved on from season long leagues, I just went for the DFS package and just discovering Blooms Sleeper article isn't available for DFS?! This is just odd to me that a weekly article geared specifically for that given week in the season that highlights a staff members take on who he sees as sleepers for that week is ONLY available for season long package? What's the reasoning for this one not being available to the DFS only package? It directly lines up with what DFS is all about and highlights that given weeks sleeper picks. that's exactly what DFS and more importantly, GPP games are all about... finding those deep sleeper cheap guys who can blow up and give you 3x or more production compared to their price tags in DFS. This is another huge downgrade in content for me when I moved to the DFS package and just discovered this.
My personal path with the types of subscriptions I've had over the last 6 years:
- $64.95 for a 3 Year All Pro Package (2014-2016) breaks down to $21.65 per year
- $72.95 for a 3 Year All Pro Package (2016-2019) breaks down to $24.31 per year
- $49.95 for a 1 year subscription to just the DFS package (2020)
I understand I was very fortunate to snag those extremely discounted 3 year packages for the all Pro and that sometimes all good things do come to an end like this where it's no longer an option from comments I read by
@Joe Bryant. But now that I just paid $50 for the DFS only package, and adding all items up above that I'm now missing, I'm sitting here going into week 3 scratching my head wondering if I made the wrong move with sticking with FBG for the DFS only content. It seems crazy to me that I'm even thinking like this because I've been dropping "FBG" name left and right to close friends and family about how good the content has been in the past years. I'm now paying MORE money on a yearly basis this year than my past 6 years and getting less content (that matters the most to me). To top it all off, I've been so busy in life these last 3 weeks, that I haven't even submitted a single lineup in DFS this season yet. Now I look at the pricing on the site for the packages and see them discounted at $44.95 for DFS package ($5 off) and $54.95 for All Pro ($15 off). The all pro price at this point is only $5 more than what I paid for the non discounted $50 DFS package. In my mind I was like sweet, maybe for $5 more I can upgrade now to be an All Pro (my $50 DFS + $5 = the new discounted price of the all pro at $55. But the "Upgrade to all Pro" button for me states $10 to go up? If I already paid $50, why not $5 to go up to get where the current discount is now at $55? That's odd to me. Regardless, I'm not upgrading to All Pro for $5 or $10 just to get access to Blooms weekly Sleepers article but I wanted to at least point out that pricing thing I just noticed.
Conclusion: DFS content in my opinion took a huge hit this year with FBG for the above highlighted reasons. Add in the phasing out of the volume discounted multi year offers for your long time die hard subscribers has me currently reviewing the "Money Back Guaranteed" disclaimer right now. All of this time spent writing this up today is in hopes it makes it up the chain as valuable feedback from a decade+ long subscriber like myself and not simply as "complaining" or looking for a back and forth fight. Honest opinions here.