Fantasy Sports Basics – What is a Guaranteed Prize Pool (Gtd.)?

The most popular type of contest in today’s fantasy sports landscape are ones with a guaranteed prize pool. What does that mean?

What is a Guaranteed Prize Pool (Gtd.)?

Guaranteed Prize Pool (Gtd.) refers to a contest in which we make the entire prize pool known in advance, no matter how many people enter the contest.

The more money that is guaranteed up front, the more you can win. During the Premier League season, especially, the guaranteed prize pool for our season-long fantasy game will be 1 million euros.

Fantasy Premier League Cash Game – 1 Million Euro Gtd.

Guarantees will often be smaller for other sports and leagues — like La Liga, Serie A, CS:GO, NBA, NHL and MLB — although contests can still have fairly high guarantees like the weekly monster tournaments.

Gtd. in Daily Fantasy Tournaments

Our DFS contests generally guarantee prize pools so that players can easily identify how much money is up for grabs in advance.

For example, if a 20€ tournament offers a 20,000€ guarantee, then it needs at least 1000 entries to break even. If only 800 teams enter the contest, then the contest is 4,000€ shy of the guarantee and we will cover that cost ourselves to make sure 20,000€ is split among the winners. This helps us hold larger contests, and helps you anticipate how many players you will be playing against in each contest.

Guaranteed Prize Pools & Overlay

If the number of entrants in the contest doesn’t cover the amount of money guaranteed, then there is an overlay. You can read more about overlays here. All of Fanteam’s big tournaments have a guaranteed prize pool. This means that we guarantee this tournament will be at least this big. If not enough entries are submitted before the tournament starts, then we will cover the rest of the prize pool.

Going above the Guaranteed

Prize pools can become higher than the guaranteed if there are more entries. In our lobby, you will see the MAX prize pool that this tournament can reach if all seats are sold out (shown below the guarantee, with grey letters).

Therefore, a tournament with a guaranteed prize pool means that the prize pool will be AT LEAST this much. It can become even higher if there is enough demand for it. Notice that if you multiply the total seats with the entry fee, you won’t get the maximum prize pool number. This is because of the rake. It is the small percentage of the prize pool that Fanteam keeps as a fee for hosting the games.

Create your team and win €200,000 for 1st place!

The €1,000,000 prize pool is guaranteed – this means, regardless of whether the cash league fills or no, we will pay out the entire €1M prize pool winnings, as advertised. To make things even more exciting, we’re paying out winnings to the top 5500 finishers.