SOCCER

Introducing Women's World Cup FanDuel Contests

FanDuel will be offering contests for the Women's World Cup. What do you need to know before you start making lineups?

The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup is right around the corner, with play in France kicking off on Friday, June 7th when the hosts battle South Korea.

FanDuel will be offering DFS contests -- both single-game and full roster -- throughout the global event, and the game style of the contests for the Women's World Cup will be a little different than what FanDuel has offered in the past for soccer.

So, let's break it down and see how the changes will impact things.

Scoring

FanDuel's scoring system will be the same as it has been for the past 12 months. Here's what we're looking at.

Stat Points
Goals 15.0
Assists 7.0
Shots on Goal 5.0
Chance Created 3.0
Blocked Shots, Tackles, Clearances and Interceptions 1.3
Goalie Goal Against -2.5
Goalie Save 3.0
Goalie Win 7.0
Goalie Clean Sheet 10.0
Defenders Clean Sheet 5.0


The settings were tweaked leading into last summer's Men's World Cup, and the changes -- which simplified things a bit -- remained consistent through this season's Premier League and Champions League offerings. You can peep this piece for a more thorough breakdown on how those changes impacted DFS, but in short, defensive midfielders saw a big drop in value as a result as forwards and midfielders need to create scoring chances to have upside.

Also, goalies on quality teams got a huge boost in value because keepers tally a 7.0-point bonus for getting a win and a 10.0-point bonus for clean sheets, meaning a goalie can rack up 17.0 FanDuel points for a clean-sheet win even if they aren't asked to make a save.

Single-Match Slates

FanDuel's single-match slates will remain the same for the Women's World Cup. You'll have $50 to select a five-person squad. Four positions will be for forwards and/or midfielders while one spot is for a defender. Goalies are not involved in single-game slates.

The all-important wrinkle with single-match slates is the addition of a captain slot, which isn't a part of rosters for multi-match slates. The player you put in your captain position has their points multiplied by 1.5. If you have a so-so roster but your captain goes off, you have a chance. If four of your five players deliver but your captain flops, you could be in trouble.

In single-game slates, goals are even more important than they are in full-roster contests -- and they're extremely important in full-roster contests. To stuff your pockets in single-game contests, you most often need at least some kind of exposure to every goal in a game, whether that be via the goal-scorer or an assist.

Full Roster Slates

The game style for multi-game slates has changed for this event. You'll get $100 to fill your lineup, and the roster has been tweaked to include four forwards/midfielders, two defenders, and a goalie. That's seven total players, one fewer than FanDuel's traditional offering.

The lumping together of forwards and midfielders opens up a lot more roster flexibility, and it should, in general, make it a lot easier to build a lineup.

The DFS impact of the roster changes could be significant. The obvious thing is that you can now roster four forwards if you want to (and if you can make the salaries fit), and given how important goals are, we can expect many DFS players to do just that. In an attempt to load up on goalscorers, dropping huge money at forward/midfield while punting on defense could become a popular lineup construction, and that would make attack-minded full-backs -- particularly those on favored teams, allowing them more chances to get forward -- perfect for tournaments due to low ownership levels.

Get to Know These Teams

You need goals to win in soccer DFS, and the best real-world teams score the most goals. Rocket science, I know. But it's imperative that you get to know the favorites in this tourney.

So who are they?

These are the seven teams most likely to win it all, according to the odds at FanDuel Sportsbook.

Team Odds
USA +350
France +360
Germany +500
England +650
Japan +1400
Australia +1600
Netherlands +1400


France, USA, Germany, and England are the clear frontrunners, and those teams will be favored in most every match they play. As such, the top players on those teams will likely be very popular on any slate in which those sides are involved. While it's a must to know those stars, it's also good to try to uncover which lesser-known players on the favored teams could blow up.

More important than knowing the overall tourney odds, however, is looking at the odds for each match, more of which will be released as we get closer to the fixtures. Oddsmakers are good at what they do, and we need to weigh their numbers when filling out our lineups while also knowing that the listed odds will heavily impact ownership. When you're building your roster on a given slate, be sure to know what the lines are for each match. In that regard, it's no different than playing DFS for any other spot.

Another thing to note is that the gap between the best teams in the field and the worst ones is bigger in the women's game than it is in the men's game. For example, the US is an otherworldly -8000 favorite to beat Thailand in their opening match. That's an implied win probability of 98.8% -- a number you just wouldn't see very often (if ever) in a men's match, especially at the World Cup. For DFS, that means the Americans will be insanely popular for that match, and it's easy to justify loading up on them.

Takeaways

For those of you familiar with FanDuel's typical soccer offerings, the setup for the Women's World Cup will feel mostly familiar with the added flexibility of the more fluid roster positions.

For those of you new to the game, the game style is intuitive: seek goalies on favored teams so that you can secure win bonuses, and check the oddsmakers lines to see which teams are primed to score goals and generate scoring chances.

When in doubt, trust the powerhouses and the oddsmakers.