DraftKings contributor Tim Finnegan joins The Sweat to discuss UFC lineup building strategies on DraftKings.
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Transcript
Jessie Coffield:
If some of our viewers haven’t joined many MMA DFS contests, can you give us an overview of strategy for how you want to build a lineup for some beginners, perhaps?
Tim Finnegan:
Yeah, sure. So basically, you want high volume fighters. You want to look at striking volume, takedowns and control time—these are stats that really score on DraftKings. So what I would do is I would go to ufc.com, pull up the stat page and look up significant strikes per minute, takedowns per 15 minutes—these are time-adjusted stats. And fighters who blend grappling and striking together are going to be the best fantasy scorers.
Colby Covington, he really blends his grappling and his striking very well and he scores a lot of fantasy points. He’s landing about five significant strikes per minute over his last five fights—that’s a good rate right there. He’s landed about 600 total significant strikes over his last five fights, so that’s a lot of striking volume that he lands. He’s also landing four takedowns per 15 minutes because he’s a very good wrestler, and he can generate over 10 minutes of control time in any fight. So you combine his striking, and his wrestling, and his takedowns, and his control time and he’s averaging over 100 DraftKings fantasy points per fight, which is one of the highest on the entire slate. So Colby Covington is basically the type of fighter you want to target in a DFS contest.
After you find the fighter that you want to pick, you also have to find the right matchup. So one of the first things I look for is opponent significant strike differential. Basically, you want to pick on fighters who absorb more strikes than they land. It’s just like point differential in other sports—if an NFL team is giving up more points than they score, they’re probably not going to be very good, right? So if a fighter is absorbing more strikes than the fighter lands, the fighter is probably not going to be very good.
You can also look at their takedown defense, too. So say, Colby Covington is a very good wrestler, if you look at his opponent and his opponent is only stopping 50% of takedown attempts, that’s not very good. So you can project that he’s going to score some takedowns in that fight. So those are the things I would look for when picking a fighter in DFS.
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DraftKings promoters may sometimes play on personal accounts in the games that advice is offered on. Personal views on the games and strategies above do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skills and judgment in building lineups. DraftKings promoters may also deploy different players and strategies than what is recommended above. DraftKings promoters do not have access to any non-public information.