The start of the New Year is a perfect time to try new ideas and embrace new adventures and that is exactly what DraftKings is doing to kick off 2015 with the introduction of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) daily fantasy sports. In the ever growing and highly competitive daily fantasy sports space companies are now more then ever looking for ways to differentiate themselves from the competition and the debut of MMA is allowing the player popular Draft Kings to do just that. As one of the first daily fantasy sports sites ever to offer Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) as a playing option Draft Kings is positioning themselves once again to be a daily fantasy sports industry leader and innovator. Lets review some of the opening day characteristics of DraftKings Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) to get a better feel for what is to come for this new exciting and intriguing daily fantasy sports game type.

DraftKings Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Daily Fantasy Sports Scoring

At first glance the scoring and lineup system for DraftKings daily fantasy sports Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is simple, straightforward and reasonable. While limiting the depth and breadth of scoring options reduces the variance of event it could be beneficial for new sport releases while statistics are studied and kinks ironed out. In each MMA daily fantasy sports event players are given a fixed salary cap of $50,000 that is available to draft a 5-fighter lineup. The scoring glossary and summary include SS – Significant Strike (+.05 points), ADVC – Advance (+1 points), TD – Takedown (+2 points), REV – Reversal Sweep (+2 points), KD – Knockdown (+3 points), 1rW+ – 1st Round Win (+100 points), 2rW+ – 2nd Round Win (+70 points), 3rW+ – 3rd Round Win (+50 points), 4rW+ – 4th Round Win (+40 points), 5rW+ – 5th Round Win (+40 points), WBD+ – Decision Win (+25 points) making it very easy to decipher where points are coming from. Some of the more complex terms are defined as 1. Significant Strikes are any Distance, Clinch, or Ground Strikes considered “Power Strikes” and 2. Advances include Half Guard, Side Control, Mount, and Back Control. The scoring follows official MMA scoring and rules so there is little discrepancy between live event points and there translation into lineups. It seems improvements could be made in all places where the scores are equal. TD and REV should be the same and 4rW and 5rW should also not be the same. It also seems the distance between points in 1rW versus everything else is too large. Since this was only the first appearance of MMA it will be interesting to see how the scoring advances and changes over time to improve the MMA daily fantasy sports.

DraftKings Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Daily Fantasy Sports Debut Winning Lineup

The complete 5 fighter winning lineup breakdown is below and there are some notable points of interest. The first interesting note is that the whole winning lineup scorecard did not have one single instance of an Advance (ADVC) or a Reversal Sweep (REV). Given the scoring are already extremely limited that two of the options were not even exercised at anytime. This seems to indicate that scoring need to be expanded or re-defined in some way. A second DraftKings daily fantasy sports Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) lineup scoring curiosity is the point value to actual scoring marks ration between Significant Strikes (SS) and all other technique scoring options. One surprise of significance is that the two highest scoring fighters were on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of when and how they finished their fights. One must have missing piece of the scoring would seem to finishing move point differentials based on difficult which would allow inclusions of popular MMA moves like the Arm Bar, Rear Naked Choke, Flying Knee, Spinning Back Fist, Ground and Pound into the scoring system thus enhancing the experience while adding much needed additional variance. While the overall system may seem to need a bit of work the kickoff event went off without a hitch and was certainly a lot of fun.

Evan Dunham 6.9% vs. Damm W By Dec 152 SS, 1 TD, 1 WBD+     (103 POINTS)

Paul Felder 32.5% vs. Castillo W By KO/TKO 33 SS, 1 KD, 1 2rW+     (89.5 POINTS)

Cody Garbrandt 27.9% vs. Brimage W By KO/TKO 49 SS, 1 TD, 2 KD, 1 3rW+     (82.5 POINTS)

Shawn Jordan 10.9%  vs. Cannonier W By KO/TKO 12 SS, 1 KD, 1 1rW+     (109 POINTS)

Brad Tavares 35.1% vs. Marquardt W By Dec 50 SS, 1 TD, 1 WBD+     (52 POINTS)

The premiere of DraftKings Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) was a huge success with some tournaments drawing as many as 14,375 lineups. The UFC Fight Card was amazing with Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier putting on a decent Main Event performance. While there does seem to be a few kinks DraftKings may need to work out the experience and enjoyment of finally getting to play Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) daily fantasy sports far out weighed any of the negatives or shortfalls. As always it was a first class game release by DraftKings and in normal fashion players can always only expect it to get better. If your are looking for something new to try in daily fantasy sports or if you are a die hard UFC Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fan then this exercise in investment and entertainment is a must. We sure are already looking forward to the next event!!!