So there are about a billion DFS websites and everybody has their favorites, that is for sure. And there are many theories as to which ones are doing well and which ones are not. Now, I decided to actually look at the data and see which ones are getting the highest traffic. Now a word before I go further, this is a novice analysis. I do not have access to the actual data such as subs, how much of their traffic is low value, how much is high. I used the Alexa rating service which is itself limited (no I did not pay for the sub to get all the data just for this dumb article). The fact is a site with 700 visitors, if they are all paid, is in theory better than a sub with 10k visitors and only 50 are paid, but I have no way to distinguish the difference.
So what I am asking is please do not assume some tout site is going under just based on this data. It is an extremely limited subset. Again, I went mainly with rankings. Also, this is a snapshot in time and might change greatly in two months after this article is written. But here are the most popular DFS tout websites and where they rank:
Rotogrinders ranks 17,9000 in the world and 3,677 in the United States
Fantasy Labs ranks 38,394 in the world and 5,624 in the United States
Awesemo ranks 32,7776 in the world and 6,528 in the United States
Numbersfire ranks 27,056 in the world and 3,688 in the United States
Guru Elite ranks 174,000 in the world 31,649 in the United States
Daily Roto ranks 109,920 in the world 18,282 in the United States
Establish the Run ranks 47,893 in the world 6,544 in the United States
Run Pure ranks 253,476 in the world does not have an Alexa US rank. Also, the only site that I have done so far that is actually losing visitors in October
FTN ranks 439,882 in the world 97,919 in the united states
Rotowire ranks 14,753 in the world 3,147 in the United States
So a couple points about the data; every site listed is on a growth trajectory other than RunPure. Now this is October so football is probably the reason. Elite Mafia and Guru have multiple first page websites so that is hard to track. Also, if people are bookmarking into the sites and not going to the front page I do not believe Alexa would track them. If you are shocked by Numberfire they apparently do very well on Social Media. Now another way to look would be Youtube videos which is an idea. One other point; all these sites see a ton of traffic. All are over one million for October, so the DFS industry at large is healthy.
Honestly, looking at the data, outside of RunPure I think all these sites are doing fine and on a growth trajectory. FTN is hurt because it was just formed and would have trouble getting a good number. So outside of RunPure I would imagine all these sites will be fine for the next year and as I said again I do not have access to subscription data etc….