“If you think it can’t be you, it can be you.”

“I’ve won over $62,000 on FanDuel.”

Such phrases can be heard from FanDuel commercials multiple times while watching a sporting event on TV. They advertise FanDuel as being a relief from tanked seasons in your season-long fantasy leagues, and also promise the potential of winning cash prizes. Daily fantasy sports have become one of the bigger crazes in the sports world lately, and have garnered many headline news stories, both for popularity and for scandal.

Daily fantasy has become such a trend, in fact, that even on fantasy sites such as ESPN, the outlook for players mentions their value in daily fantasy leaguers. One such example is Malcom Floyd’s outlook, which states about his matchup against the Bears, “He’s a dart throw in daily fantasy this week.”

There are a lot of perks of daily fantasy sites such as FanDuel. Signing up requires putting a deposit down. Therefore, there is always a money stipulation, making it more of a thrill every week by being able to “bet” on your team. Additionally, you can pick a different lineup just about every week, and often there are solid scorers that you can get for low value, theoretically making a solid lineup quite easy. Most importantly, however, there are prizes in every league, ranging from cash to cars, such as Porsche Carreras.

What the commercials do not tell you is that the prizes are much harder to win than they make them seem to be. Each league, depending on the type, has a predetermined number of points that you must score to be “in the money.” In other words, if your team scores well, but doesn’t score among the best in the lobby, you win no money.

Additionally, these sites make it seem as though any given person can go in and win large cash prizes. However, due to the budgets set by the sites, the well-known players are very expensive, and you can’t put more than a few on your team. This makes “sleepers,” who cost little money and who can possibly give you massive point values, a hot commodity. Casual fans most likely don’t know the sleepers, however, and simply pick whatever they can afford, regardless of all the other variables that may factor into the point value potential.

Contrasting these daily fantasy leagues are the season-long fantasy leagues. In season-long leagues, there is no required money deposit, unless the entire league agrees to one. Additionally, it involves a draft where you pick your players, and theoretically most teams balance each other out. The different systems of getting players, such as waivers and trades, are not part of daily fantasy leagues because they are only one day, so neither of these things really matters, but these systems can redeem a “busted season” if you feel you’ve had one. This contrasts to daily fantasy, where once your team is out of the money, your dollar or two dollars is gone. Because everyone drafts players, nobody else has the same players that you do, unlike in daily fantasy leagues, where many different people can have very similar rosters.

There are drawbacks of season-long fantasy, however. Those who drafted players such as Jamaal Charles or Jordy Nelson can attest to how good your draft may have looked on paper, until injuries strike. Such catastrophic losses to a fantasy team can kill your season. If you had the right waiver claims, you may luck out. However, most of the time losing a top draft choice like that, especially in a ten or twelve team league where talent is scarce, can immediately lose you two or three games. Therefore, you are essentially stuck with the remnants of your once awesome team.

Additionally, draft busts can do more than just lose you a couple of bucks like in daily fantasy. Draft busts are those six or so players every year who are hyped up as being obvious early round picks, but end up either injured or entirely ineffective in the offense. If you drafted Alfred Morris or Jordan Matthews high this year, you have felt this pain. You’ve been stuck with busts, and if you have one or more of them, not only are they horrendous and killing your team, but they’re also not tradable assets, leaving you to make the (possibly) tough call of benching them or letting go of them entirely.

Whether you choose to play daily fantasy or season-long fantasy is up to you. Some people prefer one over the other, and some play both every season. The one thing that you must take into consideration, however, is what the benefits and drawbacks to each are, and make the best decision accordingly.