Underdog is a difficult sports platform to put into one category. Many fans discovered the company through fantasy football, Best Ball drafts, or player picks. Open the Underdog app in 2026, though, and the experience can extend well beyond traditional fantasy sports. Depending on where you’re located, Underdog can include fantasy drafts, Pick’em contests, college contests, and sports prediction markets built around event contracts.
There is even an Underdog Sportsbook, although that part of the company has a much smaller geographic footprint than its fantasy and prediction products. For sports fans, this creates an unusual situation. Crossing a state line doesn’t necessarily mean Underdog simply switches from “available” to “unavailable.” Instead, the version of Underdog available to you can change with your location.
That’s one reason location and privacy are particularly interesting when discussing an Underdog VPN.
A VPN such as ExpressVPN can encrypt the connection between your device and the VPN server while masking your normal public IP address. That’s useful for sports fans researching players, managing fantasy teams, following games, or using unfamiliar networks while traveling.
Affiliate Disclosure: VPNForSports may earn a commission if you purchase through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
But first, it’s worth understanding exactly what Underdog has become.
What Is Underdog Sports?
Underdog began with fantasy sports at the center of its identity, and that history is still obvious throughout the platform. Fantasy football remains particularly important. Underdog offers drafts and Best Ball competitions alongside its Pick’em games, allowing fans to build around individual player performances rather than only focusing on which team wins or loses.
But the company has expanded. In July 2026, Underdog announced the launch of its own federally licensed prediction-market exchange. The exchange is wholly owned by Underdog and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, adding another type of sports product to an app already known for fantasy contests. That leaves modern Underdog sitting at the intersection of several parts of the sports industry:
- Fantasy drafts
- Best Ball
- Pick’em contests
- College fantasy contests in eligible locations
- Sports prediction markets
- An online sportsbook in a limited market
Those products aren’t interchangeable, and they aren’t necessarily available in the same states. That’s the key to understanding Underdog in 2026.
Underdog Isn’t Just Another Sportsbook
Calling Underdog a sportsbook doesn’t really explain the platform. A conventional sportsbook primarily organizes its sports experience around markets such as moneylines, point spreads, totals, player props, futures, and live games. Underdog’s identity was built differently.
Fantasy sports puts the players themselves at the center. A wide receiver’s receiving yards, a quarterback’s passing performance, a basketball player’s points, or another individual statistic can become more important than simply choosing which team wins. Prediction markets add another layer. Instead of a conventional sportsbook wager, Underdog Prediction Picks involve event contracts traded through CFTC-regulated exchanges. Contract prices represent a position on whether a particular outcome will occur.
Underdog therefore gives sports fans several different ways of interacting with the same games. You might draft players before a season, make fantasy selections based on individual performances, or trade an event contract tied to the outcome of a game. Understanding which product you’re looking at matters.
Fantasy Sports Built Underdog
Before prediction markets became one of the fastest-growing areas of sports, Underdog had already established itself with fantasy players. Best Ball is a good example of why. Traditional season-long fantasy football requires constant management. You draft your roster, but then the weekly work begins. Start-or-sit decisions, waiver claims, injuries, trades, and lineup changes become part of the season.
Best Ball removes much of that weekly management. You draft the team and the strongest performances on your roster determine your scoring lineup under the contest rules. That makes the draft itself extremely important. For serious football fans, preparing for one can involve researching depth charts, rookies, coaching changes, injuries, target shares, offensive lines, schedules, and average draft position. That research-heavy culture is a major part of what separates Underdog from a sportsbook that a customer might simply open shortly before kickoff. Underdog users can spend weeks thinking about players before the regular season even starts.
How Underdog Pick’em Works
Pick’em brings that player-focused mentality into a shorter format. Instead of drafting an entire fantasy roster for a season, users make selections involving individual player statistics and performances. The exact format available depends on the state. Underdog currently uses multiple Pick’em structures, including Classic and Champions, and the company automatically changes what appears in the app according to location and eligibility.
That last point is important. If Pick’em isn’t offered where you’re physically located, Underdog says the Pick’em tab may simply not appear. So two Underdog users opening the same app in different states can encounter different product menus. That makes Underdog’s geography substantially more complicated than a platform with one product and one state list.
Underdog Prediction Picks Add a Completely Different Product
Prediction Picks may look familiar to sports fans, but underneath the interface they work differently from fantasy contests. Underdog says Prediction Picks are event contracts traded on CFTC-regulated exchanges. A contract has a price associated with a particular outcome. If the prediction is correct when the market settles, each winning contract pays $1. If the prediction is incorrect, the amount paid for the contracts and applicable fees is lost.
For example, a contract might cost $0.70. Five contracts would cost $3.50 before applicable fees. If the outcome occurs, those five contracts settle for a combined $5. If it doesn’t occur, they settle at zero. That makes contract price an important part of the experience rather than conventional sportsbook odds. Underdog also allows eligible users to cash out certain Prediction Picks before settlement based on the current market price. That price can be higher or lower than when the position was originally entered. This is much closer to trading a sports outcome than making a traditional fantasy selection.
Underdog Now Has Its Own Prediction-Market Exchange
Underdog’s prediction-market business took another significant step in July 2026. The company announced that it had launched its own federally licensed prediction-market exchange, wholly owned and operated by Underdog. The exchange is licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and is designed to support markets covering sports, culture, and other subjects. Underdog Prediction Picks can involve contracts traded on the Underdog Exchange as well as contracts made available through other CFTC-regulated designated contract markets.
That development makes Underdog particularly interesting because the company didn’t simply add a prediction-market button to a fantasy app. It has moved further into the infrastructure behind prediction markets themselves. For sports fans comparing Underdog with platforms such as Kalshi, Polymarket, or Novig, that’s an important distinction.
What Sports Can You Follow With Underdog Prediction Picks?
Underdog’s current Prediction Picks lineup covers many of the sports its audience already follows through fantasy. Current markets can include: NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, college football, college basketball, soccer, WNBA, MMA, esports, tennis, and futures.
Availability can differ depending on the exchange powering a particular account or contract. That’s another reason Underdog fits naturally with fantasy players. Someone already researching an NFL quarterback or NBA star for a fantasy decision is working with much of the same underlying sports information that could influence a prediction-market decision. The product changes. The sports research often doesn’t.
Prediction Player Picks Go Even Further
In some states, Underdog also offers Prediction Player Picks. These can involve statistics such as passing yards, rushing yards, receiving yards, anytime touchdowns, and multiple touchdowns. As of August 2026, Underdog specifically lists Prediction Player Picks for customers in Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, and Washington.
Those states are interesting because they demonstrate just how unusual Underdog’s geographic setup has become. Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, and Washington aren’t currently eligible for Underdog’s regular Pick’em or Draft products, but Prediction Picks are available. In other words, prediction markets have opened an Underdog experience in places where its traditional fantasy products aren’t offered.
Underdog Sportsbook Is Something Different Again
Then there’s the sportsbook. Underdog operates a conventional online sportsbook in North Carolina, where it holds an Interactive Sports Wagering Operator License. That’s different from Underdog Fantasy and different again from its federally regulated prediction-market products. This distinction matters when someone searches for something broad like “Is Underdog available in my state?”
The correct answer might be: Yes, but only certain Underdog products.
A person in one state might have fantasy drafts and Pick’em. Someone elsewhere might have Prediction Picks but no traditional fantasy contests. North Carolina users have access to an even broader Underdog ecosystem that includes the sportsbook. There isn’t one Underdog availability map. There are several overlapping ones.
Which Underdog Products Are Available in My State?
This is the most important geographic distinction for Underdog users. Rather than asking only whether Underdog operates in your state, check which Underdog products operate there. As of August 2026, Underdog’s official state-eligibility information separates access into: Drafts, Pick’em, Prediction Picks, College Pick’em, and College Drafts.
Even Pick’em can vary between Classic and Champions formats depending on the state. For example, California currently supports Drafts, Champions Pick’em, Prediction Picks, College Pick’em, and College Drafts.
Georgia supports Drafts, Classic Pick’em, Prediction Picks, College Pick’em, and College Drafts. Connecticut is very different. Traditional Drafts and Pick’em aren’t currently offered there, but Prediction Picks are. Arizona goes in the opposite direction. Drafts and Champions Pick’em are available, while Prediction Picks and Underdog’s college fantasy products are currently listed as unavailable. The same Underdog account can therefore lead to significantly different experiences depending on where you open it.
Where Are Underdog Prediction Picks Available?
As of August 2026, Underdog lists Prediction Picks as available in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Users must be at least 18 years old, be U.S. residents, and be physically located in an eligible Prediction Picks state at the time of trading. That last requirement is particularly relevant to travelers. Eligibility is based on where you are physically located at the time, not simply the state listed as your permanent residence.
Why Underdog Changes When You Travel
Imagine that you live in California. You might be accustomed to seeing Drafts, Champions Pick’em, Prediction Picks, and college fantasy products inside Underdog. Now imagine opening Underdog somewhere else. The product mix can change because each Underdog offering has its own geographic eligibility.
That’s different from traveling with an ordinary sports website where every feature remains identical regardless of which state you’re visiting. It also means that simply having an Underdog account doesn’t determine what you can use. Your physical location matters.
Underdog says it only displays the modes you’re actually eligible to play in a particular location. If Pick’em isn’t available, for example, you may not see the Pick’em tab. For frequent travelers, understanding the difference between account access and product eligibility can prevent a lot of confusion.
Why Use a VPN for Underdog Sports Privacy?
Underdog users can spend a considerable amount of time online researching sports. Fantasy football alone can mean checking depth charts, injuries, player projections, schedules, target shares, draft rankings, and breaking news. Add basketball, baseball, hockey, college sports, and prediction markets, and the amount of sports browsing can increase considerably.
A VPN adds another privacy layer to that activity. When connected to a VPN, traffic between your device and the VPN server is encrypted and your normal public IP address is masked. That can be particularly useful when you’re following sports away from your normal home network.
You might be researching a fantasy draft from a hotel, checking player news at an airport, reading projections on public Wi-Fi, following live scores while traveling, or using compatible sports streaming services from another network.
A VPN can protect the connection behind that broader activity. Underdog separately determines which fantasy, prediction, and sportsbook products are available based on its eligibility requirements and your physical location.
An Underdog VPN Is About More Than One App
This is particularly important with Underdog because serious fantasy players rarely use only Underdog. A Sunday morning football routine might include injury reports, fantasy rankings, social media, weather forecasts, league statistics, beat-reporter updates, streaming apps, fantasy platforms, and live scores.
During draft season, that research can stretch across weeks. A VPN can remain active across that broader sports activity rather than only being thought of as something associated with one app. That is how we view ExpressVPN for Underdog. It’s part of a broader privacy setup for people who spend a lot of time following sports online.
Best VPN for Underdog: Why We Use ExpressVPN
Our preferred VPN for Underdog users is ExpressVPN. The biggest reason is that we want a VPN useful throughout the entire sports experience rather than one designed around a single site.
- Server Locations Across All 50 States
- Servers in 100+ Countries
- Lightway Protocol
- TrustedServer Technology
- Network Lock
- Multiple Sports Devices
Affiliate Disclosure: VPNForSports may earn a commission if you purchase through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Underdog Has Become Its Own Kind of Sports Platform
Underdog’s fantasy roots still matter. Best Ball drafts and player-focused contests built an audience of sports fans who care about individual performances, projections, injuries, depth charts, and statistics. But Underdog has expanded around that audience rather than simply becoming another sportsbook. Fantasy contests remain. Prediction Picks have brought event contracts into the same broader ecosystem. Underdog now operates its own federally licensed prediction-market exchange. And in North Carolina, the company also has a conventional sportsbook presence.
The result is a platform where your location can change the experience without necessarily removing Underdog entirely. One state might give you fantasy drafts and Pick’em. Another may offer Prediction Picks but not those traditional fantasy products. Somewhere else can have a different combination again. For sports fans who spend hours researching those decisions online, ExpressVPN can add a privacy layer across the rest of the experience—from checking player news at a hotel to following scores at the airport or preparing for a fantasy draft on an unfamiliar network.
Underdog determines which sports products you can use. A VPN helps protect the connection behind the sports fan using them.
