Injury Protection Insurance

On Tuesday night, San Antonio ruled Victor Wembanyama out for the second half of a playoff game with a head injury. Within minutes, FanDuel and DraftKings were fighting on social media over whose injury protection was better.

DraftKings posted: "Get injury protection without paying extra."

FanDuel's sportsbook VP responded with a gif of Bill Hader eating popcorn: "Me waiting to see the silence when it's the 2nd half."

Buried underneath the (awkward) marketing war is a product that deserves a closer look, because FanDuel’s new injury insurance is not as bettor friendly as it is being presented.

So today we’ll review Bet Protect+ before closing with an NBA playoff bet of the week.

Let's get after it.

What Bet Protect+ Actually Does

FanDuel rolled out Bet Protect+ on April 18 for the NBA Playoffs.

For 3% of your stake, you get full-game injury protection on player prop wagers. If your player leaves with an injury and doesn't return, straight bets get refunded in cash and parlay legs get removed with the payout recalculated.

You toggle it on in the bet slip before placing the wager. It doesn't cover ejections, foul trouble, benching, or a player who gets hurt and comes back. NBA-only, pre-game props only for now.

Here's what got buried in the marketing blitz: Bet Protect+ replaces FanDuel's old Bet Protect program, which voided and refunded player prop bets when a player exited with an injury in the first quarter. That was free. It happened automatically.

Now it's being discontinued.

If you don't pay the 3%, you now get zero injury protection on FanDuel.

DraftKings, by contrast, still offers free first-half coverage through its Early Exit Program, which is why Dave Portnoy was calling FanDuel users "morons" on X over the weekend.

Should You Use This?

Prices being equal, this is a minor reason to place an uninsured player prop bet on DraftKings instead of FanDuel.

FanDuel's strongest argument for this having value is their cited data point: according to their internal tracking, half of all NBA injuries this season occurred in the second half, with the third quarter seeing the highest concentration.

That means DraftKings' free first-half coverage only catches about half of in-game injuries. The rest aren't covered anywhere unless you pay FanDuel's 3%.

But is 3% a good value?

My answer is ‘no’.

The expected value of the protection is higher on players who carry more injury risk, like Embiid or Zion.

FanDuel's actuaries certainly anticipated this type of adverse selection, and priced this to profit in aggregate.

So using this on a random player should be mathematically terrible value, and using this on Zion or Embiid should be break-even at best.

I’m not buying it!

Is There A Sharp Angle to Profit From Bet Protect+

There's an interesting angle circulating online.

In a Same Game Parlay, FanDuel adjusts odds based on how the legs correlate.

If you pair a Wembanyama “Over” on points with a De'Aaron Fox “Over” on points, those are negatively correlated: if Wemby is dominating, Fox probably isn't.

FanDuel's SGP pricing reflects that by giving you better odds than if those legs were independent (since they're unlikely to both hit).

Now Wemby gets hurt and FanDuel removes that leg through Bet Protect+.

The question is: does FanDuel also strip out the correlation adjustment baked into the original SGP price, or does the remaining Fox “Over” leg keep the more favorable odds it got from the original correlation?

If they just remove the leg mechanically, you could end up holding Fox Over at odds that were discounted for a Wemby correlation that no longer exists.

And with Wemby off the floor, Fox's Over is likely easier to hit (higher usage rate). You'd be getting a now-more-likely outcome at odds that were priced when it was less likely.

I don't have a definitive answer on how FanDuel handles the recalculation yet. But if you're building SGPs with Bet Protect+ this postseason and think this has merit, let us know in the comments.

Let’s get to the bets!

Bet(s) of the Week $$

Last newsletter we booked an easy win!

The Cavs looked exactly as unmotivated as I expected, and Atlanta took care of business.

Including that result, since starting the newsletter, bets in this section are ahead 21.81 units, with a positive 14% ROI. We’ll update this regularly.

Based on my research, I am making the following bet this week:

• Denver Nuggets ML @ -126 on FanDuel for 0.5 units (Tonight)

I like this side both qualitatively and based on trend.

Denver blew Game 2. Up 19 in the second quarter with the series ready to be seized, they hit a catastrophic six-minute stretch where Minnesota scored on 10 consecutive possessions to get back in the game.

The series is tied 1-1, but two games of evidence show that Denver has been the better team for all but about 10 minutes of basketball.

In particular, I believe Jokic is too good to let Gobert and Randle bottle him up twice. He still managed 14 of his 24 points in the final seven minutes when Gobert was off the floor. I expect him to attack those non-Gobert windows much earlier in Game 3.

From a trend lens: road playoff favorites coming off a loss of more than three points are 23-9-1 against the spread, covering at a 72% rate by an average of 6.5 points. I attribute that to recency bias moving lines too far toward a recently successful home team.

Give me the Nuggets to reclaim control of this series tonight.

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