Survivor and Pick ‘Em Pools
I’m in a few NFL fantasy and survivor/ pick-em pools. Some of these pools I’ve been in for 25+ years. Fantasy pools are season long and usually consist of a small pool of friends. In my case, I’m in pools with friends from elementary school, high school and university. Survivor and pick-em pools are much bigger and typically run by taking a small admin fee.
Fantasy pools are usually run on apps that don’t hold player funds. ESPN and Sleeper are the two platforms I use. Yahoo has some public prize pools available in Canada, excluding Ontario and Quebec (side note, based on Yahoo’s reasoning it should update the prohibited territories list to exclude Alberta too). If you want player funds held for you, you have to use a third-party service, like LeagueSafe or Cheddar Up.
Survivor and pick-em sites used to function in the same way. You would enter contests and either send money electronically (via etransfer in Canada) or meet someone in person to give them cash. The two sites that we used (and I think two of the largest) were at runyourpool.com (RYP) and officefootballpool.com (OFP). The business models for these two sites were to charge hosting services by pool or by number of players.
Pool administrators, wary of being public about the gambling elements of the pool, would take great care to post about playing for points, or credits with no cash value, and to emphasize in the rules that the pools were for entertainment only. And they were for entertainment only - but part of that entertainment was the fact that money was involved.
In the last two years, the survivor and pick-em landscape has changed dramatically. Splash has become the dominant player in the survivor and pick-em space. It has modified how online survivor and pick-em pools are run in two key ways by (i) providing a way for players to pay for private pools; and (ii) by hosting real-money public pools.
Splash-ification
Splash Inc. (now Certamen Games, LLC) acquired RYP and OFP in 2021 and announced the acquisition in June 2023. Alongside the announcement, Splash Inc. launched Splash Sports (in private beta at that time) and started offering real money contests to the public. In 2025, Splash began transitioning players from RYP and OFP to the Splash Sports site. As of this year, RYP and OFP no longer exist.
Splash Sports was described in this press release as a “real-money gaming platform built for friends and groups to compete in games of skill, bringing the sports pool space to the modern age”.
In practice, this has led to a dramatic shift in the landscape of how survivor and pick-em pools are operated. Private pools can operate similarly to how they did in the past. The hosting fee is $20 for the first 10 entries, $2 per entry for the next 40 entries, and there is a reduced price per entry after that. Commissioners can also waive the service fee if they sign up for “Contest Vault,” where entry fees are paid by the participants directly to LeagueSafe in exchange for a 3% payment processing fee.
Splash’s goal appears to be to convert private pools to public pools, compensating league commissioners as affiliates for bringing customers to the site through its “Commissioner Rewards” program. When you run a public, paid contest on Splash, you earn 5% of the rake — the platform fee collected from entry fees. The more players in your contest and the higher the entry fee, the more you earn.
Splash’s real play is to run public, real-money contests. In addition to survivor and pick’em contests, including a $21m survivor pool Splash is running with Polymarket, Splash offers additional games called Quickpicks, Tiers, and One & Done.
In Quickpicks, you “Pick MORE or LESS on 6 different player stats to unlock a huge 50X PAYOUT !” (side note - Splash writing “MORE or LESS” because someone advised them to not write “OVER or UNDER” because those are “gambling words” is hilarious).
In Tiers, you “Draft your dream squad. Each slate, draft a group of players and earn points based on their in-game performance. Outscore your opponents to win!”.
One and Done is described as “Survivor meets Tiers in One & Done on Splash Sports. Draft your lineup, but once you use a player, you lose them for the rest of the contest”.
Splash has a number of large investors, including EP Golf Ventures, which is a joint venture of PGA of America and Elysian Park Ventures (the private investment arm affiliated with the Los Angeles Dodgers ownership group).
In a few years, we have gone from two sites who host private pools “for entertainment only,” to one site deriving revenue almost exclusively from public-facing real-money pools. This is a shift in the commercial model that wouldn’t be possible without a corresponding shift in the legal analysis of the contests.
Splash and Betting in Canada
Splash is a sophisticated organization and has raised almost $30m over the last few years. Splash has almost certainly retained Canadian gaming counsel to advise them on the legality of their operations. And obviously that gaming counsel is not me or I wouldn’t be writing this article. And also obviously nothing in this article is legal advice.
In the United States, Splash is taking the approach that it’s a contest of skill, and therefore legal. I’m not going to comment on that other than to note that there seems to be ambiguity in the United States about what is a bet as compared to bet-adjacent activities like trades and contests.
In Canada, the relevant legislation in our analysis is Part VII of the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code targets commercial gaming. There’s a great line that sums up the Criminal Code’s gaming provisions in the 1986 Alberta Court of Appeal case R. v. Arundel. Arundel was charged with aiding and assisting a bookmaker. He placed bets with a bookmaker, participated with another person in having that account with the bookmaker, and there was an “implied condition” that Arundel would not inform the police about the bookmaker. In quashing Arundel’s conviction, the Court stated that “a bettor is not an abettor,” and “Parliament has not made it a crime to buy a pool ticket or place a bet with a bookmaker.”
There is also a specific exemption in the Criminal Code, s. 204(1)(b), that provides that the betting provisions of the Criminal Code do not apply to “a private bet between individuals not engaged in any way in the business of betting.” This covers situations like private survivor pools, pick’ems, fantasy leagues (if you think that fantasy sports is a “bet” not a “game”) where people are not taking fees.
We don’t have a lot of case law on this section, and “in any way” is interesting wording. Would the section read differently if “in any way” was removed?
For companies holding funds related to betting, the betting provisions of the Criminal Code do not apply if you are holding funds for “the winner of any bets between not more than ten individuals”. Most of the pools on Splash have more than 10 people.
It’s All Sweepstakes
Most interestingly, is how Splash is able to run contests in Canada. We have separate sections in the Criminal Code for “bets” and “games”. “Games” does not include games of skill, but there is no similar exemption for bets.
A careful review of the Canada-specific terms and conditions reveals that Splash Sports contests are actually sweepstakes. From Section 4:
Splash Sports public contests are sweepstakes contests and no purchase is required to play. Winners are determined by the objective criteria stated in each contest’s rules. Splash Sports’ contests may not be used for any form of illicit gambling.
Splash Sports contests have a free entry alternative where no payment is required to play. If players choose to enter contests through paid entry and not through the free entry alternative then there exists the possibility that players can lose money. Players should play having that knowledge of the risk of financial loss if they choose not to enter using the free entry alternative.
That was news to me. None of the advertising I’d seen mentioned the sweepstakes element. There’s nothing in the terms and conditions about how to obtain the free alternative method of entry. There were no separate “Sweepstakes Rules” available on the main page of the site.
By clicking on “Game Rules” I was taken to a page with a number of rules, including “Sweepstakes Rules Canada”.
By clicking on “Sweepstakes Rules Canada” I was taken to a page which stated the following:
Splash Sports public contests are sweepstakes contests and no purchase is required to play. Winners are determined by the objective criteria stated in each contest’s rules. Splash Sports’ contests may not be used for any form of illicit gambling.Splash Sports contests have a free entry alternative where no payment is required to play.
If players choose to enter contests through paid entry and not through the free entry alternative then there exists the possibility that players can lose money. Players should play having that knowledge of the risk of financial loss if they choose not to enter using the free entry alternative.
Current Free Canadian Public Contest terms can be found in the Contest Rules section in each contest. All active Sweepstakes can be found here.
By clicking on the “here” link I was taken to this page:
So I’m still not sure how to enter the sweepstakes contests. It could be a “skill issue” as my 11 year-old says to me regularly, but we know from our very limited case law in Canada that free alternative methods of entry should be easy to find.
What’s Next?
I have additional questions and comments I will save for another article if time permits (and if people are actually interested).
I entered a private contest using the Contest Vault method and was unable to deposit because I’m in Ontario. My friend (who is in the U.S. and with whom I partner for these contests) was able to deposit in my account no problem. A friend who is based in Ontario was able to enter public contests by depositing crypto.
Eventually, private pool owners will migrate off of Splash. It’s already happened in most of my pools.
Splash will likely continue to rely on either a skill-game exemption or a sweepstakes exemption for Canada. Is that legal? It doesn’t really matter, because government authorities won’t do anything about it. Which, respectfully, is for the best. Our gaming laws are too clumsy to address betting, gaming, or contests taking place in multiple jurisdictions.
