After unveiling its new RG Check-In tool at SBC Summit Americas in May, FanDuel is gearing up to talk all things Canada and North America at the Canadian Gaming Summit this week in Toronto.
June 17-19, the gaming industry takes over the Metro Toronto Convention Center for the biggest event in Canadian gaming. We broke down all the basics you need to know.
FanDuel SVP of Public Policy and Sustainability Cory Fox will be speaking on a Technology in RG panel on June 19. Ahead of the Summit, Fox spoke to SBC Leaders Editor Steve Hoare for SBC Americas.
SBC Americas: You’ve just launched RG Check-in, and you’ve had My Spend going for a while. What have been your observations around the data and experiences you’ve had coming out of that?
Fox: I think we are now embarking on a new generation of tools that are much more integrated right into the customer experience, which we think will be more effective for our users, and we will get greater engagement from our users.
Last year, we launched My Spend, which gives users personalized insights into their play right within the flow of the actual app without us having to surface it to them proactively. So they don’t have to go and click around in menus in order to find their play history and figure it out for themselves.
We found incredible engagement with that; over half of our active users used it during the NFL season. We were really pleased with that response. And so we took from that: if you include the tools right in the product and you give users personalized insights, they really appreciate that and want to engage with it. Then they understand their play better.
When we saw that we had a lot of success with that, we realized we could build on it and that led to real-time check-in.
SBC Americas: Tell us more about real-time check-in. It does feel like a progression.
Fox: Absolutely. Real-time check-in uses artificial intelligence to create for every user for each day a predictive deposit amount based on that individual user’s history. And when a user goes to deposit significantly more than that predictive amount, they get a little pop-up that says, “this is more than you usually deposit, you should consider lowering the amount or setting a deposit limit.”
Our customer research suggests that users really appreciate that, and I think that’s because it’s built right in and it is specific to them. So they feel like we are giving them useful information right in the flow.
And then there’s a phase of that product wherein if the amount they deposit is even more, related to the proportion of what we expected they would deposit, they are prompted to lower the amount or set a deposit limit. They can go forward with the original amount, but they’ll be required to set a deposit limit going forward.
SBC Americas: As we mentioned earlier, RG check-in seems like a progression from My Spend. So what’s next?
Fox: We are continuing to look at the best ways to do proactive identification of gambling harm and get to users before that harm happens. We’re really trying to understand our users and what types of patterns suggest that they may be going down a road that they themselves will not be comfortable with. That’s critical.
And so we continue to explore what the options are to both identify and then empower those users to control their play once we do identify those patterns.
SBC Americas: With all the data we have at hand, and with AI and the way the technology is moving, can you see a future where you can foolproof your own operation so that players can’t get into trouble? It doesn’t stop them going elsewhere, of course, but…
Fox: There are certainly challenges, in part because what addiction looks like for each user can be a little bit different. What is an uncomfortable level of play from the monetary standpoint obviously varies greatly across different users on the platform.
But also, sometimes, it’s not about money. Sometimes, it’s about them spending too much time on the platform, and that’s interfering in their life. And so we’re trying to identify what is problematic at the user level. It’s not easy, but I do think we have a greater set of tools than we’ve ever had before, and we’re going down that path.
This is an edited version of an interview that will be published in the next edition of SBC Leaders.
