Fantasy sports operator and approved prediction market participant PrizePicks has partnered with Mindway AI to lean on the Danish company’s automatic detection and monitoring technology.
The Atlanta, GA-based company will integrate Mindway’s software directly into its platform in a partnership it said will greatly boost its ability to detect and respond to potential problem gaming behaviors.
Mindway AI offers fully automatic detection and monitoring of at-risk and problem gambling behavior, as well as providing operators and its other partners with intervention solutions to enhance player protection. PrizePicks will use Mindway’s GameScanner tool to proactively identify nuanced player patterns that may signal increasingly risky gaming, such as shifts towards more frequent play, increased session frequency or accelerated spending.
“Partnering with Mindway marks a meaningful evolution in how we support player protection,” said PrizePicks Senior Director of Responsible Gaming Phil Sherwood. “By enhancing our ability to analyze behavioral data, we’re able to deliver more tailored interventions and promote responsible play tools with greater precision—helping ensure a safer, more sustainable experience for all of our players.”
First detection, then intervention
PrizePicks added that the data-driven insights it receives through Mindway’s work will facilitate more timely interventions such as pointing players towards responsible gaming resources, budget-setting tools and options like timeouts and self-exclusion in a timely and personalized fashion. It will also help PrizePicks direct players to external resources such as those offered by Kindbridge Behavioral Health.
The operator hopes to ultimately not only protect players but increase their self-awareness.
Majority owned by Better Collective, Mindway offers solutions in around 65 jurisdictions and monitors more than 13 million active monthly players.
“Today marks an exciting day for our company,” said Mindway AI CEO Rasmus Kjaergaard. “Partnering with PrizePicks signifies a hugely positive step for player protection not only in the daily fantasy sports realm but in the North American market as a whole.” He added that his company is fully confident of producing heightened risk minimization for PrizePicks players, as well as increased commercial benefit for the operator.
Pick ‘n’ mix
PrizePicks stressed that as it continues to expand to new markets, investing in responsible gaming remains a key focus.
That talk of new markets could relate to geography or to industry. The company currently operates in more than 45 U.S. jurisdictions but has been shifting its operations recently.
It scrapped against-the-house daily fantasy sports nationwide on Aug. 22, transitioning to offer only its peer-to-peer Arena product in all U.S. states and territories in which it operates. That came amid an increased regulatory and legal spotlight on DFS, not least the California Attorney General’s office’s formal opinion that all paid fantasy sports should be considered illegal.
And the operator, which will soon be majority owned by European lottery firm Allwyn in a deal that values PrizePicks at around $2.5 billion, is getting into the prediction markets space.
Its Performance Predictions II subsidiary received approval in September from the National Futures Association (NFA) to be a registered Futures Commission Merchant (FCM), a status that will allow it to partner with a Designated Contract Merchant (DCM) like Kalshi to offer sports contracts on its platform that are regulated and overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
PrizePicks is the first gaming organization to obtain NFA approval to work with a DCM, organizations such as Kalshi that set and run event contract markets across the U.S., including on sports.
