Social casino: MyPrize, my beginnings

As Founder & CEO of MyPrize, how do you foresee the social casino space growing over the next few years? 

In general, we’re really at the very beginning of these things, and that’s what’s really exciting for us at MyPrize, and more broadly, the entire industry. Ten years ago, there wasn’t a lot of capital in the space or a lot of investors, which means there are less entrepreneurs and less product innovation. Fast forward to today, you see companies like Kalshi and Polymarket, and folks like ourselves, coming into the space in different types of ways.  

My personal view is the entire stigma around the gaming industry is going to disappear, and you’re starting to see that slowly with meme coins, everything that happened on Robinhood, GameStop and AMC. Now you’re seeing even more prediction markets where you actually have real institutions and speculation is at the forefront. We’re at this golden age where the consumer wants fast wins, they want to participate and feel engaged.  

They don’t want to just consume content, they want to be a part of it. So whether you’re playing on an online slot, a prediction market or making a wager at a sportsbook, it’s taking that next step where you’re actually participating and following along. That’s the big bet we’re making. We’re not just an online gaming business; we really view what we’re doing as an entertainment business. We view all of the speculation as this next place where people are going to have fun on the internet from what had once been a single player experience. At MyPrize, we’re building that camaraderie, we’re making it possible to come online, build community, have fun, have engagement, make friends, possibly have existing celebrities come onto the platform and we’re excited to make some big announcements in the coming weeks. 

When did you first notice this social, or entertainment as you described it, aspect of online gaming becoming an interest from consumers? 

Don’t be thrown off by my rock and roll t-shirt, but I’m a history buff of the internet, and if you look back historically, even in the 1990s, you had internet bulletin boards, and that’s where communities formed online. That’s where the community thrived. From there, you had things like AOL chat rooms, Reddit where you can actually have indexed communities and eventually Discord, where you can actually talk and communicate.  

All of the internet has grown because of community and when I was looking more broadly at the online gaming space, I looked at two things. I felt as if, one, the internet gambling space really hadn’t taken off yet, whether it be because of regulatory concerns, the stigma, it hadn’t really happened yet, but also all of online gaming and gambling had been a single player experience.  

And that is the antithesis of how the rest of the internet has grown. We recognized we have an opportunity to build the next generation entertainment business and the next generation internet business, where we can really tap into the community within gaming. And we know it can find success because at its core, that’s what makes the win so much fun. When we started asking ourselves those questions, we recognized there’s this wide open opportunity for us to take online gaming and make it what it should be, which is a multiplayer experience, and that’s what we’re doing at MyPrize. It’s why we were able to find such big success in our first year, there was even a wedding where they were streaming and playing slots on the platform.  

What does the $21m in funding and $250m valuation say about not only MyPrize, but the future of social casinos? 

It’s just the start. I think more and more entrepreneurs are going to enter this space. Some folks might say it could get more competitive and, while I agree, I also think for the consumer, which is ultimately who we care about, they’re going to see a competition to deliver the most fun experiences.  

With this funding, of course we’re having the confidence of institutional backers that are coming into our business, but it’s also a sign of where the world is trending and where entertainment is headed. You can’t even turn on the TV without seeing an advertisement for one of our competitive sets because this is what the people want to consume. And for us, it now gives us the opportunity and the war chest to really go and create incredible and beautiful products for our customers; ensuring we’re ultimately delivering them the most fun possible.  

How can MyPrize and fellow social casinos grow while respecting the concerns of state regulators and organizations such as the American Gaming Association? 

From day one, compliance was the single most important thing to us as a business for a few reasons. Once we felt as if we were building a very strong foundation from a compliance standpoint, we knew it would set us up in the future to ultimately have the largest social gaming business in the country. Secondly, we want to provide that trust and confidence to our player base, so we take it very seriously. It’s a state-by-state issue, but we work with the best legal teams, we work closely with the regulators and we always make sure that what we are doing is in compliance. Obviously, things are going to be constantly shifting, but it’s our job to make sure that we are remaining compliant and, as the future changes, we’re going to find ways where we can participate and do so in a compliant way. That’s how we want to play. We want to be one of the largest players in this space and don’t see a world where we can’t be as large as the FanDuels or DraftKings.  

And how does MyPrize set itself apart from other social casinos currently operating in the space? 

MyPrize is the most trusted gaming platform in the US right now, period; for a few reasons. One, we make it very easy for players to deposit into the system, whether through Apple Pay, credit card, ACH and we let you withdraw very quickly. We own and built all of our own technology; it’s not white label, so we have a lot of control from a granular level on our product. We can constantly fine tune how we’re delivering that fun, how we’re listening to the feedback of our player base and how we’re making sure we’re delivering them the best experiences.  

A very large differentiator between us and our competitors is we own the underlying technology, we’ve built it and constantly change the product to make sure we’re meeting the needs of our player base today, tomorrow and the next day. Another big differentiator between ourselves and our competitive set in the social gaming space is we’re American. We’re sitting right here in Miami, Florida, our team is US based, but most of our competitors are not. We also have the ability, if you are a content creator, to come onto our platform and start streaming slots or a blackjack hand and actually have the chance to play with your audience.  

Would MyPrize still be interested in partnering with land-based operators, despite having control of its own product being viewed as essential? 

Totally, we currently work with all the top game content providers and, as it relates to land-based businesses, if they’re looking to get online we would certainly be open to helping them from the infrastructure standpoint. We want all players to be able to come onto a platform and have fun, and they’d have great distribution because we’ve got a ton of players. We want to be an entertainment business where people can come on and leverage our games business on the back end to monetize and work with their player base. Then on our side, deliver our existing player base an enormous amount of content which they can go discover, have fun and engage with. 

David Thompson

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