FanDuel Predicts’ US rollout with CME Group is a sharp lesson in regulated expansion. Here’s how Malta iGaming teams can scale with AI, partners, and smarter market entry.
FanDuel Predicts: A Playbook for AI-Led iGaming Scale
FanDuel just did something that should make every Malta-based iGaming team pay attention: it launched FanDuel Predicts, a prediction markets app built with CME Group, and started rolling it out state-by-state in the US—beginning with Alabama, Alaska, South Carolina, North Dakota, and South Dakota—with a phased national expansion planned for 2026.
That list of states looks oddly specific. It is. And that’s the point.
For anyone building products in a regulated, cross-border industry (read: most of the iGaming and online gaming ecosystem in Malta), this is a clean case study in how growth actually happens: choose your entry points, partner with institutions that reduce friction, and use data and automation to learn faster than competitors. AI doesn’t replace that strategy—but it makes it scalable.
Prediction markets aren’t “just another betting product.” They’re a regulatory and distribution test-bed where partnerships and AI-backed operations can win the long game.
What FanDuel Predicts signals about where iGaming is heading
Answer first: The FanDuel Predicts launch shows that iGaming growth in the US is becoming more modular—new product types, new regulatory lanes, and new partnership models—rather than “launch everywhere at once.”
Prediction markets sit in a space that overlaps finance-style infrastructure, sports fandom, and real-time information. That overlap matters because it pushes operators toward capabilities Malta companies already care about:
- Compliance-by-design (auditability, controls, transparent pricing)
- Real-time risk management (exposure changes minute by minute)
- Personalization without crossing privacy/regulatory lines
- Fast localisation (content, offers, customer support) across jurisdictions
If you work in Malta iGaming, you’ve probably seen “expansion” treated as a BD exercise. The reality? Expansion is an operations exercise. The US market forces that truth into the open.
Why these “smaller” states matter
Answer first: Launching in a handful of states is a way to reduce regulatory complexity while stress-testing product-market fit and operational controls.
You don’t start a new compliance-sensitive product in the toughest environment if you can avoid it. Rolling out in specific states lets an operator:
- Validate onboarding and KYC flows under real-world pressure.
- Measure retention and engagement without nationwide marketing noise.
- Train models and teams on support, risk, and fraud patterns early.
- Prove stability to regulators and partners with clean operating history.
This pattern mirrors how Malta-licensed businesses enter new markets: controlled pilots, narrow scope, and tight feedback loops.
The CME Group partnership is the real story
Answer first: The collaboration with CME Group signals a shift toward institutional-grade credibility and infrastructure, which is increasingly necessary for new iGaming-adjacent products like prediction markets.
Partnership headlines often read like PR. This one is more structural. In tightly regulated environments, who you partner with can determine:
- how quickly you obtain approvals,
- how you manage market integrity,
- how robust your reporting and controls are,
- and how comfortable stakeholders are with your product category.
Collaboration reduces friction (and that’s a growth advantage)
Answer first: Strategic partnerships compress timelines by outsourcing trust—operationally, legally, and reputationally.
Here’s what I’ve seen repeatedly in Malta iGaming: teams that try to “own everything” move slower and carry more risk. Teams that partner smartly ship faster.
For Malta-based operators and suppliers, the takeaway isn’t “find a big-name partner.” It’s more practical:
- Partner for what regulators care about: transparency, controls, and audit trails.
- Partner for what customers notice: brand confidence, payments reliability, fair play.
- Partner for what your team can’t scale easily: 24/7 monitoring, specialized risk tooling, localisation.
In prediction markets, trust is the product. In iGaming, trust is the multiplier.
Where AI fits: the unglamorous systems that decide who wins
Answer first: AI creates advantage in regulated gaming when it’s used for precision operations—compliance, fraud prevention, segmentation, and multilingual customer experience—not just marketing copy.
This post is part of our series on Kif l-Intelliġenza Artifiċjali qed tittrasforma l-iGaming u l-Logħob Online f’Malta, and FanDuel Predicts gives a concrete lens: AI is most valuable when you’re expanding market-by-market and need consistent execution.
1) AI for responsible gaming and risk signals
Answer first: The fastest-growing markets are also the most scrutinized, so AI-driven responsible gaming tooling is becoming a go-to-market requirement.
When you enter a new jurisdiction, you’re not only proving revenue potential—you’re proving harm controls. AI helps by detecting behavioral patterns at scale:
- sudden changes in deposit frequency,
- repeated late-night sessions,
- chasing losses patterns,
- multi-accounting indicators.
The stance I’ll take: responsible gaming can’t be a PDF policy anymore. If your product expands, your duty of care has to expand with it. AI is the only realistic way to do that consistently across markets.
2) AI for fraud, AML, and “clean growth”
Answer first: Fraud and AML risk increase during expansion because criminals follow new products and new operational gaps.
A controlled rollout, like FanDuel’s, allows teams to refine detection systems before they scale nationally. For Malta-based companies, AI supports:
- anomaly detection on deposits/withdrawals,
- device fingerprinting and suspicious login pattern detection,
- document verification triage,
- prioritizing cases for human review.
What works in practice is a hybrid model: AI flags and ranks risk; humans decide and document outcomes. Regulators like this approach because it produces explainable workflows.
3) AI-powered personalization that doesn’t break compliance
Answer first: Personalization is profitable only if it respects consent, privacy, and local promo rules—AI can enforce those constraints automatically.
Prediction markets and sports-adjacent products are highly sensitive to messaging. Offers that are fine in one state can be restricted in another. Malta teams already live this reality globally.
AI helps by:
- segmenting users by behavior and risk profile,
- suppressing promotions to vulnerable segments,
- generating compliant variations of content by jurisdiction,
- predicting churn so retention outreach is targeted, not spammy.
Done right, personalization becomes less creepy and more useful: fewer irrelevant pushes, more contextual nudges.
4) Multilingual content ops (where Malta has a built-in edge)
Answer first: The teams that win international expansion in 2026 will be the ones that can localize fast without quality slipping.
Malta is uniquely positioned because it already serves multilingual, multi-market audiences. AI can turn that into a systematic advantage:
- faster translation and transcreation for promotions and help center content,
- consistent tone across markets,
- internal tooling to brief support teams,
- real-time categorization of customer tickets.
If you’ve ever launched a new market, you know the bottleneck: not “ideas,” but throughput. AI increases throughput—if you have governance.
A practical expansion blueprint Malta operators can copy
Answer first: The FanDuel Predicts rollout maps to a repeatable playbook: pilot, measure, harden controls, then scale.
Here’s a pragmatic version for Malta-based iGaming and online gaming businesses looking to expand (US or otherwise).
Step 1: Pick “learning markets,” not just “revenue markets”
Your first jurisdictions should be places where you can:
- get clear regulatory feedback,
- run controlled marketing tests,
- validate payments and KYC reliability,
- measure retention with clean cohorts.
This is exactly what a state-by-state rollout enables.
Step 2: Build compliance and reporting as product features
Treat compliance outputs like product outputs:
- auditable logs,
- model decision records (why something was flagged),
- configurable rule sets by jurisdiction,
- dashboarding for risk and RG metrics.
If you’re relying on spreadsheets during expansion, you’re already late.
Step 3: Use AI to shorten feedback loops, not to “sound smarter”
The highest ROI AI work during expansion usually looks boring:
- automated QA for localized content,
- call/chat summarization for faster case handling,
- anomaly alerts on promo abuse,
- cohort analysis that updates daily.
Boring systems are what keep regulators calm and customers happy.
Step 4: Partner where it changes outcomes
FanDuel + CME Group is a reminder: partnerships aren’t decoration. They change the feasibility of your roadmap.
Ask these questions before signing anything:
- Does this partner reduce regulatory friction?
- Do they improve trust with customers?
- Do they bring infrastructure we’d struggle to build?
- Will this partnership still make sense at 10x volume?
If the answer is “no” to most, it’s not a strategic partnership. It’s a logo swap.
Common questions Malta teams ask about prediction markets (and the honest answers)
Are prediction markets “iGaming” or “financial products”?
They sit in a grey area depending on jurisdiction and structure. The practical implication: your compliance posture needs to be stronger than a typical casino launch, especially around market integrity, communications, and reporting.
Will prediction markets cannibalize sports betting?
Some overlap is likely, but the bigger opportunity is adjacent engagement—users who prefer simpler “yes/no” outcomes, shorter time horizons, or non-sports topics. Think of them as another format, not a replacement.
What’s the AI risk if we personalize too aggressively?
The risk isn’t “AI.” It’s uncontrolled automation. If you can’t explain why a segment received a message (and prove it complied with local rules), you’ll eventually regret scaling it.
What to do next if you’re building from Malta
FanDuel Predicts is a reminder that regulated growth is engineered, not hoped for. The operators that scale into 2026 will be the ones who treat expansion as a disciplined system: partnerships that reduce friction, pilots that generate clean learning, and AI that strengthens controls while improving player experience.
If you’re running iGaming operations in Malta, here are three next steps that tend to pay off quickly:
- Audit your expansion readiness: Can you spin up a new jurisdiction’s rules in days, not weeks?
- Identify one AI project tied to compliance throughput: e.g., automated content compliance checks or RG risk triage.
- Map your partnership gaps: payments, identity, market integrity, localization, or monitoring.
The question worth sitting with: when a new market opens for your product in 2026, will your team be ready to scale safely—or will growth break your controls?