The 2026 FIFA World Cup showcased the world’s most widely played sport to millions of fans, which in turn created opportunities for people to wager on the matches, even if they had never placed a sports bet in their life.
The timing was spot on for Mindway AI’s global launch of Gamalyze Sports, a reimagined iteration of Gamalyze Casino, the Danish company’s flagship gamified card game responsible gambling tool.
The surge in global sports betting underscores the importance of responsible gaming. No solution has proven more effective than Gamalyze, rooted in over a decade of neuroimaging and behavioral research from Aarhus University.
Rasmus Kjaergaard, CEO of Mindway AI, acknowledges that operators struggle to identify which players may be at risk before harmful behaviors are revealed, especially with the volume of new player registrations which were created by FIFA.
In an exclusive interview with iGaming Future’s Head of Content, Curtis Roach, Kjaergaard joined Guy Harding, Senior Director of Development at Better Collective, Mindway AI’s majority owner, to discuss player safety.
Kjaergaard said that Gamalyze Sports gives operators the ability to move from reactive intervention to proactive player protection not by identifying gambling harm earlier, rather as a wider vision to prevent it altogether.
Gamalyze was the recipient of the prestigious Global Regulatory Award Compliance Innovator or Invention of the Year 2020, two years after Mindway AI’s inception in 2018.
Reinventing the self-test was a game changer, engaging more players in a way that seems natural to them. Player Protection is increasingly becoming a focus for operators globally who recognize that safer gambling is a cornerstone to business sustainability.
Mindway AI’s responsible gaming solutions currently track 15.9 million active players across 73 jurisdictions in 48 countries on four continents in 14 languages.
The foundation of Gamalyze Sports is moving away from the traditional card game format of Gamalyze Casino and reinventing the experience as an immersive, high-engaging football game reinforced by action over reflection.
Kjaergaard’s long-held belief is that traditional questionnaires are subject to low engagement and clinical stigma. Gamalyze Sports meets sports bettors in their natural element by replacing forms with gameplay, complete with stadium audio, vibrant visuals, confetti, and a movable goaltender.
Niamh Gallagher, Senior Marketing Manager, emphasized that Mindway AI’s foundation is based in neuroscience, and as such Gamalyze Sports was created to appeal to sports bettors from extensive research.
“We will be launching an American football version of Gamalyze Sports in time for the start of the 2026-27 NFL season,” she said. “We are also looking at other sports moving forward.”
Gamalyze Sports, localized in 14 languages, analyzes a player’s real-time choices and sensitivity to rewards vs. losses. It bypasses the bias of self-reporting to deliver an authentic, unbiased assessment, creating critical self-awareness before compulsive behavior escalates.
Players instantly receive a specific, personalized, and detailed feedback report in addition to a preventative, actionable plan based upon their unique decision-making strategy, while operators gain detailed, real-time insights via their dashboard.
Gamalyze Sports is founded upon the reality that sports bettors engage with products differently than casino players.
“Skill and knowledge play a larger role in sports betting than games of chance,” Gallagher observed. “There is a high degree of predictability. It is this sense of expertise that makes sports bettors more resistant to standard interventions.”
Kjaergaard observed that during major events like the FIFA World Cup, millions of people engage in sports betting without a clear understanding of their own risk tendencies. Gamalyze Sports gives players an engaging, science-based way to gain insight into their decision-making and risk tolerance before problematic behaviors develop.
His depth of knowledge tells him that traditional player-focused responsible gambling tools do not resonate with sports fans, especially during major events such as the FIFA World Cup during which operators saw huge spikes in betting, much of which came from recreational bettors.
“Gamalyze Sports is relevant to sports bettors taking into account their knowledge, and what excites them as well,” Gallagher said. “It captures what interests them, and there was no more logical a time to debut it than during the World Cup.”
Gamalyze Sports, says Kjaergaard, is rooted in that fact it speaks the language of sports fans and engages them in a way to which they can relate. Embedding science-backed risk assessment into an interactive, football-themed, gamified experience makes player protection more engaging, more relevant, and more effective with a less biased outcome.
The goal is simple: Help players better understand their own decision-making and risk tendencies, and at the same time provide them with specific advice about what to be aware of based on their tracked behavior.
