PrizePicks

Is PrizePicks safe?

PrizePicks is a legitimate, heavily used app that takes age checks and self-exclusion more seriously than many rivals. It is also a fast way to lose money: you pick whether two to six players beat a stat line, and the app advertises payouts of up to 2,000 times your entry. Its legal footing changes from state to state, and it paid New York $14.97 million in 2024 for operating without a licence. We score it 52/100.

The company says about 20 million people have used it. Allwyn, the European lottery operator, closed its purchase of a majority stake in January 2026.

Is PrizePicks legal in my state?

There is no single answer, which is the main thing to understand before you deposit. PrizePicks now sells three kinds of picks. Player Picks are fantasy contests regulated, or tolerated, under state fantasy laws. Team Picks and Culture Picks are event contracts offered through a subsidiary registered with the CFTC, the same federal route Kalshi uses.

PrizePicks' eligibility page shows the patchwork. All three products are open in 25 states, including California, Florida, Georgia and Texas. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ohio and Maryland only Culture Picks are offered. New York and Arizona get Player Picks only. In October 2026 PrizePicks stopped offering sports contracts in Missouri, SBC Americas reported, and its eligibility page no longer lists Team Picks there.

The record of state pushback is long. New York's State Gaming Commission settled with PrizePicks in February 2024 for $14,969,688, covering contests run in the state from 2019 to 2023 without a licence, and PrizePicks left New York until it won a licence in October 2025. Florida's gaming regulator and Arkansas ordered pick'em games out in early 2024, and in Massachusetts PrizePicks replaced them with a peer-to-peer game after the attorney general's office challenged pick'em contests that year. Its eligibility page now lists all three products in both Florida and Arkansas. The courts are now split on event contracts too.

Age checks and young users

PrizePicks checks age before an account is opened and follows each state's minimum: 18 in most states, 19 in Alabama and Colorado, and 21 in Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts and Virginia. It requires location checks every time you play, so moving to an ineligible state locks you out.

The weak point is the same as for any app with an 18 floor: in most of the country an 18-year-old can stake real money on player stats, a product that looks and feels like a prop bet. PrizePicks says it bans accounts used for underage players and asks parents to email its support team if a child has used an adult's details to sign up. That is a sign the problem happens, not proof of how often.

Tools against gambling harm

PrizePicks offers more than most event-contract apps:

• Limits on deposits or entry fees per day, week or month, held for at least 90 days.
• Alerts when you pass your own activity thresholds.
• Timeouts of 1 to 30 days that block picks and deposits.
• Self-exclusion of 30 days or more, or Lifetime, which closes the account and bars new ones.

None of these can be edited or cancelled before the period ends, which is the right design. Set them inside the Responsible Gaming menu before you start, because promos such as "Play $5, get $150" are built to pull you in quickly.

What data does PrizePicks collect?

The App Store label is modest: only contact info is listed as used to track you, and coarse location as linked to you. The privacy policy, last revised in May 2026, describes much more. PrizePicks collects your real name, date of birth, Social Security and driver's licence numbers, card details and chat contents, real-time GPS location to confirm you are in an eligible state, and session recordings of how you use the site. It says it does not sell data but that interest-based advertising may count as a sale or sharing under California law, and it honours Global Privacy Control opt-out signals.

You can delete your account from Settings, though PrizePicks keeps what identity and gambling rules require.

How to use PrizePicks more safely

1. Set a deposit limit and an alert before your first entry.
2. Turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser and choose "Ask App Not to Track" on iPhone.
3. Withdraw winnings regularly instead of leaving a balance to replay.
4. If you are a parent, check whether your ID has been used, and email PrizePicks support if it has.
5. If you want to stop, choose Lifetime self-exclusion rather than just deleting the app.

How we scored it

Transparency and control (62) is the strongest factor, thanks to self-serve deletion and harm tools that cannot be undone early. Scams and harmful content (42) reflects high-payout picks open from 18, and the regulatory record (50) the New York penalty and repeated state exits. Kalshi scores 51 and Cash App 47.