Underdog Fantasy, one the fastest-growing sports gaming and media companies in the U.S., today announced the next investment from its pioneering GuardDog fund to foster innovation in responsible gaming, which was founded with $1 million last year.

GuardDog will provide funding to The Game Safety Institute (GSI) and its efforts to build wider product intelligence platforms to more accurately assess risk for each game type and develop opportunities to better educate players and showcase tools to help players control their play.

“Our clear aim with GuardDog is to support and help scale innovation in responsible gaming, and the Game Safety Institute is precisely the type of partner we look for – imaginative, with a commitment to rigorous testing and research to develop real, actionable solutions to enhance player safety across a wide range of products,” said Adam Warrington, Vice President of Responsible Gaming at Underdog. “We look at RG a little differently: not as a challenge, but as an opportunity necessitating fresh, creative ideas to create a stronger and more responsible ecosystem for operators and players.”

“The majority of investment and innovation in RG over the past 15 years has been centered on solutions focused on the player. As these initiatives start to mature, we anticipate increased regulatory and industry focus on product safety. A recent survey of major global operators showed that almost all understood the importance of product safety, however only a third are satisfied with their current approach to understanding product risk,” said Sarah Ramanauskas, co-founder of GSI.

“New RG solutions are complex to develop and deploy. They require wide stakeholder engagement, R&D funding, and time. GuardDog is therefore a critical initiative as it supports the most innovative new RG ideas with not only capital, but access to a range of industry expertise. We are delighted to be partnering with Underdog,” said Simo Dragicevic, co-founder of GSI.

In 2023, Underdog made an initial $1 million investment in the GuardDog innovation fund, and the fund’s partnership with GSI represents its second investment since inception. In addition to financial investment, GuardDog also provides funded companies with access to mentorship and consultation from responsible gaming experts, including renowned responsible gaming advocate Brianne Doura-Schawohl; Dan Hartman, Former Director of the Colorado Division of Gaming; Sara Tait, Former Executive Director of the Indiana Gaming Commission; and Chris Grove, Partner at Acies Investments.

Underdog’s commitment to responsible gaming runs far deeper than the GuardDog innovation fund, as the company was the first and only operator in U.S. sports gaming to support the GRIT Act, which would earmark 50 percent of federal excise taxes on sports betting for problem and responsible gambling programs.