Pickmister
A fully licensed daily fantasy sports platform built from scratch. We developed the complete system and achieved licensed operator status with the Malta Gaming Authority—one of the most rigorous gaming regulators in the world.
The Challenge
Daily Fantasy Sports had exploded in the United States, with platforms handling billions in entry fees. But the European market—home to the world's most passionate football fans—remained largely untapped. The opportunity was clear, but so were the barriers.
Operating a real-money gaming platform in Europe meant navigating serious regulatory requirements. The Malta Gaming Authority licence, while opening doors to most EU markets, demanded rigorous technical standards, comprehensive compliance systems, and ongoing operational scrutiny. White-label solutions existed, but they came with licensing fees, limited customisation, and platform lock-in.
We made a deliberate decision: build everything from scratch. Not because it was easier—it wasn't—but because owning the technology meant owning our destiny. No platform fees eating into margins. No artificial constraints on features. Complete control over the user experience.
White-label DFS platforms charge substantial licensing fees and limit customisation. By building custom, we eliminated ongoing platform costs, gained unlimited flexibility, and created genuine technical differentiation in a competitive market.
The Solution
Pickmister was a complete daily fantasy football platform where players competed by assembling teams of real footballers within a budget, earning points based on actual match performance. Entry fees funded prize pools, with the platform taking a 15% commission.
The platform supported major European leagues:
- UEFA Champions League and Europa League
- English Premier League
- Spanish La Liga
- Italian Serie A
- Turkish Super Lig
Lineup Builder
Intuitive team selection with formation tactics, budget management, and real-time player pricing based on performance statistics.
Real-Time Scoring
Live points calculation during matches via OPTA integration, with WebSocket-powered leaderboard updates as games progressed.
Tournament System
Multiple tournament formats including classic prize distribution, winner-takes-all, and guaranteed prize pools regardless of fill rate.
Responsible Gaming
Full MGA-compliant player protection: deposit limits, play limits, self-exclusion, and cooling-off periods built into the core platform.
Payment Processing
Secure deposits and withdrawals through regulated payment providers, with full transaction history and audit trails.
KYC Compliance
Identity verification workflow ensuring age compliance and geographic restrictions, meeting MGA regulatory requirements.
Technical Architecture
We made unconventional technology choices—not for novelty, but for maintainability. The frontend was built in Elm, a functional language that compiles to JavaScript. While Elm had a smaller developer pool, those who knew it were exceptional, and the language's design made runtime errors essentially impossible.
Elm is such a good solution that the relatively small pool of developers who are familiar with it are literally fighting for the few job opportunities currently offering the chance to code Elm, meaning we are able to hire extremely talented developers at a fraction of regular cost.
The backend combined multiple languages, each chosen for specific strengths:
PostgreSQL served as more than a data store—complex game logic lived in stored procedures, ensuring transactional integrity for financial operations. The microservices architecture separated concerns cleanly: data service, statistics service, authentication, payments, messaging, and real-time updates each ran independently.
OPTA Integration
Official licensed statistics from OPTA provided real-time match data, player statistics, fixture information, and squad details for all supported leagues.
Microservices
Seven distinct services handling data, statistics, scheduling, authentication, messaging, payments, and live updates—each independently deployable.
Regulatory Achievement
In June 2018, Pickmister received its Malta Gaming Authority Game of Skill licence—one of the first EU-wide DFS licences granted. This wasn't a rubber stamp. The MGA conducted extensive technical audits, reviewing everything from random number generation (for tiebreakers) to financial controls to player protection systems.
The licence required ongoing compliance: transaction reporting, player verification, responsible gaming features, geographic restrictions, and regular audits. Building these requirements into the architecture from day one, rather than bolting them on later, proved crucial.
The platform implemented stringent regulatory controls: KYC verification during registration, age verification, 3-device login limits, self-imposed deposit and play limits, self-exclusion options, transaction audit trails, and geographic access restrictions—all built into the core system.
Project Timeline
Technical Lessons
Pickmister validated several technical decisions that inform our current work:
- Custom beats white-label when you need genuine differentiation and long-term cost control
- Unconventional tech choices can be competitive advantages—Elm attracted exceptional developers at reasonable rates
- Regulation-first architecture is essential for compliance-heavy domains; retrofitting is painful and expensive
- Microservices done right enable independent scaling and deployment, crucial for real-time gaming
- PostgreSQL stored procedures provide transactional guarantees that application-level code cannot match for financial operations
While the operating company closed, the technical approach and lessons learned continue to influence how we build business-critical systems today.
Inside Pickmister
Screenshots from the daily fantasy platform, showing the player experience from team selection to live scoring.
Team Building
Tournaments & Competitions
Account & Compliance
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