Escrowing the funds is better, do not even open a competition if there is no escrowed funds.
A platform like this will not escrow funds because they want to try sell their products to you and me by visiting their site and probably playing there in the process when they credit accounts with funds..it's a clever marketing strategy as far as I know...
Delay payment for few days is normal but for weeks is not acceptable whatever the reason is because it shows how unprofessional they are in hosting a competition in this forum. Actually it is contradictive while they can offer daily $1000 competition without issues (at least I do not find any complaint related to the daily $1000 competition) but on the other side they do it badly in this forum for weekly competition with smaller prize pool.
My concern too, on their site these are paid without problems but here on the forum it's a whole different story and wonder where the problem really is...??
I know escrowing prizes is to prevent situation like this but If they don't escrow the prize there's still some participant who will join the contest especially when the contest is free like the one they are currently running.
I don't know what other competition they are running here, but the last required users using their own money to flay and chase those high multipliers unless you meant the price prediction game which I thought has-been paused for some time now...