Great. Welcome everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Bernie McTernan, one of the Internet analysts here at Needham & Company, and my pleasure to introduce the team at Rush Street. We have, Richard Schwartz, CEO, and Kyle Sauers, CFO. Thank you both for joining us so much.
Hi, Bernie, great to be here. Thank you for having us.
Great. Well, one of the beauties of this conference is it, it is right after earnings, so we'd love just to hear your, you know, key takeaways from earnings.
Sure. I mean, we had, you know, record revenues this last quarter at $217 million, which was up 34% year-over-year, and we also had a record in Adjusted EBITDA of $17 million, which was far above expectations. So we're coming off a really strong quarter and first half of the year. Including the fourth quarter of last year was also very strong for us, and what I think is interesting is that we're growing in all areas really fast, and not just iCasino, but even sports betting for us and iCasino both grew over 35% last quarter. So, you know, that was one of the more exciting things for us, to have that balance between also the U.S. and North America and Latin America, where we're also very strong. In fact, something else we shared over the...
As a takeaway for the quarter, I think would be that we acquire new players more efficiently, while also increase the number and the value of our users. So when I say that, as an example, our MAU growth, monthly active users that we have in North America, grew over 20%. The Latin America growth in monthly active users grew over 70%. So both are really healthy and strong growth metrics, but what's, I think, really hard to achieve, that we did achieve, was that we actually increased our ARPMAU at the same time, which is the average revenue per, you know, per active user.
The fact that we were able to grow as many new customers, and many of the newer customers that you grow are gonna have either negative revenue initially, or are gonna be very limited on revenue, because they're earning through the sign-up offers that we've offered. So to be able to grow the pace that we did, and at the same time grow our revenues per active user at the same time, I think really shows a really strong quarter for us. And then on top of that, if you're acquiring players for half of the cost that we did the prior year, it's an even stronger result.
So you're getting players in the door at a lot less of a cost, so you can imagine the return on your invested capital will be far better when you're able to achieve that. So, the quarter was great for us, and what we're most excited about is that there's so many opportunities ahead of us in all these other markets globally, especially in Latin America, where markets are legalizing and regulating all at the same time almost, which is exciting, 'cause we're in the right place at the right time with the right brands and the right people to take advantage of those growth opportunities. So we're really excited, as you can imagine.
Oh, that's great. And then you guys increased guidance for the year. You know, what's the best way for investors to, to think about this guidance increase, especially relative to the 1Q beat, other than maybe some of us on the sell-side weren't modeling 1Q the right way?
I'm not gonna throw any stones at our analysts on this call, Bernie, but yeah, I mean, that's. There's certainly some element to that. I think we're, as you pointed out, you know, we increased our revenue guidance at the midpoint from $800 million-$835 million. Probably more notably, increased the guidance on EBITDA from $40 million-$55 million. So I think we saw just really strong growth throughout the first quarter. Saw that continuing into the second quarter. So we're pretty excited about that, as Richard mentioned. There's a lot of good things happening, but a lot of things we can continue to improve upon as well. We're seeing a lot of markets with the best growth rates we've seen in a long time.
We've got Delaware that just recently launched. What we don't have in guidance is our Peru launch that we expect later this summer. But just a lot of good things happening, for sure, and we wanna be mindful that we're setting appropriate expectations, but we're certainly excited about the success we're having.
You mentioned Peru's not in the guidance. Is Brazil?
No, Brazil's not. It's the way we've handled guidance, at least thus far, is any, any market that hasn't launched, at the point where we're giving our earnings and doing any guidance updates, we don't include that in our guidance. So, in that current guidance is just markets that we have open today.
Understood. And then how does the, just the macro backdrop feel, just thinking about it both from a maybe competitive intensity perspective, but then also just from, you know, health of the consumer?
Yeah, I mean, the consumer remains strong from our vantage point. I think that's reflected in the growth in our MAUs and our ARPMAUs I described earlier. You know, we are continuing to experience strong momentum during the current quarter, so we feel really pretty positive about the macro backdrop.
Yeah. No, that's great. Well, Richard, you made some very... oh, the results speak for themselves, but encouraging comments on just North America MAUs, how they've accelerated every month since October. Really, what is driving this in your view, and is this happening for online sports betting and iGaming, or is it primarily focused on iGaming?
Yeah, well, the growth is balanced between iCasino and sports, and driven by improvements and enhancements in the products and overall experiences. You know, we've always maintained that when the market gets more competitive, the players are gonna choose the operators that deliver the best experience for them and the service for them, and that's something we've spent over a decade focused on. So I think when it comes down to what are some of the reasons why we've had this accelerated growth in MAU, you know, over the last six months in North America, is because of our focus. I mean, we're focusing very heavily on achieving the right growth in the right markets. Not all markets are the same, not all product categories are the same.
What we have done is we've enhanced our CRM, which is how we communicate with our players, adding more functionalities and capabilities over time, focusing on reactivations. I've said this before, that a lot of the players who played with us historically, they don't leave us. If they leave us because they didn't like the way we treated them, or there was something that they felt we did wrong for them. Often, it was just because of overly aggressive promotions by our peers. And as other peers are pulling back on their promotions and we send out reactivation campaigns, there's not a negative history with us, and all these players are willing to give us a shot again and come back to us.
We continue to improve the UX and the UI on the site, and the experience, and improve all aspects of the product, including a lot of parts that aren't as forward-facing for a consumer, but are things that are under the hood that really make a difference in reducing friction for the user. So it's really a combination of a lot of incremental improvements, that when you aggregate them together, they lead to material enhancements in the performance of the company.
These new customers that you're adding, any sort of estimate in terms of what the LTV of these customers are, versus older cohorts?
Yeah, so-
Yeah.
So we certainly want me to go ahead, Richard?
Yeah, please do, yeah.
Yeah. So I mean, we in each market, Bernie, as you can imagine, we've got our estimates of what the value's gonna be to us, you know, both at a revenue perspective, but more importantly, profitability, with different tax rates or different player values in different markets. We're still seeing very strong player values in these markets we're in. But it's also probably partly that we're focusing our marketing investments in the markets and in the places where we think we can find the highest value players. I mean, there's no doubt that when you have a new market open, oftentimes those players can be more valuable, but we're still seeing really valuable players come into the platform.
You know, Richard highlighted it before, but when we've got these reactivation and CRM activities that are improving every day for us, we're buying players for half of what we were a year ago, and getting good value for those players. And so we're not only reactivating players and keeping players better, but we're having the highest level of first-time depositors that we've had in the company's history.
and I guess the other point on that, the answer to that question, too, that Richard said earlier, just in terms of, you know, growing MAUs, but then also growing ARPU as well, too, helping to highlight the LTV.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we talk about this, you know, throughout the company all the time because it, you know, ultimately, everything people in our company do translate back up into, how do we get more new users or keep those users? And how do we create a great experience so that we get a bigger share of their gaming or entertainment wallet? And when you can do both of those at the same time, it's pretty darn powerful.
You mentioned strength in Michigan, North Carolina or New Jersey and Pennsylvania, you know, older states. Is that the reactivation that's driving the strength there, or anything else we should be thinking about?
Well, yeah, I would say it's a combination of a lot of these facets we've talked about. I mean, we've had the highest year-over-year quarterly revenue growth in two years in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. So it comes down to us offering a truly differentiated experience that's resonating with new customers and existing customers. Many of our competitors' products for casino are really similar to each other, where they're aggregations of game catalogs. And, you know, we have those same game catalogs, too, but we have built on top of these catalogs experiences that are truly unique to our platform.
So when a player is playing a maybe well-known slot machine, I'll use the Wheel of Fortune, because that's such a famous game in the history of the land-based casinos. We will intervene in that Wheel of Fortune gameplay experience for a player when they're with us, and offer that player an invite to a jackpot system to play for a jackpot game, or a bingo game, or a slot tournament, or we'll have a 3D character, our own King Cash. We've created him ourselves. Reminds me of maybe a Mr. Monopoly type of character that dances across the screen and dumps a lot of money on the player's account, using an algorithm to deliver it at the right moment for the player, when we know, based on player history, it's most valuable for that player to receive that bonus.
So we're doing all these in- and we have a community of players chatting with each other while they're playing slots, chatting with our moderators who work for our company, who are offering engaging conversations, and bonuses, and promotions, and trivia contests, all kinds of fun things. So when you combine the fun of the community with the promotional engine that we have built, that is truly unique in our industry, we're offering these players more ways to win, more things to think about, and more ways to feel like when they play with us, it's a different experience than others.
So when we get players playing with us, they stay with us, and those who maybe have left for the reasons I described earlier, that perhaps there was a larger aggressive bonus offers in the past, we think we have a pretty good chance of getting those players back, and I think we're seeing some of that growth due to that.
Yeah, and I think, Bernie, the other part I would add is just it's, it is about focus and allocating our financial resources and our human resources to the places where we can do the best, and we can make the most money for, for shareholders. And iCasino markets, you know, in spite of the great success we had in sports betting in Q1, with both user growth and revenue growth, focusing where we can do best is working out really well for us.
Yeah, no, it makes a whole lot of sense. Well, we talked about some of the older markets. Maybe we can talk about some of the, or one of the newer markets, and that's Delaware. $70 million revenue run rate, up from $60 million you were talking about last quarter. Why has this been so successful, and maybe, you know, in terms of expectations increasing, but then also what the prior operator is doing in the state?
Yeah, well, we always knew our casino product was really unique, as I just described. And I think at times it's harder for investors to fully understand the quality of it because of other factors in other markets that are at play in terms of who has what share, and based on massive differences in marketing budgets, massive differences in starting brand awareness, massive differences in land-based databases that are able to be deployed, or daily fantasy databases able to be redirected to sports and then cross through to casino.
So what we like about Delaware is it gave investors, I think, the first example to see that when you take a, a casino platform run by a company that's been doing it for 25 years, online casino, as a global leader in, in Europe and also active in the U.S., and you replace that platform with ours in this market, we got this 4x improvement, and pretty immediate and pretty drastic, and with very minimal marketing. So I think it really showcases the bells and whistles of what we've built and the value of it, that if you take a, you know, an average player and bring them into our platform, you're gonna get a much larger return than you get from other, other platforms that are maybe not as advanced in the capabilities that we have.
And it's not just the product, by the way, it's the customer service, too. We've won that Customer Service of the Year award every year it's been run, four years running. And we really pride ourselves on having a local team that really understands the players that they're talking to, understands the vernacular, and makes sure that they're helpful, and efficient, and thoughtful in how we treat our customers. And we combine that experience with the product being unique and high quality, you end up creating a user experience that's unique and differentiated, and that delivers those outsized returns. So I think it comes down to the experience. And one more thing I'll add, Bernie, is that a lot of companies maybe are now trying to get profitable, and so it's a big effort to how do we retain customers?
When I started this business in 2012, the number one goal we had was retention from day one. How do we keep our players? 'Cause we're gonna have a limited number of players in limited states, so let's make sure that when a player experiences, joins us, that we retain those customers. And if you can retain those customers, that's how you get the ARPMAUs like we have that are industry-leading, is because the players stay with us and they're loyal to us. Even as Kyle said, when they have, you know, wallet share is important to us.
That's, you know, many players have multiple accounts, and you don't- I don't think you achieve the results we have on the revenues per user, unless a larger percentage of the player's budget is spent with us than other brands they may also be registered with.
Yep, makes a lot of sense. And so certainly, you know, something that's helping you in Delaware is just that you're the only operator in the state right now. I know there's a bill floating around that could potentially add other operators. What's your outlook for maintaining this, this status that you currently have?
We're actively involved in discussions, you know, lobbying-wise and otherwise with other stakeholders in the state, and we're positive on maintaining the current, that the current structure will be maintained. Something happened earlier this week that I thought was noteworthy to share. You know, a fiscal note was issued by the Controller General of Delaware on Tuesday of this week, which shows that multimillion-dollar annual losses will be incurred by the state if the proposed multi-operator sports betting bill is enacted.
So the fact that this competitive bill would actually cost the state, according to the Controller General's office, which is for the legislators' budgeting office, we believe this will give legislators a reason to pause before supporting the bill, because that's a substantial amount of risk of losing money to the state that I think wasn't anticipated.
Did they detail why, how the new proposal would make them lose millions?
There's a whole thing. I don't have the details ready.
No, yeah.
I think there was certainly a pretty thorough effort that went into that by them. I think that was just another example of there being a concern that the other approach is really not gonna necessarily be more beneficial for the state than maintaining the current structure.
Yep, understood. And before we move on to LatAm, Kyle, can you just remind us what the split of Delaware revenue is between OSB and iGaming?
Yeah, so I think it's a good point because this, while we feel very confident that this bill won't go through, if it does, it's only related to sports betting. And the split for us is running around three quarters iCasino and one quarter sports betting.
Yep, understood. Okay, moving down to LatAm, revenue is up about 75% in the first quarter. Is Colombia still the primary driver of growth, or, or is Mexico starting to contribute more meaningfully now?
Well-
Mexico is certainly... Oh, go ahead, Richard.
Oh, go ahead, Kyle.
I was just going to say that Mexico is for sure ramping and contributing nicely. But Colombia for sure is still the primary driver there. A tremendous growth in Colombia, and then we're seeing Mexico start to ramp pretty nicely.
That's great.
I'll just add that, you know, you mentioned the 75% year-over-year growth in Colombia, but the LatAm was up 84% year-over-year. So again, a really strong growth, and both markets are contributing. But what we've not shared before is that Mexico is at a higher rate and a higher growth, higher revenues at the, compared to the same timeline that Colombia was open. So that's exciting for us for two reasons. Why? 'Cause you're growing at a faster pace than Colombia did, and you've seen how successful Colombia has been for us, so we're at a faster rate of growth. Or, we're at the same, after the same period of time, but also because Mexico is a much larger market opportunity, a much larger population by multiples.
So that's growing as fast as we are in a market that's that has a lot of growth ahead in the whole region for us is really exciting. So anyways, we're really proud of what we're achieving down there.
... That's great. And what's your expectations for turning, you know, that revenue into, you know, contribution profit and EBITDA?
So Colombia's been profitable for us for quite some time, and it's one of the bigger contributors for us across the different markets. And Mexico actually just turned profitable this past quarter, so. And we'd expect that to continue that way. So I mean, the Latin American markets that we're in, very nice, positive contributors for us. We'd expect that, you know, going forward, the new markets we can enter would follow that same playbook.
And just to get a clarification, you're saying Colombia is one of the biggest contributors. That's comparing Colombia just to other states in the U.S. and thinking about, you know, in that-
Yes.
As a context of it?
Yeah, I wasn't comparing the country to the country of the United States.
Right.
I'm just saying to other large markets, you know, places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ontario, you know, are big drivers of revenue, that, that Colombia is a big contributor to the profit line for us, relative to those.
Understood. And so Peru's an opportunity that you've been talking about more recently. What is the opportunity in Peru, you know, and maybe you know, relative to Mexico and Colombia?
Yeah, so we're really excited about Peru for a couple reasons. You know, it's about two-thirds of the population of Colombia with a slightly higher GDP per capita. So it's a really nice country, but what's also really relevant for us is that it's adjacent to Colombia, and we do a lot of marketing in Colombia on soccer matches on some of the major stations like ESPN and Fox. And those same streams and broadcasts that come into Colombia are also viewed by people in Peru. So the patrons, consumers in Peru already know our brand in a way that is rare for our company to have had that opportunity to go into a market where there's already awareness of our brand.
So I think the adjacencies and the ability to leverage marketing and awareness of the brand between the two countries is gonna be a great opportunity for us. So we are very excited about that country. We think it has a lot of opportunity for us. But one thing I just want to also add on is that, this is a once-in-a-history moment, where it's not just Peru, but there are other large markets in South America that are also legalizing, and that's Ecuador, Chile, Panama, Dominican Republic. I mean, there's. And I even mentioned Brazil. So really exciting time in the industry's history, and like I said at the beginning, we're extremely well-positioned because we have a brand, the teams, the database, the platform localized for the region the way that it needs to.
We just think there's ample market opportunities for us there that we're really excited to start to expand into.
Oh, that, that's great. It's exciting. And so just on Brazil, what's the latest in terms of potential timing and, and how you guys are thinking about the TAM? I think a lot of, you know, industry estimates are putting it between, you know, $2 billion-$4 billion. Does that, does that kind of make sense once you get to a more, you know, mature level for the country?
Yeah, maybe, I'll talk a little bit. Maybe Kyle wants to add in just a little bit. The regulations are beginning to roll out. There's still a process. There's some changes happening in the regulator there that are, I think, slowing down the process a little bit, but we're reviewing every regulation as they're being published. We had submitted an interest in the market a year ago to make sure that we were considered one of the companies able to launch in the earlier group if we want to. We're real excited by the size of the market, the opportunity there. We're very focused on the right strategy for that market. It's a population of over 200 million people, so it's a massive market, massive opportunity. We spent time down there.
We recognize what the current leaders are in the gray market. We're aware of who's coming in the market, and we're really focused on putting together a comprehensive strategy that makes a lot of sense for a company like us. So I think our strategy for this market is just to keep working on the strategy and to provide updates publicly as more information becomes available as to what we plan on doing.
Yeah, and I think, Bernie, we've seen a lot of those same estimates. Pretty big gap between $2 billion and $4 billion, but either of them are pretty nice-sized markets, of course. I think we probably tend to think that it's somewhere near the midpoint of those. But we'll be excited to get our piece of it.
Yep, yep. I mean, what's $2 billion between friends, Kyle? Come on.
Right.
Maybe, you know, lots of, lots of commentary and talk already on tech and product, but we wanted to make sure we're really zooming in on it, 'cause I think you have an interesting story to tell. So just on iGaming, you know, how do you feel like your product compares to the rest of the industry and maybe the main points of differentiation that you can point to?
Yeah, so I think casino, for us, is something that we live and breathe, and we have in our DNA the know-how how to actually build our own products that are compelling for users. Most of our companies, historically, who are operators in the casino category, really don't have that ability, and they're mostly publishing third-party content as their primary strategy. So the fact that we... You know, I, my career started at a slot machine manufacturer, and I learned there for many years what are the key things we need to develop to make products that a consumer wants to play. And we've hired a lot of people over the years that also have that same sensibility and knowledge and experience, so we've been able to build a lot ourselves that's really compelling.
So I talked earlier about some of the features that are unique, all the promotional engines in the community, but what I think I want to answer your question in a way that I haven't really thought about it before, but I think that a lot of people in our industry focus a lot on the casino games or the sports betting markets that are available to play. And that's almost like everyone wants more parlays, more bets, more, more variety of bets, more of prop bets. So that's all important, and that's valuable, right? And we do that, too, like everybody else does. But I think what but to me, those are the stars of the industry. They're like the quarterbacks in a football match. I'm gonna try to use that analogy where, you know, everyone wants to talk about the stars.
You know, what prop bets are available, what parlays, the okay parlays available, how many are available? And, you know, they're the position players get all the attention in sports, right? It's the receivers, running backs, quarterbacks, and it's important, but the war is won in the trenches. The offensive and the defensive linemen in football are what wins the games for these teams. We were joking earlier with someone about Michigan and how their offensive line and defensive lines are tremendous, and that's what wins games, right? They won the championship this year. And I—the equivalent of the offense, offensive, offensive, defensive lineman in our industry are the, is our technology platform. It's of our business. It's not sexy to talk about.
It's most investors don't really have a lot of interest in learning about it, but the truth is, is that it's where you make profits in our industry. It's how you convert players, and it's how you automate systems. It's how you have waterfalls for conversion rates. If, if one KYC vendor doesn't work, you flip over real-time to another. How do you find a way to make it so the vast majority of your players and a higher number of your players get through the KYC system in our platform at a higher rate than other platforms? That includes creating automation tools, letting players do self-verifications in a way that others don't do.
It's how do you avoid that process going to a manual review process, which takes resources to go through and ends up, in some cases, demanding players to give you information, like a copy of a Social Security number card, that you don't, consumer doesn't want to go look for. So if we can avoid the number of players looking for that at a much higher rate than others can, we're bringing players in more efficiently and automatically and in a way that reduces friction for them. And so it's those things that are built on 10, over 10 years of features being built. So I think that at the end of the day, all the touch points a user has, 95% of them are happening before you get to the parlay bet or the casino gameplay. But all, everybody wants to talk about that, 'cause that's the star.
But I'm here to say that I think a lot of our success has been all these investments we've made over a decade on the technology platform and conversion, retention, and making sure those things are working in a way that players will not feel friction, and in fact, be impressed by things we do that they don't have in other platforms. And so that's where I think we put a lot of our investment in it. We have dedicated organizational teams focused on every part of the user journey, so it's not just the tip of the spear, but it's the entire flow through from the beginning, when a player lands on our app for the first time, to when they make their first bet, to when they make their first deposit, and the customer service needs they may have.
It's all the little details that matter, and I think that's why we've been able to deliver outsized results, given our much smaller marketing budgets compared to our peers.
Yeah, no, and Richard, that's a great response. And I know, like, one of the questions we get from investors a lot is, you know, what does separate, you know, DraftKings and FanDuel from Caesars versus Rush Street? And I think, you know, just having that, you know, the example that you gave, too, where it's like, you know, reactivating customers, and it's like, well, they always had a good experience with Rush Street, but then Promo took them to another platform, and now you can win them back. Just giving, you know, not giving customers a reason to have a bad experience. I think that's a great response.
Maybe also, and then I think the, the logical follow-up would be: How difficult do you think it is for someone to recreate, you know, those, the, the nuts and bolts or, or the offensive line, as, as, as you put it?
I mean, it took us a decade of improving it every two weeks, so it's not a simple thing. I think as companies come in the market and are trying to be really aggressive and grow share and grow sportsbook quality and casino at the same time, and there's a lot of things to do when you're marketing in 15-20 different states. It's a very complicated business because you every jurisdiction has their own set of requirements and things that you have to do to fulfill the requirements for that market. So I think there is a...
It's hard to achieve it, and I think sometimes you can do a shortcut to get into markets fast, but it doesn't mean you're optimized the way you need to be in order to be long-term sustainable and viable for 20 years, which is what we planned when we built our business. So I think that it's tough to do that. But one thing that I also want to make sure we've mentioned is that we've also differentiated our products. The casino side, I've talked a lot about it with all these tournaments, slot tournaments, blackjack tournaments, things that just others don't have. But even on the sportsbook side, when we introduced the Squares feature for football, it was so successful we added it to basketball. It's very valuable when you're adding unique feature.
Players are betting on a parlay with us, the same parlay that's available on another site. But with us, when they bet with it, we give them a square, and if their scores or the outcome of the game of the two teams match their square, like you do in Super Bowl squares, typically, you win up to $10,000 through a lottery mechanic. We're giving players value for no extra cost, and we're differentiating the user experience, and makes a player want to stick with us because we're getting similar bets somewhere else, but with us, we get something more and extra. And so we are building a lot of mechanics like that for the future sports markets and other markets moving forward. So we did that. We innovated in the casino way, side, in this way, and it worked extremely well. We launched Squares.
I think it was the first entry into an innovation product like that on sportsbook. That worked extremely well. So now we're accelerating some additional concepts that we're getting ready to launch later this year that we think will have a bigger impact as well. And along the way, we have had to improve our sportsbook to ensure we get to parity on things like the parlays, prop bets. We do some innovative things on the way you can find player prop bets more easily on our app than you can on most of our competitors. And just some merchandising improvements we've made on sportsbook have really helped us, I think, to be able to grow that, that market for us, despite us investing less than other, others, and even less than we did in the past.
And yet we're still growing that sportsbook market by 35% quarter-over-year, year-over-year.
... That's great. That's a very comprehensive answer. I wanna make sure, last couple minutes here, and I don't think I called it out before, but if anyone has any questions, please type them into the portal so we can make sure we get to them. But wanted to make sure, you know, hit on the competitive environment. Kyle, you mentioned that you're able to acquire customers, you know, 50% below last year's levels. DraftKings on their call was talking about, I think, 20% below, going to 40% below in April. Just why does it seem like the... You know, it seems like the environment's competitive, but then, you know, CACs are going down.
You know, I don't believe you were in North Carolina, but just, like, any broader thoughts on the competitive environment and why customer acquisition costs have been trending lower?
Yeah, so I think it's a lot of it is that we're getting better. We're better at knowing what types of players are worth or what the value is, where can we find them, and then we're getting better at bringing them onto the platform. It certainly doesn't hurt, as Richard talked about, if you continue to improve that new user flow, and you get them through more successfully at a higher rate to where they're gonna make that first-time deposit. All of that improves your CPAs.
Right, 'cause the better you convert, you know, that, if that top of funnel stays the same or, or is growing, you're converting more because the back, back engine's stronger. You know, that's-
Yeah
... That's a pretty impressive place.
It's a combination of all those things, and it's finding players in the right places. And we have, you know, we have a marketing team that's very, very nimble in putting marketing investments to work in the right places and in unique places to find players that are generally iCasino first. There's a lot of value to that for us.
Got it. I wanted to pivot over to, to legislation. Just, you know, any states, whether it's OSB or iGaming, that you guys are, you know, bullish on, that we could see come to market in the near term?
I think, Alberta is one that's gaining a lot of traction up in Canada, and it would be a really exciting market for us, given, you know, the, our already being in Canada and the ability to extend from Ontario there, and it being a casino market, especially. So we're excited for that opportunity, and there's a lot of other states here that are getting a lot of momentum. It's been slow to actually get across the line, but I think there's been alliances being built that are gonna be powerful in the future, and it's a combination of land-based, large land-based casino groups and online large groups as well, all aligned around wanting more states to legalize.
The combination of the states now needing more budget, taxes than in the past, the recent past, and the ease of adding iCasino to sports betting markets is pretty clear. But, you know, one thing I want to point out, Bernie, is that while we are gonna get a disproportionate benefit of iCasino that's legalized in more U.S. states, I think given our success in iCasino markets, we're not sitting on our, our twiddling our thumbs. We have these markets in Latin America that are large, and attractive, and high-margin, and fast-growing, that we are able to hit on now and not waiting for any legislation to enable. So we're amply busy getting ready to go after all these opportunities that we feel very confident about based on our performance in the past and the existing markets we're in there.
It is about U.S. new iGaming markets, but we're not idle waiting for that. We have plenty of opportunities ahead of us available today without anyone, any obstacles in our way to achieve.
Yep, makes sense. There's been a lot of just, we can call it integrity issues, in the news, whether it's, you know, Ja'Marr Chase or Shohei Ohtani. Is that, is that changing any of the sentiment from either legislators or leagues as it relates to online sports betting?
I think everyone's being more cautious, and I think it's really important that everybody is being thoughtful about how things are done. Like, for example, the NBA, maybe the two-way contracts, where players who aren't paid at the same level as more of the traditional players won't be available for prop bets, which I think would be a good resolution to try to make sure that you know you have that kind of integrity, 'cause that's everything you need for betting to be successful. You need to make sure there's high integrity at every angle. So we're supportive of that.
I do think that you have to be careful because the more you regulate and try to solve a problem, the more you drive players to an unregulated market, where there are no protections of any kind and no influence by any league or regulator who's gonna have an impact on things. So you have to ensure that there's a competitive environment out there, where consumers are gonna still wanna play in the regulated sites. So I think that's the balance that's critical to maintain at all times.
Got it, okay. Makes a lot of sense. Wanted to make sure that we at least touch on the guidance a little bit. So midpoint of the guidance is for 21% revenue growth this year. That's relative to 17% reported last year. What's the best way for people to think about that acceleration, and then, you know, how sustainable, not that you're gonna give 2025 and 2026 guidance, but how sustainable would, you know, 20%+ growth be, or what would be the levers to get there?
Yeah, so I think it's that acceleration is all the things we were talking about today, all the things that we've been getting better at. So bringing in players at a lower cost, bringing in high-value players, retention, reactivation, and the acceleration of our user counts. Certainly, the Delaware launch has been very successful for us, and we expect, you know, continued success there. Richard talked about it. Latin America, regardless of new market openings down there, should be a really consistent high-growth business for us, and we're excited about the new markets that are opening. So I think we feel very good about sustained high growth for the foreseeable future.
To your point, I'm not gonna give 2025 guidance today, but we have not been more optimistic about, you know, the opportunity ahead, in a long, long time.
Great. Well, Richard and Kyle, let's leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks to everyone who tuned in on the webcast, and looking forward to talking to you guys soon. Thank you.
Thanks.