All right. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Last day of our, I think, the 28th Annual Oppenheimer TMT Conference. It's my pleasure to welcome Richard Schwartz, CEO of Rush Street Interactive, and their CFO, Kyle Sauers. Rush Street 's probably been one of the best-performing gaming stocks over the past two years. The management team's done a wonderful job sustaining iGaming growth and growing its Latin American presence. Richard, Kyle, thanks for joining us.
Thanks, Chad. Thanks for having us.
I guess just a question we, or actually, I want to start this off because they got a bit covered in, you know, growing its Latin American presence. Richard, Kyle, do you want to, thanks for joining us.
Thanks, Chad. Thanks for having us.
I want to start this off.
Yeah, we hear it too.
All right. Cool. Richard, Kyle, do you want to--all right. All right. Thanks. Coming back, I guess, Richard, we've been covering the stock now for, I think, almost six years. What struck me is, as a CEO, I think you had the right strategy in terms of where you saw the vision for the company, thinking that sports was nice to have, but iGaming was really where you saw a lot of the value creation for Rush Street . Can you just talk about the overview of the iGaming strategy? I think iGaming was up mid-20s or around 25% last--or maybe it was probably higher. Can you just talk about where we are in terms of the growth trajectory of iGaming and the sustainability around it?
Sure. I mean, I think from the very beginning, we did recognize that iGaming was going to be the profit engine of our industry. We took the steps we needed two years ago to make sure that we were starting development of a lot of a wide range of differentiated and unique intellectual property that would give us an advantage in this market. We have been able to own our own technology from the very beginning with our own platform so we could be nimble, differentiated, quick to market, control with new features, and control our destiny. When we bring something new and exciting to a customer base, making sure that we were the only ones that offered it, which then gives a customer a reason to stay with us. We knew we had it right.
I think that that would be the right focus for us as a growth engine. I think you'll see from the states that report the data that in many states, you know, three times, you know, online casinos, three times the size of Sportsbook. It is the right market. It's high, it's reliable. It's consistent. The question becomes, how do you make sure you have the experience that is right to retain and to establish and retain a leadership position in that segment? In terms of the market itself, you'll see New Jersey, over 10 years in, is still growing 20%+ a year. Other states are growing even faster. The exciting thing for this segment and for our company is that you only have five US states where it's legal. That represents only 12% of the US population can play a legal-regulated online casino today.
Contrast with sports betting, we're over 60%, around 60% of the population in the U.S. can play online sports or can bet on online sports today. You can see the major opportunity for iCasino, online casino to not only bridge that gap but also address some of the other states that don't have either one yet today. I think for us, it's really the fact that you have a very high-quality, proven, reliable industry that is very clearly going to generate a large amount of tax revenues for states that embrace it and legalize it. Based on what you've seen in Pennsylvania and in markets like Michigan, you'll see that we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars a year in incremental taxes for states. I think we're in the right place at the right time with the right product.
Everything for us is really, I think, hitting on all cylinders other than just trying to get the acceleration of more jurisdictions.
Before we go company-specific, you touched on something. You know, New Jersey is still growing, call it 20%. I think iGaming's been legal there for almost 12 years. Is it just coming from new users? Why do you think, even a state like New Jersey, it seems that it's still, you know, the market's not nearly close to being saturated?
I think it's a combination. You always get a new generation of players every year who are the legal age to bet. That's really what's driving, I think, is ultimately just the maturity of our experience and the fact that we have so many—we've done a lot of great things. As Kyle and I and others in the company talk about a lot, there are so many more things we want to do that we know are going to be opportunities to grow the revenues for our business.
I think it's really the maturity of more methods, better methods for payments getting involved, more intuitive designs, more innovative features, and just being able to improve all aspects of the service that we offer to the point where customers are like, this is really compelling and in some ways more fun than any other entertainment we have available because it can be done in the home, right? From a cost standpoint, if people are being budget-minded, this is the most affordable way of having a high-quality entertainment in that you're not having to travel. You're not having gas. You're not incurring hotel costs or flight costs and eating out costs. Even the price to play a game online, online casino, you could play a blackjack game for $0.05, right, compared to $10, $15, $20 minimums at a land-based property.
I think across the board, you're not being impacted by tariffs. You're not being impacted in the same way, or at least extremely directly, by anything in terms of inflationary costs because the cost to play our product remains the same as a currency, as it remains fixed. All in all, I would say that new players coming in always helps. As you have more brands, more industry supporting our industry, you get the opportunity to acquire new customers. On the flip side, I would say we've been very good at growing the existing revenues from our existing customer base. I think others are probably doing something similar.
Yeah, that would, and as you're,
I'll just throw in there, like in terms of point of saturation, I don't think we're anywhere near that because most of the growth that we're seeing in these online casino markets is coming from new player ads. Certainly, as our players mature, they get stickier. Retention is higher and higher as the cohort gets older. The value of those players does go up, but our revenue growth is being driven by the user counts increasing. In fact, we said this on our earnings call, but our growth in North American iCasino markets in player growth has been the highest it's been in a long time. It actually accelerated as the second quarter went along. I think that gives us good indications of how the business is trending for the back half.
Is it now, has your customer mix changed? Because historically, I mean, before the boom of sports betting, I think iCasino was sort of, you know, call it mid-50s females. Are you seeing more sports-first players? Or is it kind of still a similar consumer mix?
I'd say it's a similar consumer mix. We have been focusing most of our marketing efforts and marketing investments in the markets that have online casino. That's where we've got a great differentiated product. We're getting players at really good values that have good payback periods. We're actually doing it at lower costs than we were, much lower costs than we were two years ago. In Q2 anyways, in North America, our monthly active users grew 22%. I think it was in total, maybe it was 21% in total. It was over 30% in the iCasino markets. I think by virtue of our product being super differentiated and that we're spending more of our money there, that's where our player growth is coming from. We're getting sports betting players added every day, of course, some in Sportsbook-only markets, some in those iCasino markets. It's predominantly coming from iCasino player ads.
Got it. Richard, you mentioned something about owning, you know, the tech stack. Is that more important with the smart bonusing, or is it more important with having your own content? I guess the follow-up question there is, how do you measure using content from third parties versus what you create on your own?
Yeah, that's a great question. In the industry, there's a large number of very high-quality suppliers that provide games to all the operators. Think about like a movie theater. Everyone has the same basic movies from the same distributors. We're the only ones that do something completely different, I would argue, in that we don't just use the intellectual property from the suppliers of the movies, but we build our own games ourselves that aren't actually just the primary movies. They're actually interjected in the middle of watching a movie. We're giving players all these different experiences that are our unique intellectual property that we built ourselves.
What I like about this strategy and why it's been, I think, very successful is that 100% of players who are playing any game on our site will experience the content that we build ourselves rather than trying to hope that we can drive a customer to play the one or five games that we built ourselves in the corner somewhere that's probably not well known, not something they've ever played before, maybe not at the same quality as maybe the top hits that are provided by the biggest suppliers in the world, like the Aristocrat or IGTs of the world, Light & Wonder. I think what we have built is a wide range of intervening experiences, which is unique for our experience. If someone plays with us, they're not just watching the same movie in the same movie theater as everybody else is.
We're watching a movie and all of a sudden saying, "Jed, hey, pause here. We have this really exciting opportunity for you to win some extra prize in a fun way you've never seen before." Whether it's a 3D character coming across the screen, dumping money on the player's side, whether it's, hey, you've been invited to a slot tournament or a fun bingo game, or here's a mystery present that shows up and players are like, "What happened here?" You open it up and you get all kinds of prizes. We have jackpot games of, "Hey, Jed, congratulations. We're going to pause this movie for a second and we're going to give you a chance to play a jackpot game where you can win $100,000. By the way, it's on the house.
You don't have to pay anything extra as a player." We're creating value and fun and experiences with players that every player feels when they play with us. I think if you're going to build something yourselves, you have to know what to build, build high quality, but also make sure you distribute it in a way that all your players can play it and experience it and that you're not. We also have our own unique exclusive core games on casino, like others are doing as well. Arguably, the impact of that is not as great as the impact is to what we've been able to do, which is make sure that our unique intellectual property touches the players every session they play with us, no matter what game they're playing. I think that's where we've put a lot of effort into developing with our own technology, unique features.
We also offer something unique that I think you know, but I think for investors who may not be as familiar with our story, that's really compelling, is a community, a digital community of players who talk with each other, engage with moderators from our team as well that are in there offering trivia contests, fun parties, just engaging conversations. What that does is, you know, the world's a kind of lonely place right now for a lot of people. This creates a very social environment for those players to be able to engage and have fun and laugh and forget about the day-to-day in their life, possibly, and what's going on in the world and be able to just enjoy the entertainment value that comes from playing the games they like, but also socializing with like-minded customers who enjoy the same things they do.
I think that combination of this gamified promotional engine that we've built, plus the social community element that we've combined into our product, are two things that are completely unique to us and is one reason why, despite having a lower budget on marketing than some of the others and having a lesser-known brand, certainly at the beginning, we're able to deliver the outsized results that we are. It's because players who find us and experience this, they tend to stay with us. The retention in this industry is the key. The way to retain players ultimately is obviously treating them well with fairness, honesty, integrity. Our customer service team does a great job with that. It's also the user experience. Give them something that they can experience with us that they like. They don't want to go anywhere else because they want to replicate that.
If they go somewhere else, they can't replicate that. They're coming back to us to play. I think that's one reason why our revenue per active user is the highest that we've seen in the industry, because multiple players typically have multiple accounts. What you see is our MAU is so high that it's an indication that the players are choosing to spend a disproportionately large amount of their entertainment budget with us versus other brands that may be competing with us.
You mentioned something interesting about engagement. That leads me to two other questions. Number one is, can you talk about the strategy on Live Dealer, build versus partner, how you think about Live Dealer? Second, speaking of engagement, you probably, more than other competitors, talk more about poker, state by state, having more liquidity pools. Can you talk about those two strategies and how that fits in?
Sure. Live Dealer is a trusted product for customers because they see with their own eyes the cards being dealt by Live Dealers being streamed to the players in their homes. We were very early to be live with the market, the global leader in this area in terms of product quality for many years. It's been an evolution. What we did was many of our peers had exclusive deals only with that one company and they weren't able to use other Live Dealers. We know that players like a variety of content. We made sure that we were never restricted, and we were able to bring in a wide variety of different Live Dealer suppliers into our mix. On top of that, what many do is many of these suppliers of Live Dealer want to retain customers only playing their subset of games from that one supplier.
As an operator, we want to give the players a choice of all the Live Dealer games. What we've done is we create our own live lobby, Live Dealer lobby, where we mix all the games from all the venues together in a way that maybe isn't intuitive for other sites because typically you might have every vendor wanting their games only being played themselves. You're done with one game A on vendor, on Evolution. Maybe they want you playing game B from Evolution, where we want the choice for players to pick whatever games are available for us regardless of which supplier provides them. We focus on Live Dealer improving the quality of the experience, integrating some tools that allow us to bonus the players.
I think the margins aren't as great typically on the Live Dealer for us as they are other products because of the cost and overhead to run those products. I also think some of our competitors are more heavily focused on the overlap from sports who have larger sports audiences than we do. Having said that, I think the quality of the experience we offer is first rate and it's only getting better. It's a category that we plan on continuing to grow in terms of a variety of content. We have some unique intellectual property coming out in this area in partnership with some third-party suppliers. Overall, I think it's a category that you have to have, and it's one that we plan on being very strong in in the future. I think that's an important part of the casino mix.
If I could shift to poker, you know, poker, when the market started, it opened, you know, 10 years, 12 years ago, people thought poker was going to be this gigantic revenue opportunity on its own merit. I think we sort of felt like without liquidity sharing among the same number of states that they used to have it when it was a great market experience in the U.S. before when PokerStars and Full Tilt used to sort of run the business in the U.S., you know, they were operating in 50 states. That made the product way more appealing. You really have to have multiple states joining together to create liquidity so you have enough of an experience to offer larger prizes and enough variety of games always on so a player can always find what they're looking for.
Recently, or a couple of years ago, we said this market's really been under-focused on by a lot of our peers. There's really nothing innovative new in that segment. When you look at it, a poker customer is a casino customer. A lot of players want to play poker because they're passionate about it, and they want to play poker. They weren't going to play with us, and that meant they were not going to probably give us their casino business unless they already experienced it with us. We think adding poker did two things for us. One is it widened our audience of new customers who will give us a try that maybe in the past would not have given us a try because now they're looking for poker and they hear we have a great quality product, so they're going to come play with us.
Number two, an existing customer who wants to play poker in the past would leave us to go play somewhere else. We want to keep that customer within our ecosystem. I think by launching poker, we're the first ones to launch in West Virginia. We were the only exclusive in Delaware, and we're live in Pennsylvania and Michigan. At some point, we'll be launching as well in New Jersey. The point is that we now have some liquidity, and it's really helping us to reach gamblers. Some of the personalities we have, like Phil Hellmuth and Phil Galfond, very respected poker players, are reaching out to consumers in a way that I'm getting more inquiries from people I know asking about them than I have from really any other marketing exercise we've done. I think it just creates a brand awareness for the brand that helps the business overall too.
Lastly, we've made sure we built the poker platform not to generate revenues for poker because we recognize poker itself as a small market. We're not putting the effort in for poker revenues. We're putting the effort in so we can cross-sell to sports and casino. What we're seeing is it really is validating what we thought was going to happen, which is that you're getting a lot of the players playing poker are like, oh, let me try betting on sports with BetRivers. I like this experience. Let me try to bet on casino games. Ultimately, it's just a part of the ecosystem that I think if you're missing it, you're not a complete operator. We felt it was important to have it. We're really proud of the result of what we put in.
The product's been very, very well received, which is hard to do for a product this complex. I think there's very few companies that own their own poker platform. If you try to add it as a B2B supplier, there's very few options available. Ultimately, we have something that's scarce and working very well for us.
Just touching on where we are in the legalization, I think it's maybe forced. We haven't really seen anything go live here in iGaming in a while now. What do you think the impediment is? Is it more of the land-based casinos worried about cannibalization? Is it more of the legislators? Is there any catalyst you think that could unlock more states to start to legalize iGaming? The numbers don't lie. I think it's kind of surprised some of us that have been following the industry now over the last five years.
Yeah, there's a lot of questions in your question here. Let me try to simplify it in saying that, yes, it hasn't moved at the pace that I think a lot of people thought it would, although we do have a great market in Alberta getting ready to open probably in the first quarter of next year. That's another opportunity. It's really exciting for us given our success in Ontario and the opportunity and the ease for us to launch in that market when it's available for us. What I will say is that I think during COVID, there's a belief that maybe, you know, the states would need some extra money, but instead, they end up getting a large surplus of funds from the federal government. Really, states weren't really struggling at all financially. I think now states are increasingly left on their own.
I think the bill that was passed recently is putting a lot of pressure on Medicaid fees. States that went all in with matching on Medicaid are going to need to sort of supplement those lost funds with something meaningful. If you look at a market like Michigan, which is approaching, you know, a couple of $2 billion of tax generated in the first five years, that's real money for another state like Illinois or New York to add in, maybe even larger given the larger population and the increased maturity of the market, our industry. I think the rates of adoption are faster when a new market opens than they would be from, say, seven or 10 years ago. You have a couple of things happening. You have states under financial pressure.
A few of the states have, you know, added some increases to sports betting, as you've seen for tax rates like in Illinois. What you'll see is that that incremental amount is a small amount of incremental tax base compared to what it would be like to add gaming, iGaming, as a, you know, three to four times more volume will come through iCasino. The taxes generated from iCasino are going to blow away anything you get from increasing a tax rate of sports betting. I think the signs that are there that when governors are looking for everything they can and they're looking at sports, can we add a little bit here and there? It's sort of an indication of validation that, OK, that's sort of run its course. Now the way to really generate meaningful revenues in the taxes for the state is through iCasino legalization.
You have the financial pressure, number one. Number two, I would argue that you didn't have this existence as widely known as you have today of these sort of social sweepstakes casinos that are live and operating in every state nearly. A bunch of states are starting to write cease-and-desist letters. These are kind of loopholes that allow some companies to try to unlicense, unregulated, untaxed, operate essentially online casino sites. In these states, when we talk to governors or legislators or lobbyists, it's like, hey, online casino is already legal in your state with zero benefit. You're not generating taxes. You're not protecting your consumers. They're targeting, in many cases, underage people. It's a real problem. You already have it here. Why isn't it well regulated and create a framework where you tax it and protect your consumers?
I think it's a very compelling argument that's existing now that's much more visible than it was in the past. Those two things are very powerful. The third thing is that you have a large number of online or casino groups that have identified that iGaming, online gaming, is complementary to land-based. I mean, you've had Caesars and MGM and Hard Rock, very large established successful land-based companies operating in New Jersey for many, many years now, seeing the benefits iGaming has to complement land-based. I think as you start to see more and more casinos that have been active in this industry recognize and appreciate the value, and the data is showing once again that the states make more money, period, from online gaming legalization.
That momentum, and I think the alignment of the industry stakeholders on our competitors and ourselves to focus on this as a priority, is something that's also going to drive results because arguably in the past, there was a lot more focus on sports, sports, sports. I think as more fiscal pressures are there for companies in our industry to continue to grow their profits, everyone's recognizing how important iGaming is in that process. There's a lot more effort and alignment among industry peers to work together to legalize online casino.
Got it. It makes sense. Is the headwind then, does it come from some of the trade unions? I know in New York, it seems like the hotel union, maybe they're a little more in the governor's ear. In Illinois, is it the VGT, like the video game terminals you hear about, their unions? It seems like there's some other specialty interest groups you guys are competing against because, you know, on the surface, it seems like a no-brainer, right? New York's facing a massive deficit again. Might as well legalize iGaming. Can you just talk about it as more of the unions you're dealing with?
There's always protectionism. Every state has their own interest groups that have their own interest in having things maybe stay the same the way they are, not have online gaming. Arguably, a large number of the land-based folks who are supporting it are just protectionists in general. It would be like, you know, Walmart, say, and Amazon can't operate in your state because we want Walmart to be the sole source of selling products. Ultimately, the consumers speak and the consumers want these extra services. I think that's an example where ultimately I think that won't be the winning argument because it rarely is. I think every state has their own unique interest. You're right. In New York, there's unions that are concerned about online casino impact from the land-based, although you will see in these markets that land-based revenues stay the same. They don't drop.
In many cases, they go up a little bit. You haven't seen a loss of jobs or loss of revenue from online. If only it adds, like I said, to the overall pie of revenues the state generates. Certainly, I think each state has its own unique set of players and circumstances. Each one has to be really focused on a case-by-case basis. I think you identified a couple examples of things that have been real and are opportunities for the industry to come together and say, how are we going to address this?
Got it. I don't want to put you on the spot. Are there any states you're a little more bullish on over the next 18 months to 24 months we should be paying attention to?
Yeah, I don't think I would share it too much more. I think whenever I've sort of thought maybe something that hasn't really materialized, and to be honest, it's taking bets on this is hard. As a sports fan, I wouldn't take bets on this. I just think you have to look at the states that have a larger deficit and ones that haven't legalized online casino. Obviously, ones that have sports betting are probably easier because you already have a regulatory framework set up. You already have all the licensed entities set up. You already have the executives licensed. It's really just adding a server, which could be done, servers, which could be done very quickly and efficiently. I think those are really great opportunities. I think states that are really heavy in the Medicaid situation are going to really, you know, there's no way around it.
You have to find incremental sources of revenue, and where it's sitting on the shelf is a very convenient, easy, reliable, consistent way of doing that. I think those are the states I would maybe focus more on.
Got it. You mentioned Alberta is opening up potentially sometime next year. I think Canada is just a little bit of a different beast because you do have some gray market operators already operating there in certain provinces. How do you sort of think about the investment in going into a province like Alberta? I think some of the larger sports betting first companies have put some pretty large numbers on what they're willing to spend in Alberta. Can you just talk about your strategy there with large capitalized competitors and the gray market operators as well?
I think everything you just described is a similar thing that was described for Ontario before we entered that market a couple of years ago. We've done really, really well in Ontario. I don't know, perhaps, Kyle, you want to share a couple of thoughts. For example, we were profitable within the first four quarters of launching there, which has been pretty standard for us in markets like casinos. I think we're excited for Alberta. I think we've always been competing with companies that have big budgets, but we've seen to do extremely well. We continue to carve out our fair share and do it in a profitable, smart way. I don't know, Kyle, maybe you have something else you'd want to add about.
Yeah, and I think you made all the right points. I mean, we have consistently, when we launch iCasino markets in North America, we've been profitable by the fourth quarter of operations. We'll make the appropriate investment. We haven't said exactly what that'll be, and we'll figure that out as we get closer. It'll be commensurate with the opportunities for sure. You're right, Jed, that there's likely to be a little more competition because of the gray market that exists there, just like it did in Ontario. When you look at Ontario, we've done quite well there given the investments we've made. Actually, this past quarter, it grew at 25% plus. That was the fastest growth we've had in a long time in Ontario. A lot of opportunity up in Canada for sure for us.
Got it. Before I get over to Latin America, can you talk about the sports strategy? What do you think about Missouri? Where are you in sports betting? You've done a nice job with the podcast. I know you have Mike Francesa on the platform. Can you talk about how sports fits into the strategy?
Yeah, so I'd like to like poker. It's important to have sports as a product that is part of the mix. As I referenced earlier, a lot of states don't allow online casinos. You have sports that are allowed, and some of those states are going to add iCasino. Being in those markets with a presence is important, I think, from an early start opportunity and cross-sell from the existing sportsbook players to casino, which we know is a proven method of acquisition of new customers. Our quality of our product is continuing to improve. We have teams dedicated to that. We keep launching all kinds of innovations in that marketplace. The most recent one was something called Prop Packs, which is really exciting. It kind of brings the fun of collecting baseball card packs and cards from baseball packs.
Players are ripping cards when they make a sportsbook bet with us on a single-game parlay. They're getting these cards, let's say, in the basketball. If you get a LeBron James card, and you follow how LeBron James does in the game you bet on, if he performs over 10 points, you win a small prize. 20 points, you get a larger prize. If he scores 50 points in a game that you have his card for, you're going to earn, you know, win $10,000. I think we've created really fun dynamics and engaging tools that are differentiated. A lot of the things that we've done well in casino, we've leveraged and applied properly to the sportsbook area to create some differentiation.
At the end of the day, the best value we're giving back to customers because they're making the same general bet with us on the single-game parlay as you make anywhere else. With us, you're not only getting that parlay bet down, but you're getting this extra chance to win through a fun Prop Pack mechanic that's unique for us. I think that those kind of mechanics, we have those football squares ones, and we apply that to basketball, where you have a lottery mechanic. It's really fun and exciting. It differentiates our user experience. I think we continue to grow nicely. Listen, we grew, you know, we grew, was it 15%? 15% sportsbook last year- over- year, last quarter.
We've had a lot of nice growth over the last year or two in sports, despite, as Kyle referenced earlier, not investing a whole lot in the sports category, which is an indication that the product's good and the service is great that we offer. We think that's a very important part of our business. It isn't the engine that's going to generate the profits that we are counting on and that we've been delivering the last couple of years. Improvements in the EBITDA and the record EBITDA we've been hitting quarter after quarter have really been driven by casino first. We know where our engine is, and we're focusing on making sure we develop unique product experiences first that drive the differentiation in casino because we know that's going to end up being the thing that matters most for us.
Yeah, I mean, I would just add there, you know, Rich is right about the profitability engine for sure. Sports is profitable for us in North America. It's a good business for us to be in. I think the last thing I would add, you know, you're going to shift to Latin America. It coincides well with that. We've got a great product that's been developed to compete really well in North America, although it's harder with the brands and the databases that we compete against. We take that same great product and put that in Latin America, and it's a super competitive product. It's a huge part of our business, certainly in Colombia. It's important for us overall for the business. No question about it.
Got it. Just shifting to Latin America, hard to handicap what's going on with Colombia with value-added tax. As we kind of look and you get through this year, whether or not that tax stays in place, it assumes that the comps improve a lot because even if it stays in place, you're now comping that structural change from last year. Is that the right way investors should be looking at it? How should we be thinking about Colombia?
Yeah, so maybe for those that haven't been as close to it, there is this temporary value-added tax that's in place. It's on deposits, 19%. The way we and the rest of the industry have responded is by making up that tax to the players through extra bonusing. That's had a real headwind on our net revenue. Our gross gaming revenue, which includes the losses of the extra bonusing money, but GGR has been growing well over 50% in the first half of the year, which means that headwind on revenue is something in that range and obviously impacts EBITDA fairly dramatically. Every sign that we see and our expectation is that it does go away as of the end of this year, as it's been decreed, and that there won't be a tax like this in place next year. That's what our guidance assumes as well for 2025.
To your point, if that were still in place for some reason, the comps would get easier, assuming we're still growing GGR at a nice clip, which we would expect to be doing. I think the other piece of it is if there's indications to the industry that for some reason there is some sort of tax in 2026, I think the industry is likely to respond a little differently in terms of the way they're doing the bonusing. We'll see how that plays out and how we would respond competitively and what's going to be best for our customers, but also for us to run a profitable business.
I think what.
Just one quick thing on South America for next year is that just a reminder as to World Cup here. It's really exciting for our markets. We're operating in, as you know, in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, large population markets that have good soccer teams. We're going to be in the same time zone next year as the World Cup is, which makes betting on it, I think, even more appealing and attractive to a wider audience. I think it's going to be an exciting year of growth for the industry because of the World Cup. For us, sports does very well for us in Latin America. We're excited for that opportunity to kind of grow the player base next year as part of that World Cup year.
Are you top two, top three player in Colombia? I know you're expanding your Mexican market share. Can you give us a lay of the land on the key countries you're operating there?
Sure, yeah. In Colombia, we're number two out of about 18 to 20 competitors typically. We've grown consistently from day one, really, I think, surprised the industry because there's really been no one else other than us who's been able to emerge out of the rest of the groups to kind of gain market share in the two existing market leaders that owned about 90% of the market together when we started. We've now captured one of them in terms of market share. We're continuing to perform extremely well in that market. In Mexico, which is a much larger market opportunity long term than even Colombia is, given the triple size of the population, we keep growing share as well there. We entered that a couple of years ago. It took some time to kind of localize and customize the experience.
We're now at the top seven in that market out of probably, I forgot how many we listed as competitors.
Yeah, it approaches 50 operators, our brands.
Yeah, something I was going to say, 48, 50. We're right there near the merging at the top and hope to get the top five at some point soon. We have Peru, which is a market that is the newest for us. We're in the process, like we were in Mexico for a while, just localizing, adding the right methods, pay for payments, right for the user flows, all the little things that aren't that exciting to talk about but are critical for success. We have that. We know what we need to do. We've done it before. We're in the process of doing it again.
We're coming up to the last couple of minutes here. Just on the guidance, Kyle, I mean, you've been a very good beat-and-raise story for a while now. I think the guidance implies somewhat of a little bit of a back-half deceleration. Is that more conservatism or is that something we should be looking at? Can you talk about the back-half guidance on what you said on your Q2 call?
Sure. I'll start by agreeing with you that I think we've been fortunate to be able to beat and raise pretty consistently. Obviously, we're always hoping to be able to achieve that in the next quarter and following quarters. I think when you think about the back half versus the first half in terms of growth, we did lap Delaware at the beginning of this year. It is logical that the growth rate should slow over time. We're not going to grow at 70%, 80% in perpetuity. I think when you look at Colombia, we had a real strong back half in Colombia last year, so the comp is a little tougher. We've still got the value-added tax in place, as you know. That provides a little bit of extra variability.
Sequentially, Q2, we had a little bit of help from favorable sports outcomes, probably helped us by $5 million in the U.S., something like that. To your point about conservatism, and back to the beginning of the call, we're operating in all these markets for iCasino that are growing so fast and continue to outpace everybody's expectations, probably including our own for the industry growth. If we continue to see growth like that, like we did in the first half of the year, and we get our fair share, which we would expect to do, then I think there's probably upside in there because we're just not building in 25%, 30% + growth in those markets for the remainder of the year.
Got it. Just the final question, do you think there's anything in the Rush Street story that you think investors are misinterpreting or anything important we didn't cover in this discussion?
I think the quality of our user experience is just hard to understand as an investor on the casino side because very few investors live in the states where we operate. Even if you live in a state where we operate, you have to play decent amounts to really appreciate all the things that we do. Many things that we do on the product we don't do for a new customer. We kind of wait for the moment to deliver an experience to a customer that we think is likely to be a more valuable customer for us in the future. I think it's just the concept that a lot of companies or investors don't understand, how if so many casino games are just plugging, casinos just plugging games from third parties, like I said earlier, that seems pretty mundane, pretty basic.
What are we doing that's so different and creating that loyalty that we're experiencing for our customers? Don't forget, when it's a sport, you're looking on the field of the play and the court to see the results. There's a trust there already, you don't have to worry about it. It's why you trust the results. You see them with your own eyes. You know what the results are. Casino is a trust issue. Players think that the operator is out to get them, right? How do we do little things like a one-time playthrough requirement? When players get a bonus from us, once they bet it once, it's theirs to take. Whereas a lot of our peers will make a player recycle that same bet 10x before they can withdraw it. You can imagine how a consumer feels when they're having to go through it multiple times.
I think there's a wide range of tools that we have built over many years that are delivering this experience that truly makes an impact on the customer, where we earn their trust and then we earn their loyalty from engagement of tools that we build that others don't offer. I think that's underappreciated because a lot of investors aren't that close to the product and don't understand really why someone could build a differentiated experience when so much of the intellectual property that is being used is from the same suppliers. Like I said at the beginning, we have unique differentiated intellectual property that we have built over many years. Every couple of months, we're building new features, new tools, things that are just far beyond what you see in other sites. I think that's the secret of our success. I think that's underappreciated often by investors.
I think it's starting to change. I think the more focus that has been on iCasino and the growth here has got more investors looking more closely at the iCasino category. Maybe those that are looking closer are starting to appreciate those nuances that we do that really make a difference for the player-first mindset that we have. I don't know if there's anything on the financial side, Kyle, that you would add or anything else.
No, I think that's a great summary. I think people, investors, trust our story and understand the consistency of the iCasino business and the continued leverage that we're going to be able to get throughout the entire financial statement.
Richard, Kyle, thanks for joining us. You know, very interesting story and pretty impressive what you've built. Looking forward to seeing what's next. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today.
Thanks, Chad.
Thank you.