Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Jacques Cornet with ICR. Next up, we have Rush Street Interactive. And with us from Rush Street is Kyle Sauers. He's the President and Chief Financial Officer. RSI operates in the online casino and online sportsbook world under their consumer brands BetRivers, RushBet, and PlaySugarHouse. I think over the last decade, many peers have spent or invested billions of dollars in chasing or working after market share in sportsbook. RSI has taken a fundamentally different approach. It's one that I've always thought of as relatively simple and elegant. They go with online casino first. And they do it in a manner that's very customer-focused. They've been very selective in terms of where they invest their capital, balancing growth and profitability. Kyle has been integral to that journey. And today, he'll give us an update as to where things stand, where they're going.
Kyle, welcome back. I'll let you start with anything you'd want to add or a brief overview.
Yeah, maybe just a couple of minutes on a little more about the business for those who aren't as familiar with us. Jacques mentioned we do focus on online casino first. Online sports is an important part of our business as well. We think about it from a revenue mix perspective. We're about 70% online casino, 30% online sports. Geographically, we're about 85% in North America, 15% in Latin America. That product mix actually skews more towards online casino in North America and more towards sports betting in LATAM. I think one of the beauties of our business is, as much as this industry has grown, for online casino in North America, it's still only roughly 13% of the population that has access to online casino. So there's a big and long opportunity ahead of us as more states legalize over time.
Jacques mentioned that we've been more modest with the way we've spent and grown and spent on player acquisition. Despite that, we've outpunched our weight pretty significantly when you think about the brand awareness of the brands we have, databases we've started with against some really solid competition that puts us in the top five of players in North America. So for 2025, midpoint of our guidance ended up around a little over $1.1 billion in revenue and $150 million in Adjusted EBITDA. And 2026 will be very, very solid growth on top of that. So maybe I'll stop there, and we can dig into some questions.
Yeah, let's start with, I guess, the 85%, the North America piece. I think you've been very consistent throughout your time as a public company building share there, even into Q4. Not to get ahead of you, but if you look at the publicly released data from the states, there's. I'll take Michigan, for example. Michigan October and November revenue for the market is up 18%. They also disclosed by brand, your revenues seem to be up 50%. So clearly, as you said, outpunching your weight. This has been a theme consistent, I think, over the last couple of years. I know it's early. You haven't reported fourth quarter yet, but can you comment on the trends? How do you do it, and how do you sustain it?
Yeah, so maybe I'll start a little generically and then comment on the Q3 and how that momentum carried us into Q4 and some of the data that you're talking about. So obviously, you have to have a fantastic product. And we're very confident in the product that we've built and what we put in front of customers. We can talk more about technology later. But you've got to get people to show up, right? And as I mentioned, we do spend more modestly on marketing. But Q2 was an all-time record for us in first-time depositors, which is how we measure new customers that are actually putting money on the platform, not just registering. And then in Q3, we beat that record once again. What's notable about that is those sorts of records usually happen when you have new markets launching, and there's all kinds of new activity.
This is because of the success that our team has had in finding ways to attract new customers. On top of that, the cost to acquire those players has continued to go down. So in those record quarters, the cost to acquire players has gone down. So then along with that, as I mentioned, you've got to have a great product. You've got to keep people sticking around. You need to reactivate people who haven't been on the platform in a while. And that translates into what we refer to as our monthly active users. So those are users that are on the platform who have made a real money bet, not just something that's a bonus dollar. And those numbers have been impressive as well. So in Q3, our monthly active users in North America were up, I think it was 34%.
But then notably, in those markets that have online casino, which is where we are spending more of our time and effort and certainly our marketing dollars, that was up 46% year- over- year. So this is, again, no new market launches. This is us executing on bringing in new players and keeping them on the platform. And certainly far outpaces what you see from our peers in the industry. So very, very, very proud of that. No surprise that those monthly active user trends generally translate into solid revenue. And we had in the third quarter in all of the big markets that we would talk about, Michigan, Ontario, New Jersey, West Virginia, Delaware, where we're the sole operator, we had either our fastest or second fastest month of growth in the last three to four years in any one of those markets.
There's just a lot of really good trends happening. And then move into fourth quarter. And in our industry, many of the states report data monthly about each operator, certainly about the market itself. And as you mentioned, Michigan up roughly 50% October, November. New Jersey was in the 20% range again for us. Ontario doesn't release by operator, but that market was up over 20%. Once again, West Virginia, super strong for us in October and November. And then Pennsylvania, where we've commented that we don't invest as much in marketing because the margins are lower in that market. We actually grew again in the low teens, which is a very solid rate compared to where we've been over the last couple of years. So just a lot of really good things happening, a lot of things to be excited about, the trends heading into 2026.
A lot of things in terms of the organic growth, existing markets. How do you, if we stay in North America, what do you see as the opportunity for new markets to sort of add fuel to that growth?
Yeah, so there's a couple of things that are more. I'll call more concrete. And then there would be new legislation. So one that everyone in our industry has been talking about for a little while now is Alberta, north of the border here. So Ontario went live a few years ago. And it's been a great success story. And Alberta has legalized online casino and online sports. They are going through the process of finalizing regulations and putting together launch plans, putting together the regulatory bodies. So that's still a quarter or two away. But that'll be a nice catalyst for growth for us and the industry. Something that happened just last week. The state of Maine approved online casino. So that's a market that would fit really, really well for us, where we could see a lot of success, potentially partnering with a tribe there.
We've been very successful in other markets. Michigan's an example, West Virginia. I'll keep naming these, but where we've had really, really solid success with iCasino, with a very differentiated product and a great partner for tribes where we haven't lobbied against them like some others have in certain markets. Probably a good time to mention Delaware, where we're actually into our third year now, and in October and November, the public data still had us growing over 60% year over year. There was a previous operator there that was the sole operator in that state, and we're now at 9x what their biggest quarter ever was, so it says a lot about our technology and our ability to operate, so we'd love to bring that to Maine would be a great opportunity, and then following that, there's always discussion in our industry about new legalization of new states.
There's quite a few states that are always on the list, some of which have dropped bills already this year. The ones that people talk about are Virginia, New York, Illinois, Maryland, Indiana, all which would be really, really large opportunities. A few of those, notably Virginia, Illinois, New York, we have a land-based casino partner that would provide us additional opportunity, just some brand awareness and potentially database access. So that could be really exciting for us. So we don't need all of them to happen to have a lot of success. And the good news is all of the online casino markets that we're in today are still growing more than 20% a year, some of them eight years post-launch. So a lot of good things happening there.
And just shifting within North America, looking at the competitive environment, you mentioned new states and Maine and obviously competition to move into any new states. There's been lots of news over the last year or so of the evolution of these prediction markets. And prediction markets, as regulated as financial instruments under the CFTC, a distinct difference from where the industry has been regulated at the state level through gaming regulators. Would be curious on your thoughts around prediction markets. Are they an opportunity? Are they a threat? Are they noise? How do you see the competitive environment changing?
Yeah, so it's a super interesting topic. And it's interesting to, in some respects, kind of watch from the sidelines for us because there's a lot of noise around it. There's a ton of money coming in from different directions. There are peers of ours who have announced and launched prediction markets in this space for sports in the states where they do not have legalized online sports. The reality is for us, it is more noise because the impact that it has is on those states that haven't legalized sports betting yet. That's where the prediction markets are having success and having some penetration. And we haven't been shy about the fact that we've passed on several new online sports, but only markets. The economics for the competitive landscape was not attractive enough for us.
And that's likely to be still a very informed decision that we'll make when new sports states get legalized. Certainly, if there's iCasino, we're all in. But the reality is it just isn't impacting us as much. And it's probably, if anything, it's distracting others from spending time there. Having said that, we are paying attention to it and staying very close to it and making sure that if there was an opportunity for us to participate in some way, that we would do that. But we're not going to be a leader in sports prediction markets here in the U.S.
Makes sense. Shifting gears, let's go to Latin America. And we'll start with Colombia. Colombia, obviously, has been a significant market. I think the tax situation in 2025 was a headwind. There's news out over the last couple of months about some changes. Want to comment on where it's been and what some of the changes could be based on what's out there publicly for 2026?
Yeah, for sure. So Colombia has been a fantastic market for us for many years now. And even with the headwinds in 2025, it again was a really big grower for us in terms of player count, gross gaming revenue. For those that haven't followed our story, early in 2025, the president in Colombia issued an emergency decree, issued some follow-on tax decrees on top of that. And one of them was on our industry. And it was a 19% tax on deposits. So every time a player would deposit, that player would get taxed 19%. What we and the other industry leaders did in response to that was issue bonus dollars to those players to make up for that tax.
The kind of penalizing thing about that structure is in our industry, you're often depositing three to four times before a dollar, not before a dollar revenue is generated, but for every dollar of revenue that's generated, dollars get deposited three to four times because people are depositing, playing, withdrawing, redepositing, so that 19% was cycling through multiple times in terms of what we had to bonus. Very painful for us, reduced revenue, reduced profitability, but we grew the player base. We grew the top line gross gaming revenue that translates into net revenue after the bonusing. Fast forward, that decree lasted through the end of the year, and as we expected, it went away. The president issued a new emergency, this one an economic emergency, near the end of the year, and again, our industry and others were affected by that.
There's a new tax in place, which is a 19% VAT on revenue. So far, better for us, incrementally positive, does not impact revenue, and is far better for us from a profitability standpoint. And when we get to our earnings call in February, we'll certainly talk about the financial impacts of that. There is a real chance that that tax won't last through 2026, although that's the intention of the current president. There is an election this summer. So depending on the outcome of that election, the tax could go away. And there's also a constitutional review of this emergency decree, which many consultants and lawyers in Colombia believe may not withstand the court's scrutiny because the economic issue is really in large part driven by the presidential decisions. So it's a great opportunity for us.
We're still seeing fantastic growth in GGR and player count here in the fourth quarter and into 2026. So a big growth opportunity for us. I'll transition real quick to Mexico, if that's OK.
Sure. That was going to be my next question.
OK, go for it.
Lead you.
So, Mexico, we launched a couple of years ago. Colombia is closer to six and seven years old, depending on the product. But in Mexico, we launched a few years ago. And it's really started to accelerate nicely. The last couple of quarters, we grew over 100% year- over- year. Q4 has been another fantastic quarter for us in Mexico. We're really hitting our stride with marketing, with the product and the player experience, all of the payment methods to make it easy for players to get money on and off the platform. And then we've had a little bit of a benefit here since, I think it was mid-December. I'm trying to remember exactly the date. But two of our larger competitors actually had to shut down or still shut down because the casino partner they had their license through, their casinos were shut down.
So that's been a nice little benefit for us where we've been able to put a little marketing dollars to work and take advantage of that situation.
I want to give the audience a chance to ask a question. Are there any questions from the audience for Kyle? All right. I'm going to continue.
I don't know if that means the answer is that good.
Yes. So just staying in Latin America, obviously, there's other opportunity. We talked about opportunity in North America. What are some of the opportunities, and how do you assess those opportunities in the Latin American world?
Yeah, so there's actually quite a few. The big one that people have talked about over the last couple of years is Brazil, obviously the largest market in LATAM. Brazil went legal at the beginning of 2025. It was a big event. It was a very robust gray market prior to that. But it brought in a lot of new legal operators, obviously put in a regulatory framework and taxation. But it's proven to be a very large market. At the time, we decided to wait and see. It felt a lot like online sports betting in 2021 in the U.S. in terms of the amount of money being put to work, what people were asking for to buy their businesses. So we're staying patient there. But that's still a market we're very excited about and continue to look at. And then there's several other smaller markets.
I didn't mention it, but we launched in Peru not too long ago as well, and while still very small, it's growing really, really quickly. That'll start to be a little bit more impactful in 2026, and we'll be putting more marketing dollars to work during this year because things are really in place and clicking well now.
So, stepping back, just looking at the entire portfolio, and you've talked a couple of times and mentioned technology as a big driver for some of the outperformance and your success over the years. Can you talk a little bit more about what it is and what you do different with respect to the technology and how you use it versus, say, your peers?
Yeah, sure. So it's one of the challenges we have with investors because such a small portion of the population actually have access to online casino. Most have access to online sports. Or at least when they travel, they can try it out or they'll talk to people who are using it. But that's less so with online casino. So I think the things that we do differently, actually, maybe I'll start with what's similar from one platform to the next. So we're all using similar or the same games from the game suppliers who are providing slots and table games for a digital experience.
It's obviously very important to make sure that you are the recommendation engines and what you're putting in front of people and when you're putting it in front of them, that that's going to delight them and it's going to get them excited about spending their time on your platform. But where we go a step further is all of the promotional games and promotional engines alongside that. So we are renting and paying a rev share for all the slots that we provide on the platform. But beyond that, we have all of these free-to-play games and ways for people to win money, ways for them to take a break from real money gaming, win extra prizes. We're the only ones that have community chat, the only ones with online slot tournaments. We've got bingo games and wheel spins. We'll have our summer carnival.
We've got other promotional collection games, and so it's ways for people to be entertained, which is exactly what they're there to do, is spend time, be delighted, be surprised. We have characters that come across the screen when you're having a string of bad luck. These are all math model games, and they all work out in the end, but that doesn't mean they're going to work out perfectly for each player at each given moment, so to make them feel better about their experience, make sure they're feeling like they get good value for their entertainment dollar is super important, and that's where we've focused our time. We've spent a lot of time and effort building out a great sports platform.
But more of our effort, more of our DNA, the legacy of much of our technology leadership and our CEO comes from the slots and online gaming industry, not necessarily from sports. And so we just think about the experience in a bit different way. And if you look at the average revenue per monthly active user that we generate from our players in the range of $350-$400, that is two to three times what our competitors report. So I think that says a lot about how much of the share of wallet that our players spend with us and the amount of time they want to spend on our platform. And that's because of the technology. There's one question.
Sure. We have one question.
How many states do you have licenses in, and how many states provide licenses at this point in time?
In online casino, all of the competitive states, except for Connecticut, that has two iCasino licenses through Tribes, and we're not there. We're not in Rhode Island. We are in Delaware as the sole operator. Then the other states that are legal and live today are Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. Yep.
So, people are, hypothetically, some of your players have traveled. If they go to the states where you've got licenses in, you can play.
Absolutely. Yeah, and then we're in much more states for sports, but for sure, when players travel around, they can play in other markets. As long as you sign up and you're a U.S. citizen, you can play in any of those markets that are live, or we have Delaware is actually a pretty good example where we see a lot of traffic in Delaware playing online casino in the summer months for vacationers who don't actually live in Delaware. It's interesting. People will often ask us about the seasonality, so sports has seasonality around the sports calendars, right? Casino has some of that seasonality in travel months, but it also has seasonality around the time of year when people kind of hunker down, and it's interesting that most of the states that have online casino also get some snow and weather where people don't want to be outside.
That can be good for engagement as well.
COVID had a big thing as well because people kind of want to start playing at night. And you wake up late, so I suppose it makes a difference as well.
COVID was actually a pretty big driver for one, because land-based casinos were shut down or were very limited. And one of the issues was there was only a couple of states that had online casino legalized at that time. But it was a very good catalyst for new player activations.
Then my other question is, in terms of when you open up a new state, how long does it take you to get to a break-even? How many users, if you take your average revenue per user is $300-$400, how many users do you need in each state to break-even?
Yeah, that's a great question and a leading one that I like. For online casino markets, every online casino market that we've launched in North America, we've been profitable in the fourth quarter of operation. So it doesn't mean we've gotten all of our investment back. But absolutely, by six quarters or so, we've gotten all of our investment back. And most of those market launches were before we've gotten even far more efficient with our marketing spend. Our cost to acquire players today is half of what it was three years ago or so. So we're very excited about new market launches and what we can accomplish.
All right. We are at time. So Kyle, thank you. Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.