Great. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. My name is Bernie McTernan. I'm the internet analyst here at Needham & Company. My pleasure to be joined this morning by the team at Rush Street. We have Richard Schwartz, CEO, and Kyle Sauers, CFO. Thank you both so much for joining us.
Thanks, Bernie.
Thanks, Bernie.
A lot's happened in the last year. Really maybe just wanted to start, what do you think has been, You know, maybe catch investors up in terms of what's been the most impactful to the story?
Yeah, I would say that our consistency and our stability as a digital leader, it's been something that's really caught attention in the investor community. We're now, you know, four years of consistency of executing on our goals of expect financial objectives. Gaining market share in North America iCasino, despite that being a hotly contested market with everyone focusing a lot more energy on that. Us still continuing to outperform, setting records in terms of new volumes and new customers at record low prices for us. Having success acquiring customers when others are, like, struggling. Of course delivering the revenues per active user at the highest rates in the industry.
North America just goes from strength to strength, then we have the Latin American business also, which has continued to grow at extremely fast rate, faster than I think most people expected. We've now seen that not only can we have and continue to grow as fast as we have in a market like Colombia, but other markets we venture, like Mexico, are also having similar growth profiles and are ahead of where we were at the same time years ago with Colombia. There's a lot of optimism about our path to continue to grow all parts of our business.
Yeah. No, that's great. Start by focusing on the U.S., record First-Time Depositors in the first quarter. you know, I'm assuming it's a lot of different things, stacking up on top of each other, but what's working in particular?
Yeah, maybe I'll jump in, Richard. I think, you're right. It is everything. We've gotten asked the same question on the earnings call the last several quarters. Like, is there some magic bullet or one thing that you've gotten access to or started doing differently? The reality is it's all kinds of things. Richard can talk plenty about the differentiated user experience and retention and how we keep people around and all the promotional tools we use that we think are very unique. The reality is we're filling the top of the funnel faster than we ever have.
We've had record First-Time Depositors for many quarters in a row now, that's in an environment where we haven't launched any new markets, which is usually when you see all of the incremental player ads at a faster pace. We're doing so at record cost. By record, I mean, the lowest they've been to acquire players. We've actually been starting to spend more in marketing recently than we previously had, and kind of re-accelerating there because we see the value to be so good, both the value of the acquisition, but then the value of the players that we're bringing on.
I think as you mentioned, you know, our player growth rate in iCasino markets being over 50% for a few quarters in a row here, being at very high levels, and expectations for us to see really strong continued growth in player count. That's just such a good leading indicator for what's to come, and I think the Q1 results from revenue beat was an example of how those players drive revenue for us over time.
Yeah. There's clearly a ton of momentum in the business. You know, investors are in amazement in terms of, like, how fast you're growing U.S. MAUs right now. Was there any leading indicator that gave you insight that you would be able to grow? I mean, you said North America iCasino MAU is growing over 50%. Like, what was the leading indicator there that gave you insight that this could be possible?
Yeah, I mean, I think, so, first of all, I think you know us well enough that we're not gonna get on a call and pound our chest and say, "This is gonna continue at these fast rates for forever." We have so much opportunity because there are so many players out there who just have never heard of BetRivers or have never tried us. We have that advantage. I think when I'm saying leading indicator, I'm really more referring to the growth in our players, very rapidly, which in the near term actually decreases the average value of the player because you're diluting it so quickly, that should reverse course over time.
I think the indicators are what we've been doing with reactivations, what we've been doing with new ads, and the value of the players that are coming onto the platform today being still very, very solid. That we've been pretty dynamic and iterative with how much we are spending on marketing and which channels we spend it in. Because when we see things working, we can generally adjust those things pretty quickly and put more to where good things are happening. I think that's been part of the excitement over the last year or so, is that we're seeing places where we can win more players, and we're putting more dollars to it.
We are remaining pretty flexible on that because it's fairly obvious when we get on a quarterly call if we've spent our money well or not, based on what's happening with new players coming onto the platform and the active players that we keep coming back.
Yeah. No, makes a lot of sense. Maybe from, like, a modeling standpoint, obviously we're in this period now where we're adding so many First-Time Depositors, it's weighing on ARPU. How should we think about, you know, as you're thinking about revenue growth in the future, thinking about that balance of continuing to add MAUs, but then also ARPU as well?
Yeah, it's interesting. If we went back a year ago, I firmly would've said, you know, player count's gonna be the bigger driver, not as much from the average player value. I think to the extent we're able to grow players at a really significant rate relative to the market like we have been, that's gonna continue to be true. I mean, if we're growing players at 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, the revenue growth is gonna come from that. There will be a point in time, at some point, no new markets launching, in that scenario, player growth will slow at some point. I think that's when you see the player values start to contribute more to the revenue growth.
We're very confident that as that player growth slows down some point in the future, that the player values are gonna come back. 'Cause you just have so much bonusing early on. You have players who are only around for a part of the new month and aren't contributing as much. It takes a while for retention to build with new players. So all of those should move us towards, you know, continued solid growth. We're very, very optimistic about the growth opportunity in North America even without new market, launches.
Yeah. Maybe talking about new market launches, the I think the most recent one, Delaware. How's Delaware going? Is it still a significant contributor to growth?
It is. I think the latest state data that's been out has shown Delaware growing at 50%-60% year-over-year. There's some point where that's going to slow down. We continue to have really nice player acquisition there. Player retention is strong. Obviously, as the only operator on three different partner brands or co-partner brands, we don't have the competition there that we need to deal with. I think there's a lot of growth left there. I think when we launched Delaware or shortly thereafter, we talked about it being at some point a potentially $300 million GGR opportunity. We're not there yet, but we've been getting there pretty quickly.
Maybe there's a chance we've underestimated the longer term opportunity in that market.
Got it. Want to make sure we hit on, you know, LTV to CACs and there's, you know, there's a lot of maybe increased spending on the online sports betting side of the industry. I mean, Kalshi just raised $1 billion. Where are you seeing CACs trending? Is this what's going on in prediction markets impacting maybe your CACs where you're traditionally spending on, you know, iGaming first customers?
Yeah, it's a good question, and I think there's We've had a few of our peers talk about some pressure around, you know, marketing that's centered around sporting events, right? That just In North America, that just isn't where we are putting a lot of capital to work. You know, most of our marketing spend is going into markets that include iCasino. It's generally iCasino-led. I think we are just in different places going after generally different audiences. We all work to cross-sell, not the prediction market folks, but the traditional operators. We're all working to cross-sell after we bring players onto the platform. We I mean, we had our lowest CACs that we've had since going public, this last quarter again in North America.
We're simply not seeing pressure from that, at least today.
Therefore, if CACs are you know, record low, your LTV to CAC must be through the roof.
It's very solid. You could certainly I mean, we've been spending more on marketing, and to the extent it's working, we're gonna continue to keep spending more 'cause the values are very strong. You know, it may have been one of your Firesides or somewhere else, but I recall, you know, a year ago talking about how much our CACs have come down and how we felt like they were probably somewhat industry-leading. Then we get a year later and they're far lower than they were. That's what our marketing team said they'd be able to do. We don't like to build that level of optimism into our guides.
Yeah. No, understood. Wanted to transition over to prediction markets. Seems like we can't have an investor conversation or a conversation with investors on the online sports betting industry without talking about prediction markets right now. How do you You know, is this a competitive threat to RSI? Just how do you view this, you know, how do you view this kind of increased, you know, new players in the market?
Yeah. Hey, as a casino-first Operator, you know, we're staying extremely focused on what matters to us, which is the casino market space. As you see in Kalshi and Robinhood.
Others in that coalition, the leaders in prediction came out recently and said, "Hey, casinos are not something they're gonna focus on. It's not off the table. It doesn't have the same legal justification as trading on sports markets." As others are distracted and focusing on that part of their business and having to spend a huge amounts of money and executive attention on that, we're focusing on executing and innovating further in the casino-first space. Frankly, it's given us a great chance to legalize online casino in some jurisdictions that are at risk of losing, in their perception, some of the revenues from sports betting and having less certainty on the future of that revenue stream as a tax stream. It's giving us a chance to go in there and say, "Hey, it's a disruptive moment in time.
Let's try to legalize online casino at accelerated rates. I think that's actually gonna be helpful for us. We feel really good about the fact that others are having to have higher costs to acquire customers, as you heard Kyle Sauers mention from marketing, having a lot of others distracted onto sports, you know, the category, while we are just continuing to be executing on the things that matter most. You know, I think we have a structural advantage over others and a product advantage in that we're focusing on iCasino, which is the most attractive segment of online gaming. You know, in states like Pennsylvania, where you have both sports and casino, you know, 80%+ of the taxes are coming from casino. It's a larger market.
Slot audience alone is larger than sports betting. Everyone's spending all their money and time on sports, and we're happy to have them do that so we can continue focusing on what matters and continuing to differentiate our experience to continue to advance the reasons why players stay loyal with us, which ultimately is the most important thing, is the player finds us, we need to keep them with us. How do you do that? You treat them well. You offer them experiences that are fun, that are unique, and that they feel like you're there being thoughtful with them and treating them well. You have that retention that comes from that. I think that's just the opportunity for us, which we're taking advantage of right now.
No, that only saw sense. I certainly want to touch on regulation, just sticking on prediction markets for one more second. What would get you to launch your own prediction market service, or is that just off the table?
I think we're always monitoring the situation. There's nothing that's happened in the last two years in this space that we weren't aware of in advance or following closely. Certainly, if anything was to change where the market became attractive for a business with our profile, then we would certainly be able to put steps in place then to execute on that. We certainly are never gonna be caught flat-footed. We're always monitoring and have strategies in place should there be an opportunity that makes sense for us.
Okay. Understood. Yeah, moving over to legalization and regulation. I mean.
Please
Will this finally be the year that we're gonna get more material legalization of online sports betting and iGaming? Cause it makes, with the rise of prediction markets, at least to me, you know, it makes all the sense in the world that you would have increased market access, states, you know, losing or realizing potential lost tax revenue. We just haven't seen it yet. What's your view here?
Right. I think right now is a great moment, and I say now, I'm not suggesting it's gonna happen this calendar year, but the work's being put in right now. Virginia came very close recently. There's still an opportunity in Virginia this year through the budget process that's not getting a lot of attention, but it's an opportunity that we're still following and involved with. Certainly, if it's not this year, next year looks promising. There's also a large thing, you know, we have Alberta opening in July, so another nice, very attractive market for casino opening in North America that we're gonna be targeting. In terms of other jurisdictions too, you have a few things happening. One is you have all of our competitors and us aligning around the desire to have online casino legalized.
Like I said, only 12% of the U.S. population today has online casino, whereas over 50% are sports. There's a big differential between catching up with some of the casino offerings with the states that have sports, and as they have the risk of losing some of the revenues from sports. More interesting, I think, is the fact that the federal government will be reducing a lot of the Medicaid matching funds after the elections in November. States are gonna start to have a shortage of a material amounts of funds that they've had in the past to do a lot of their matching programs with the federal government on Medicaid.
States like New York and Illinois are going to have even greater surpluses in this area, and they all recognize the value of online casino being a meaningful, proven, a reliable method to raise taxes at a large volume, a large dollar amount. You look at Michigan, they have generated $2 billion in revenue the last five years. It is a meaningful moves-the-needle number for a lot of these states.
I think the other thing that historically has been a challenge is sort of some of the legislators or members of Congress will sort of, or the state legislators will say things like, "Well, we don't want someone to have a slot machine in the purse or in the phone or in the pocket carrying it around." What you start to realize with gamification happening around the industry everywhere, that, you know, every individual can already play sweepstakes casinos or crypto casinos on their phone. The idea that we're gonna sort of ban something that already exists, proliferated everywhere, isn't really as strong of an argument as it was in the past when maybe this didn't exist.
Now we're like, "Hey, this is already existing, so you might as well protect your consumers, have responsible marketing, responsible gaming tools in place," and obviously generate the huge stacks of revenues that I just mentioned earlier are very real and proven in this category. It's not a guess. If it's gonna happen, it will deliver the results of the predictions and projections show. I think all these things, collaborators, competitors collaborating, big opportunity with the deficits, proven and more reliable and, than other sources of tax generation and the prediction market competition, I think are all things, you know, that bode well for us and as we try to lobby for more states to legalize it faster.
Yeah.
By the way, we have all these Latin American market, sort of, legal today already that we can enter. We don't have a shortage of opportunities, which is exciting for a company like ourselves. Where others maybe are waiting for another U.S. state as their primary strategy for expansion, you know, we have multiple other markets in Latin America that are attractive that we're looking at opportunities to expand into. Given our success in existing markets down there, you know, that's something I think investors should be really excited about long-term for us.
I was just going to add in on that since Richard was talking about Virginia in particular, just so it's a good example. You know, a good comparable to Virginia would be Michigan, where we've continued to grow share over time, but didn't start with any database or real brand awareness or a partner there that had a database that we could use. You know, Michigan's approaching like a $300 million GGR run rate for iCasino for us. You take a place like Virginia, a little lower population, probably a little higher average player value. We would have strong brand awareness, a partner with a database, could be a very meaningful market for us.
You know, if we're able to layer in, you know, a New York and an Illinois over a few years after that, you're still at a pretty small percentage of the population. The benefit to us is pretty outsized and could be very meaningful.
Yeah, no, makes a lot of sense. One state you didn't mention was Maine. What's the latest there? Is that an opportunity for Rush Street?
Yeah, I think it is. For sure we're engaged in opportunity discussions there, but it's a little bit of a slow process because there's a lawsuit happening there, and I think there's a lot of efforts going into sort of preserving the legislation as a viable regulatory scheme. I think, we're waiting for that to kind of evolve and mature and certainly actively involved in the opportunity there.
Okay. let's move on to LATAM. you know, the player growth has been phenomenal and then obviously what's going on with just like the lapping of the tax dynamics in Colombia. can you just talk though to the competitive dynamics? This is a question we get a lot from investors is just, you know, who you're competing with, you know, particularly in Colombia, but just, you know. Yeah, we'd love to know more about the competitive dynamics in the region.
Sure. Well, maybe I'll start. In Colombia, there's two competitors that when we entered the market, they owned 90% + of the market combined. It reminded me of the early days of FanDuel, DraftKings in the U.S., where they were kind of dominant brands that had evolved from unregulated businesses and had already had brands and databases similar to what you saw with the daily fantasy in the U.S., where the brands that came from those backgrounds already had brand awareness and players already playing with them. It became an easier transition for them to become leaders in that market. The other competitors, at the time there were probably about 20, none of them had any market share of any size.
To this day, it's still the same case, where there really hasn't been anybody else who's been able to grow their share to a meaningful market share other than us. We came in the market and have consistently grown from day one. Every quarter after quarter, we grow. We've now last year passed the number two operator, we've now become the number two player in the market, and we're growing share on the top player. They're good companies. They're, they're strong teams, but we think what we bring to the table is so unique.
I think relative to what we have to compete with in the U.S. market, where you have a lot of other operators, that are even, you know, pushing the limits as well, Our product was received really well there, as I think it stands out even more from the casino player standpoint. The sportsbook, frankly, is equally as strong there for us. I think it's just the product experience we brought, we built as a company to compete in North America helps us to also even be stronger in LATAM. In Mexico, there's another company named Caliente that's been the dominant player themselves with 70% + market share for a decade before we entered the market.
We and a couple others have been growing share at their expense, I would say, the last couple years. When we launched in Mexico, we were probably 60, 70 companies, and little by little, every quarter we've been growing share, reflecting the similar experience we had in Colombia, where, you know, there are a large number of competitors and we kind of emerged as one of the top ones. I'm proud to say that as we shared on the earnings call two weeks ago, we're now, you know, mentioning we're probably about number five, top five in that market, so in Mexico. Again, we are able to compete successfully against the very best in these markets and I think that's something that is exciting for investors to know that we've done.
We've been able to do it in multiple markets. There are multiple markets in North America, you know, Latin America, even a West Virginia market. We come in late, a year after everybody else launched. We don't have any database or any brand awareness there. We're able to grow to become double-digit share in casino in that market. It just shows that I think the quality of what we offer, it stands above most of our competitors ultimately in the players' minds at least.
Yeah. You said on the earnings call, but you just reiterated that Mexico is tracking ahead of Colombia right now. Which is, I mean, pretty exciting. What's working well in Mexico? You mentioned the significant competitor, yeah, we'd love to know more about that.
We have spent a lot of time localizing the registration flows to make sure we reduce friction. There's other things that are required by the government there. The process, they regulate us fairly closely, so we had to sort of make sure that everything was compliant, yet we wanted to make sure that we had all the localization needed. The payment methods, the registration flows. Ultimately, I think what's been nice is that we are a casino-first brand there as well, and the largest operator, Caliente, really is a sports-first brand historically.
I think by us being able to bring a wide variety of games to the market, you know, they use a supplier there who also builds their own games, at times, maybe they favor the games that are, you know, available from the supplier, where we don't have that same constraints.
The greatest variety of games from all suppliers without favoring one versus others, which I think is helpful at times. At the end of the day, I think it just comes down to that we are marketing to an audience a very fun experience that is unique to the players. Again, we've now become better as an organization at communicating what our unique selling points are, but ultimately we keep stacking new feature after new feature. What's really exciting for Latin America, frankly, is that a lot of the most exciting features we brought to the U.S. market haven't even been launched yet there, and they're actually getting very close to being launched down there.
When we launch some of these new features down there, we would hope that they would have the same positive impact on those businesses that we saw in the U.S.
No, no, that's great. Maybe another question that we always get on LATAM, but just taxes in Colombia. Can you give us maybe a refresh in terms of, you know, where we currently are? What's, what's embedded in the guidance? Is this now a non-issue at this point, or is there still stuff that we should be paying attention to?
Well, I think it's always important to pay attention. We certainly do, we can keep everyone updated. You'll recall, last year there was a 19% tax on deposits. There was an emergency decree that ended at the end of the year, that had the effect last year of a lot of extra bonusing, which reduces net revenue relative to GGR. We had very solid player growth and GGR growth last year, because we were generous with players and took the brunt of that. Moving into 2026, there was a 19% emergency decree on GGR that the Court overturned in April. They suspended it in January, overturned it in April, said it was not legal.
President, in anticipation of that, we believe, put a new 16% incremental emergency tax in place in mid-March. The result of all of that is that we did not have any extra emergency tax for the first 2.5 months of the year. We have built into our guidance a 16% tax on GGR from mid-March through the end of the year. The Constitutional Court will review this tax as well, it has the possibility to be overturned. For the sake of guidance, we're not including that opportunity. There is a presidential election that happens in the coming months here, that could also be another opportunity for that emergency tax to go away.
With the change of administration, that's a possibility and, in any event, this temporary tax goes away at the end of the year. 16% on a very nicely growing revenue base in Colombia. If it were to go away mid-year or the end of the year, certainly incremental for us for sure.
Okay. Understood. Can we touch on the World Cup? You know, we're about a month away now from the World Cup starting. What's the opportunity for Rush Street and particularly thinking about, you know, LATAM and Colombia, even Mexico, just the potential, you know, not only player engagement, but revenue opportunity that brings along with it?
Yeah. Maybe I'll start and then Richard can chime in where he wants. Maybe I'll start with guidance because we've included the extra games because the World Cup, you know, 100+ games is generally incremental to the world soccer schedule this year. We've built in a little bit for that. Probably not so much, if at all, for the potential for significant player growth that impacts revenue in the back half of the year. Maybe I would start with a reference point of the Copa América, which was two summers ago. Big soccer tournament, certainly not on the scale of the World Cup. Certainly if you look at ticket prices, it wasn't.
The beauty of this World Cup, as we know, it's all in this region. We've got host cities in markets where we have operations. It's a big event. There's certainly a revenue opportunity in June and July because of the extra games, because of the number of people that will be watching and wagering on those games. Really the bigger opportunity is about long-term player count growth, where, Copa we grew 170% year-over-year player count in June and July. We're off of a much bigger base of players today, but there's a lot of room for us to grow pretty significantly in those player counts. I'll also say, you know, we had a nice inflection in our casino growth in Colombia post-Copa.
Bringing on all these players, most of who are there to watch this big, big event that's culturally very exciting. Then to be able to keep them around and cross-sell them in casino or other sports. Soccer will start back up relatively quickly, right? It's not like the Super Bowl where the fun has ended in football, unless you're gonna bet on Arena. It's a really big opportunity. It's a big opportunity in Mexico as well. The investment has already started for us. We're already using World Cup-related creative and campaigns. We've got great strategies and assets lined up.
You've also got an opportunity in the U.S. where we won't put as much behind it in terms of extra marketing in sports-only markets. But it's because of the relatable nature of this overall event, it's a great way to use that to attract both sports bettors, but also casino players. The last piece of that in North America is in sports we actually over-index to soccer. We've always had a great soccer product. We trade it really well. You know, we partner with Kambi for our risk and odds. We've always had a very deep offering in soccer around the world, so we've built a really nice following of soccer players in or soccer bettors in North America. It's an opportunity all around.
I think we've been modest about the way we've thought about it for guidance. If things go as well as they possibly could, it's certainly a source of upside for us this year.
Okay.
Yeah.
The only thing I would add, just the engagement. Just one real quick.
Yeah
It's in the same time zone as prime time for all our players across the Americas is fabulous, right? It's gonna create engagement. Of course, the fact that they're gonna be hosting games in Canada, Mexico, U.S. markets we operate in brings an extra level of attention to this event, and so we're gonna be able to acquire a large volume of customers, and we expect to be able to cross-sell them to the other products like casinos, Kyle mentioned. Anyways, we're real excited for the event.
Yeah. No, that's great. You mentioned Canada, and I know we only have a couple of minutes left here, but launching Alberta in July, what's your expectations for, you know, this market launch?
Maybe if you could speak to the shape, A, how competitive do you think it'll be relative to the Ontario launch, but then, B, just the shape of the investment and when do you think you'd be able to generate positive EBITDA in the province?
Sure. When we raised guidance in on our call a few weeks ago, we increased the midpoint of revenue by $115 million and the midpoint of EBITDA by $20 million. There's a little bit of revenue built in for Alberta. We just added Alberta, the impact of Alberta to that guidance, I should be clear on that. A little bit of that revenue is expected, increase is expected to come from Alberta, and we've anticipated kind of a $10 million headwind for the year from Alberta. That's the investments in the market launch and the marketing player acquisition offset by, you know, some margin generated from that increased revenue. We're gonna remain flexible, and if there's opportunities to invest more because things are going well in Alberta, we will certainly do that.
As probably everybody has, we had a lot of learnings from Ontario, we think we're much better positioned going into this launch versus Ontario. It'll be competitive, right? There's a lot of players that will launch on day one. There are gray market operators that have significant player bases that we'll try and attract away. We're all obviously going to try and grow that market, which certainly happened with Ontario. It's a good opportunity. I think it'll be slower building. We'll keep everyone updated. I think in terms of profitability, one of the things we've talked about in the past is every iCasino market in North America has been profitable for us by the fourth quarter of operations.
Assuming that that trend continues, there's probably a little bit of a headwind in the first half of 2027, but not a whole lot in terms of profitability in that market, and then should turn profitable in the back half of the year. We're very excited about Alberta, for sure
Yeah. No, makes a lot of sense. Well, I think we're at time there. Gentlemen, thank you so much for all the time this morning. Thanks to everyone who joined us on the webcast. Yeah, talk to you guys soon. Thanks again.
Thanks, Bernie.