- Online casino generated 72 percent of Rush Street Interactive’s record $393.8 million in second-quarter revenue.
- Rush Street applied for a CFTC exchange license but says it will not chase sports prediction markets.
- North American players averaged $320 in monthly revenue each, nearly six times the Latin American figure.
- Rush Street raised full-year revenue guidance to between $1.56 billion and $1.6 billion.
CHICAGO – Online casino games produced 72 percent of Rush Street Interactive’s revenue in a record $393.8 million second quarter, the BetRivers parent reported July 29. Monthly active users in its North American online casino markets rose 64 percent from a year earlier.
Casino Beat Sports Betting To The Record
Revenue climbed 46 percent from $269.2 million a year earlier. Net income reached a record $29.3 million and adjusted EBITDA hit $64.6 million, up 61 percent, according to the company’s second-quarter results.
Chief Executive Richard Schwartz credited “continued share gains in online casino and our sports betting markets benefiting from the World Cup.” Sports betting got a one-off tournament bump. Casino is the roughly three-quarters of the business that shows up every month.
Monthly active users reached about 949,000 across the company, up 58 percent. North America accounted for roughly 296,000 of them, up 51 percent, and Latin America about 653,000, where growth ran 62 percent. Rush Street operates in 15 U.S. states plus Colombia, Mexico, Peru and two Canadian provinces.
What $320 A Month Looks Like At A Half-Percent Edge
North American players generated $320 in monthly revenue each. Latin American players generated $55.
That $320 is what the house kept, not what players wagered, and the distance between those two figures is set entirely by the game. House edge is the gap between how often an outcome truly lands and what the game pays when it does. Basic-strategy blackjack on a decent six-deck game, dealer standing on soft 17 and naturals paying 3:2, runs about half a percent. At that rate, $320 in revenue takes roughly $64,000 in wagers across a month.
Slots average about 6 percent, with most machines returning somewhere between 90 and 98 percent. The same $320 comes off about $5,300 in action, roughly a twelfth of the handle. That arithmetic, not any preference for reels over felt, is why an operator’s lobby looks the way it does and why the blackjack house edge is one of the cheapest seats in the building.
It also explains why a table player is worth chasing on volume rather than margin. A shift to 6:5 on naturals adds about 1.39 points to the house edge without changing the game at all. A natural still arrives roughly 4.75 percent of the time. Only the payout moves, and the money in real money online blackjack lives in that move.
Guidance Raised To $1.6 Billion
Rush Street now expects full-year revenue of $1.56 billion to $1.6 billion, growth of 38 to 41 percent, and adjusted EBITDA of $245 million to $265 million, growth of 59 to 72 percent. Both ranges came up from the company’s prior outlook.
A CFTC Filing That Is Not A Launch
Schwartz confirmed on the earnings call that Rush Street applied during the quarter for a Commodity Futures Trading Commission designated contract market license, the registration that lets an operator list event contracts on its own exchange. He framed it as insurance rather than a product plan.
“We do view the applications as a way to preserve our strategic flexibility, to maintain our optionality,” Schwartz said. “It’s really just being prepared and preserving optionality.”
He was blunter about intent. “We continue to operate with a casino-first focus,” Schwartz said, adding that the company does not intend to push into what he called the crowded sports-focused prediction market space. Asked whether prediction-market operators had taken wallet share from the sportsbook, he said the company does not believe so.
That posture tracks a business where nearly three-quarters of the revenue arrives from legal online blackjack and the games sitting next to it. Schwartz said the company will continue to monitor developments in the space.