Rush Street Interactive Inc (RSI) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the RSI Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that this conference call is being recorded today, November 10, 2021.

I will now turn the call over to Lauren Seiler, Associate Vice President of Investor Relations and Development.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. By now, everyone should have access to our third quarter 2021 earnings release. It can be found under the heading financial quarterly results in the Investors section of the RSI website at rushstreetinteractive.com. Some of our comments will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements are not statements of historical facts and are usually identified by the use of words such as will, expect, should, or other similar phrases and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. We assume no responsibility for updating any forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on them. We refer you to our SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial conditions.

During the call, we will discuss our non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating the Company's operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in our third quarter 2021 earnings release, which is available on the Investors section of the RSI website at www.rushstreetinteractive.com.

With me on the call today, we have our CEO, Richard Schwartz, and our CFO, Kyle Sauers. We will first provide some opening remarks and then open the call to questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Richard.

Thanks, Lauren. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining the call. I have several topics I'd like to cover today. First, I'll highlight another quarter of record revenues and the raising of our full year revenue guidance. This quarter represents the ninth quarter in a row of sequential revenue growth for RSI. Next, I'll give an update on our market access initiative and some exciting recent development on new market opportunities. Then, I'll talk about our operational and marketing excellence. And finally, I'll walk through product and technology rollouts that are helping drive our differentiated user experience before handing it over to Kyle to dive deeper into our financials.

Once again, our team delivered another solid quarter of year-over-year growth as well as sequential revenue growth, demonstrating our continued ability to grow the top line while strategically investing in marketing and technology areas that we expect will drive meaningful revenue growth and long-term value. Revenue was $123 million during the quarter, representing a year-over-year increase of 57%, which included revenue growth in all of our online casino and online sportsbook market.

With this continued success and growth in our business, we are once again raising our guidance. We now expect our 2021 full year revenue to be between 480 and $500 million implying 76% year-over-year top line growth at the midpoint. This is up from the previous estimated revenue growth of 72% at the midpoint of our prior guidance range. Kyle will provide some additional details in his remarks.

Before I get into recent launches, I want to first address the news that I'm sure many of you saw earlier this week. We are thrilled to have been selected to operate our award-winning online sports betting platform in the State of New York. RSI has a strong track record of success in New York overseeing the operations of the BetRivers Sportsbook that's connected in New York. But New York isn't the only signed new market to discuss. Subsequent to quarter end, on October 12, we announced the soft launch of the PlaySugarHouse online sportsbook in Connecticut. The full launch occurred on schedule on October 19. And since then, we've been delighted to bring our award-winning product to the players in Connecticut as the exclusive sportsbook partner of the Connecticut lottery.

We have subsequently launched four recasts books, raging locations in the state of Connecticut, in New Haven, Stamford and Windsor, all of which we opened over 2 weeks ago. And most recently, yesterday, we opened our fourth book in New Britain. We expect another fifth location to be opened over the coming weeks.

During the third quarter, we also announced our partnership with the Arizona Rattlers as their partner for online sports betting in the state of Arizona, and we were eager to launch BetRivers in that state during October. We now operate real-money gaming in 13 jurisdictions, 5 of which have online casino, 11 that have online sports betting and 6 with retail sports betting. We also announced that we've entered the Canadian market with the launch of our social gaming platform, CASINO4FUN in the province of Ontario. The free-to-play online casino and Sportsbook is available now on all devices through the BetRivers platform.

As we have shared before, we've had great success in markets like Pennsylvania and Michigan with converting pre-launch social players into real money betters. In fact, in Michigan, more than 20% of our pre-launch social players have opened a real money account and made first deposits. We are hoping for similar results in Ontario as we expect to launch real money online casino and sports betting in the coming months. We are really enthusiastic about the opportunity in Ontario given the size of the market and the ability for us to offer both online casino and sports in the jurisdiction.

I can now shift to talking about market access. While we have continued to make strong progress in launching several new states over the past year, we have also made significant strides in our new market access initiatives. We are now live with online sports book in states representing 24% of the U.S. population and live with online casino in states representing 10% of the population. The anticipated upcoming launches in Louisiana, Maryland, and New York will increase our sports book population by 9%, up to 33%, and our entry into Ontario will increase our addressable population of online casino players by over 40%. Our business development team is working to secure access in future markets, but we are excited to have put ourselves in a strong position already with market access plans in 21 online sports betting markets and 19 online casino markets.

I now want to turn to some specific highlights from the quarter and exciting trends we are seeing. Connecticut is off to a strong start. While it's still early, we've seen really solid progress thus far. Over the last 2 weeks, in terms of the handle, Connecticut is already our third largest online sportsbook-only market. In Illinois, we continue to hold share very well. September data that came out earlier this week showed us with our largest share of closed revenue in the last 7 months, a great testament to the user experience we provide and our ability to retain high-quality players.

In Michigan, we have held steady with our online casino market share, and looking forward to soon being able to offer our players an iOS app to remove friction and further improve the user experience. In West Virginia, we have continued to grow online casino shares since we enter the market back in April, and we are now approaching 10% market share. This is another market where launching iOS apps for the first time will be exciting for our players, and we expect will improve player satisfaction.

Lastly, in Colombia, during recent months, we are close to 20% market share of handle for combined online casino and online sports, and we again grew revenue significantly by greater than 100% year-over-year. This is a tremendous achievement given our entry into that market several years after it first opened. As I discussed earlier, there will be plenty of new markets to invest in over coming quarters, which will put us in investment mode for the time being. But we are proud of our ability to remain disciplined and calculated in the way we invest, and ultimately generate substantial profitability from markets as they mature.

Now, I would like to switch gears to talk about some of our marketing initiatives, investments, and the results we are

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To start, we recently signed two new brand ambassadors to BetRivers, tennis great and respected tennis TV analyst, James Blake; and three-time Super Bowl Champion and MSL broadcasting veteran, Mark Schlereth. We are proud to have these to join our other ambassadors as we create new and exciting betting content for our players to enjoy. We're also excited to have launched several hyper local sports betting podcasts in major cities across the country via our CityCast’s programming including in the city of Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York and Denver. Stay tuned for upcoming launches in many more cities in the future. This is an effective way to use local talent, talking about local hometown teams to engage players and enhance loyalty because we know many betters prefer to bet on their local teams.

We recently announced we've expanded our commitment to college football by signing exclusive partnership with BetRivers.com with the Field of 68 and the Field of 12 media network. These shows hosted by former college football and basketball stars offer our players unique insight into betting and college sport. Our ability to market effectively is critical to our success. We remain a data-driven organization using dynamic learnings and analytics to acquire, convert, retain and re-engage customers. Real-time insights from our business intelligence team allow us to continuously optimize our marketing spend based on a return on investment focused model. This model considers a variety of factors, including the products offered in the jurisdiction, the performance of our diversified marketing channels, predictive lifetime values and behaviors of customers across various product offerings.

Through the efficiency of our marketing, we continue to see great results. We still have an average payback period of 6 months for all of our cohorts since inception for the year 1 and year 3

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Times and 5.6x, respectively. Our marketing spend during the course of this year was 34% of our revenue, which we believe to be near industry lows further demonstrating our ability to convert marketing investment dollars into top line revenue. Given these strong results, we have accelerated our marketing investments and have extended payback period slightly, but will only do so prudently with an eye on long-term profitability.

Now turning to product and technology. As usual, it's been a very busy quarter from a technology and product development perspective here at RSI as we continue to focus on providing a best-in-class user gaming experience. We recently launched our own dedicated and branded live casino studios for players in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which concurrently provide Blackjack tables exclusively for BetRivers and PlaySugarHouse players to make it easier and faster for them to find a virtual seat at a popular online dealer table. Our focus on customer interaction and community responsiveness continue to set RSI apart from other casino platforms.

We are also psyched a recently launched RushRace, a proprietary multi-player slot tournament for our casino customers. RushRace is the first of many exciting experiences that are powered by RushArena, our innovative multi-player tournament engine that will allow us to continue to stay ahead of the industry and offer a differentiated product to keep our players engaged and excited to play on our platform. We have also seen great interest in the same-game parlay feature we launched earlier this year. In fact, over 50% of our NFL betters this year have made a same-game parlay wager.

When it comes to same-game parlay functionality, we have a significant point of differentiation from our competitors. Unlike most of our peers, our players are able to combine multiple same-game parlays or even a same-game parlay with another game outcome or even bet on a different sport. This gives our players more ways to combine bets and create longer odds and bigger payouts. Most

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It offers another product differentiation that creates loyalty and retention with our players.

We're also very proud to be recognized by Eilers & Krejcik for improvements to our app where our new BetRivers app is now ranked #3 out of 35 brands tested. This is a strong

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From a respected and independent source as we continue to improve functionality and user experience of our app. As always, we pay close attention to the reception to our platform in new sportsbook and casino markets from first-time users when they experience our significantly upgraded app. In conjunction with the new features and award-winning customer service, we are increasingly confident that we have built a market-leading Sportsbook app. We also remain on track to begin the rollout of our integrated sportsbook and casino iOS app during the fourth quarter. As previously shared, our tremendous success in Pennsylvania and Michigan, or recently, in West Virginia, have all been achieved without an iOS app in those markets. We are really eager to see the benefit of enhanced plan engagement through our iOS casino app when we launched it in those markets.

I also want to take a moment to congratulate all the employees of Rush Street Interactive are being shortlisted for Casino Operator of the Year of the SBC Awards, North America as well as being nominated as the Social Operator of the Year in the prestigious recognition by among gaming peers. We are also very pleased to have won the Sportsbook of the Year of the 2021 SBP Latin American Awards just a couple of weeks ago. These awards as voted by industry experts are a testament to the efforts of the entire RSI team and a further recognition of our industry-leading player experience.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Kyle.

Thanks, Richard. Before I dive into the numbers, there's one more very prestigious nomination RSI has been shortlisted for at the SBC Awards, North America that Richard failed to mention, and that is Leader of the Year. A very special congrats to him and his well-deserved recognition of his hard work over the years in shaping RSI into the organization it is today having taken the company from vision to fruition during a time that many doubted whether online gaming would ever be a force in the U.S. Congrats to you, Richard, and now on to some financial data.

As Richard mentioned, third quarter revenue was $122.9 million, an increase of 57% year-over-year. The adjusted EBITDA loss for the third quarter of 2021 was $12.2 million. Adjusted advertising and promotions expense was $45.4 million during the third quarter of '21 compared to $17.5 million in the prior year quarter and $36.9 million during the second quarter of 2021. This reflects our commitment to accelerating marketing spend to take advantage of strong returns, but also our rational approach to ensure we put our marketing investments to good use. We expect marketing investments to increase meaningfully in the fourth quarter.

The football season has offered more opportunities to attract new players. And our recent launches in Connecticut, Arizona, and social in Ontario have also created an opportunity to further accelerate spend. Depending on launch timing of other markets, we could have further investments in the fourth quarter or heavier into the beginning of next year as we think about markets like Louisiana, Maryland, real-money in Ontario, and New York based on the exciting news earlier this week.

Our adjusted G&A grew modestly from the second quarter to the third quarter, moving up to $8.8 million from $8 million in the second quarter. We expect this line item to continue to grow in the coming quarters as we continue to build out our development teams and corporate infrastructure to support the substantial growth we're experiencing and continuing to expect over the coming years. As a reminder, our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter removes the effects of share-based compensation, which was $4.5 million during the quarter. While our year-to-date results removed the effects of share-based compensation, the change in fair value of earnout interest liability and the change in fair value of outstanding warrants, which were all redeemed or expired during the first quarter.

We continue to be in great position with $347 million in unrestricted cash on our balance sheet and no debt. This allows us to continue growing our marketing investments, launch in new markets quickly, evaluate potential bolt-on acquisitions, and remain opportunistic with regards to external investment opportunities. As Richard highlighted earlier, we are increasing our 2021 revenue guidance for the full year to be between 480 and $500 million, up from our prior range of $465 million to $495 million. The revised range implies 76% year-over-year top line growth

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This is up from a year-over-year revenue growth of 72% that we were expecting on our previous call. We're seeing strong results across the business, and this increase reflects our confidence in the continued strong trends we've been seeing so far during 2021. We've talked about new markets that are likely launching later this year or early next year. But as a reminder, our guidance only includes contributions from markets that are live as of today.

And with that, operator, please open the lines for questions.

(Operator Instructions) The first question is from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie.

Congrats on the quarter. With respect to the fourth quarter guidance, can you elaborate a little bit in terms of what you've seen so far in October from iGaming competition given some of the comments that we've heard from your peers? And given your approach towards disciplined promos, is this something that you're able to maintain given some potential irrational promos that we're seeing in the market?

Maybe I'll start on just the guidance and how we thought about the fourth quarter, and then I'll let Richard maybe talk a little bit about just the competitive environment and promos and the way we approach that. So as we talked about, we raised the guidance by $10 million at the midpoint. Pretty pleased that we're demonstrating the ability to set expectations and meet or beat them each time. A lot of different considerations, obviously, go into our range. More of the variability is on the sports side since the consistency of handle and volume is a little bit higher on the online casino business, which is a bigger part of our revenue.

On the sports side, calendar looks a little different than last year. We're obviously excited about all the sports that are happening and lined up to happen in the fourth quarter here, probably not unlike what you've heard from others. October had a tough start with some low football hold for the first few weeks. It's gotten a little better over the last couple of weeks. We got two new state launches in Connecticut and Arizona that we're very excited about as you know. And there's an investment early in market launches and promotions really before any real revenue starts to be generated. So that probably a significant factor in either direction on the fourth quarter. But having said all that, we're obviously excited to expect to have our 10th consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth again here in the fourth quarter.

Chad, in terms of the...

Yes, go ahead, Chad.

Go ahead, Richard. I'm sorry, I interrupted.

I was just referencing the second half about the competitive nature of the market. I thought I would just comment on that. The market remains very competitive as new entrants come into the market and existing competitors increase their spend and aggressiveness. Having said that, we continue to perform well, and we invested per year in developing all the elements of an experience that matter. So when it comes to your operations, your acquisition of players, your retention, those are things you can't just create overnight or in a couple of months. That takes years of development and expertise to build out. So we're very comfortable that we're prepared to compete, and we're seeing that we're continuing to have great results. And we think despite the competition, we operate with a very rational environment. We operate in a way that we believe is long-term, focused on efficient, flexible marketing. And I think we're seeing the results are still available for us because of the investment we've made in the past.

Great. And then my follow up. Just in terms of the iOS app launches, do you believe that this will be incremental to the current desktop business? Are you expecting customers to kind of use both, maybe use mobile for some more snacking and then desktop for kind of longer sessions? Just trying to think about the building blocks of your ARPMAU in -- I guess this is mainly for '22 after the launches.

Sure. We know mobile is king and having a first-rate app is helping us in the sportsbook markets. And we know it's going to have only upside and provide to us in the casino markets. The thing with the current setup is that our players are able to play on their iOS devices. But -- and they really -- not a very clear and seamless way. And so by reducing friction from the user experience, we're going to deliver for them a much better experience. And when you're betting on things like sports and casino, you want to be able to enter the app and do a very quick face ID, get into play, have it available on your phone very easily and accessible, have geolocation integrated into the app instead of where we have it today in those markets, people communicate with messaging directly to the players whenever you have an update or bonus or promotional offers. So there's lots of benefits that bringing an iOS app this market is going to bring. But I will tell you that the #1 thing is that it's the only part of our user experience in limited markets where we have some friction that we're very eager to get rid of.

Your next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies.

I will admit I was a minute or 2 late, but I would love to just discuss the New York opportunity. Obviously, the size and scale of the market in view of the tax rate involved and how you're thinking about that financially and strategically.

Yes. So maybe I'll start on the financial side. And if Richard wants to add anything, you can do that. But yes, I mean, certainly, we prefer a lower tax rate, but we're definitely confident in our ability to generate profits in New York. We think it's a market where competitors likely will be less aggressive with both marketing and promotions certainly over the longer term. And I think just given our success that we've proven time and again, with keeping marketing low and making efficient use of bonusing and promotions, it seems like New York will play very well to our strengths as an efficient operator.

Okay. And if I can just follow up on Illinois, right. The in-person registration is canceling next year as I understand it. If you could just give us a couple of updated thoughts about how you maneuver in that context as well, that would be helpful.

Sure. We've seen the in-person registration go back and forth a few times now. But what we have seen is that our market shares largely stay consistent. And in fact, just yesterday, the announcements came out, the revenues came out, and we were the highest number we've been at in 7 months. So clearly, what's exciting about the market now is because you've had sort of the influx of new players slow down, you've been able to really see who operates well in that market. You've seen that we've been able to deliver really strong growth and market share even enhancements a little bit, especially most recently.

So when it comes to switching buck off, probably in March or April, it appears or March. We're very prepared for it. Our products are a lot better than it was before, and we clearly have some strong marketing partnerships in place including with the Chicago Bears. And we feel that we've been able to earn and retain the player trust in this market we're playing with our products. So we're pretty excited to get to the chance to be able to open up the opportunity to increase the new player flow and be able to demonstrate to players why we've been able to be so successful and stay with our products.

The next question is from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum.

Congrats, Richard, on the nomination as well as all the other company nominations. I want to start with average revenue per monthly active user. It was up about 1% sequentially, but you have the benefit of the NFL season starting in September. I guess, was the NFL incremental to ARPMAU? And secondly, I guess, does that imply -- what does that imply for Q4?

Yes. So it's a good question. And we talked a little bit about this on the last call, I think, but we actually expected our MAU growth to be a little slower in Q3 due to the sports seasonality in the sports calendar that's spread across Q3 last year. So that's on the MAUs. And the fact is we saw a pretty meaningful increase in users in September, the start of the football season, and that's continued again nicely into Q4 in October and November. So I'd actually -- I'd expect the miles to move up pretty nicely in Q4. And then adjusting for any sports seasonality, we'd expect the miles to continue to grow meaningfully over time and really be the larger source of revenue growth.

But to your ARPMAU question, it's going to fluctuate a little more based on the mix of casino and sports and the launch of new markets. And to your point, it actually -- it probably didn't impact our model a ton in Q3 because it was only -- the NFL because it was only a part of the quarter, it will probably pull it down more likely in Q4 because we'll have an influx of players who are lower ARPMAU than our casino players and then add to that the fact that we'll have a bunch of new players in Arizona and Connecticut that will be incremental to the MAUs, but won't be generating as much revenue in those new markets because of promotions.

Helpful. Thanks, Kyle. On Ontario, you launched casino for fun a few weeks ago. Any early user metrics you can share there?

Yes, there really aren't any metrics that we're sharing, but I think the key to that market opportunity is to build our brand and build those databases early. We're learning a lot about the market and making sure the registration flows are right and making sure we're getting everything ready for the time when the market opens because obviously, we've shared before, we expect that to be one of our largest markets for next year.

How does the brand, I guess building the brand using CASINO4FUN relative to your other real-money brands? How does that resonate with customers and consumers?

So we're actually using the BetRivers brand in that market. So the platform is referred to as a CASINO4FUN platform, but it's actually a BetRivers brand being utilized in that market. So since the intent is to use that brand in Ontario, we then are investing right now and building out the brand that we use. So there is a nice awareness in the community and the consumers in that market to the brand at a time before others are really investing in the same type of dollars in that brand awareness.

That makes sense. One more on the social casino. The revenues plateaued the last 3 quarters here. Can you remind me what states you guys are live in there? And then also as you convert those to real-money, which I think you said 20% if I caught that right, do they keep playing on both or is that effectively good churn there?

Right. So we're not really investing dollars in building out the social platform other than using it as a real money acquisition opportunity. As we described, we're doing in Ontario right now, we did previously in Michigan and before that in Pennsylvania. You heard that data point right above the 20%. Certainly, that's an exciting number. I think historically, people would expect it to be under 5%. So the fact that we're generating that kind of conversion rate, I think is a real validation of the strategy that works well for us.

Having said that, there are some players that are switching between -- back and forth between the two. We've heard quite a few players when they feel like they want to be responsible with their budgets or they feel like they're spending their budget or payment budget, they basically switch to the free play model to engage with the product and experience in a more entertainment level without any risk. So we do see the players do go back and forth between the two of them. But we do know that generally, the direction is to convert those players from social to real money when those markets are legal.

The next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer.

Just back on the Illinois numbers. You mentioned your GGR was the highest it's been in 7 quarters. Can you talk about the impact that same-game parlay had on that performance?

Sure. It's been pretty meaningful although I would say the overall app experience improvement is probably even a larger driver. Why I say that is that we've gone through before all the improvements we made in the app, and there's just a tremendous amount of improvements where the product's getting better and better. But having said that, same-game parlay is a valuable tool. As we indicated, over half of our players or betters this football season have used it. We have some differentiation in that product that we're really excited about. Also, traditionally, most single-game parlay products in the competition really are limited to one game, and you can't really parlay those against other bets from other games. So if you want to bet on a Brady and the Bucks, you got the Bucks to beat the spread and Brady for over 300 yards, that would be the extent of your single-game parlay. We allow those players to not only bet that parlay, but if they want they can combine that with a Green Bay Packers to beat the spread and...

Rodgers.

Rodgers.

He's got COVID, it's okay.

He's a Cal Burton person since I went. Of course, Rodgers can go through into the yards. So we can combine single-game parlays and one part of the same-game parlay gets any other bets from any other sport. So that nimbleness and the fact that we're also opening up for college football single-game parlays, which is really exciting. A lot of the stans like to bet on their favorite teams to win and beat the spread and maybe player prop, so we've been adding quite a few more of those to the offering. So it has been meaningful. It does even the playing field. And as I just said, the competition -- not only evens the playing field, but actually in some cases has accelerated our ability to differentiate in that critical area.

And adding the extra game to single-game parlay, is that being done through your own technology or partnering with Kambi? I mean who's -- how are you powering that?

Right. So we are leveraging the Kambi spending engine for that. And one thing that we noticed is a big benefit is that some companies are outsourcing the single-game parlay from individual companies to help sort of supplement their existing core offering. But when you do that, you're really limited in your ability to cross-sell and do multiple parlays because you have the parlays coming from different sources. If you have two different platforms providing you a source, but not organic, you can't really settle the best as quickly, and you can't also allow you to do what we're doing, which is to sort of have multiple bets and extend the odds of a betting for the players. So it is driven in large part by Kambi, but the way we've integrated it and the way we unify the system that makes it just really seamless for the user experience.

Got it. And then just two more. You sort of see the success that Michigan's having with iGaming, the numbers are phenomenal. I mean where are we with neighboring states such as Indiana and Illinois potentially lead iGaming? And then back to New York, I mean is there any way you can leverage your Schenectady property when you enter that market?

Sure. So iCasino is an exciting category, as you know. We're seeing a lot of the opportunities you mentioned in the Midwest, which is convenient for us because in our location in Illinois and Indiana, two markets that come to top of our minds in terms of future markets that we think are showing some evidence of those being dropped. I mean just last year, there were Bills dropped in Indiana, Missouri as well, and Illinois. We've seen some opportunity, I think, for those markets to move. So clearly, the revenue success of the casino category vis-a-vis the sports betting category has given the states extra falter to really decide to move forward in that direction. So we're continuing to monitor these markets and lobby where we can to help encourage an accelerated rate.

The nice thing about this is, for the first time really in years, our competitors are really all reaching out to each other trying to focus on getting this category moving and legalized and regulated. So with a lot of positive momentum, I think it's just a matter of time before a few additional markets start to open up. But in the meanwhile, we're very excited about Ontario, which will be the largest population of any online casino market in the U.S., if it was a state. It's going to be opening up for us in the near future. So we're excited to have another casino market on the horizon. When it comes to New York, yes, we are working with the property on the opportunity to leverage some of the player base as we've shared publicly. Of all the four commercial casinos in the states, that property has been the best in terms of commercial sportsbook revenues from the retail side, and that's not necessarily a given that it should perform that well because it's not the largest land-based commercial casino in the state by revenue. So it has a nice database, and there's a plan to work with them to market our brand online in that state as well.

The next question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan with Needham & Co.

Richard, just given the movement in the stock, can you just remind us of your M&A framework? Any holes that you want or need to fill that you could maybe take advantage of given your equity is now worth more?

Sure. So we're -- we have really what we need to be successful long-term in this market. We need the market access, which we've shown. We have that in all the markets that matter, have your own in-house technology to drive the results that we're seeing. Strength in casino category, which is something that a lot of companies don't have, the same quality of product that we do. And then just the scale that we have to really be able to do some investments and be able to justify some of the larger opportunities ahead of us. Things that we've mentioned that we continue to want to look for is diversification of our product portfolio. Find ways to bring in some other product categories. There's some opportunities there. We think potentially that we're always looking at. In terms of the future, I think we've brought up in a lot of discussions all the time because we have these great assets that are valuable, but they're valuable for us to be able to utilize to grow the business in the industry. So we're always open-minded to explore all options including companies that we may look at to help improve our opportunity whether it's with brands or databases or product verticals would be the three categories that I think are most -- of greatest interest to us.

Got it. And then for Kyle, comment on the heavy marketing investment in 4Q. Just wanted to see if you could provide any color on if you expect the EBITDA loss to be wider in 4Q relative to 3Q?

Yes. Thanks. So as you point out, I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we do expect that the marketing expense is going to move up pretty meaningfully in Q4 from Q3. I would expect that the -- given our guidance range, and given the expectations currently for how some of these new states might launch and how we're spending in Connecticut and Arizona, the increase in marketing spend in Q4 would outpace the margin benefit that we get from the sequential increase in revenue. So that probably means we're losing more in the fourth quarter than we are in the third quarter. In the -- just thinking more about the increase in the spend, and I commented on some of it, but you've got the Q4 sports calendar, so a little heavier marketing-related to football, trying to attract new players in all the states that we're in.

The Connecticut and Arizona launches, and that's always an investment when you launch in new states. And then really, the other upcoming launches that we've talked about on the call, it's really going to depend on the ultimate timing of those when the states and the regulators are ready. So that will impact how much we actually spend in Q4 or even into Q1 of next year. I would expect both Q4 and Q1 to be bigger than Q3. But to your specific point, I'd expect that the spend is bigger in Q4 on marketing and that it's bigger such that the loss would be bigger in Q4 than it was in Q3.

The next question comes from the line of Stephen Grambling with Goldman Sachs.

Maybe that's a good place to jump, so just any updated thoughts on the path of profitability and any kind of puts and takes to consider along that path?

Sure. So I'll take that one. I mean the good news is we're already operating profitably in quite a few markets, and we've demonstrated an ability in the past to operate this business profitably. I think that's -- it's going to depend really largely on the pace and timing of rollout of new markets, sports and casino, and what the competitive situation looks like in those markets. And obviously, there's a lot of commentary around that. And we have competitors that are behaving in different ways in different markets, but it's definitely competitive at this point, both in terms of promotions that are offered and outright marketing dollars that are being put to work. I mean we're operating in an environment that's aggressive, and we're really doing well.

Our revenue guidance has us getting near $500 million or to $500 million this year at the top end of our guidance, which should make us the fourth largest operator in the market. So in the near term, I'd say we don't expect profitability here in the near term, but we're going to continue to invest in all the new markets that we've talked about today. Hopefully, we're going to see a bunch more that get approved over the next year or coming years, and we'll continue to have opportunities to invest. And while markets -- more markets mature and eventually, we'll have less new approved states that are part of that mix. We're highly confident we're going to demonstrate strong profitability. But I think we'll wait until there's a little more clarity when it will slow down or when we'll have less markets -- new markets to focus on before we forecast a timing for profitability.

Got it. Makes sense. And then maybe changing gears, in the markets where you have iGaming and sports betting, any sense for what the split is in either revenues or users as we look at iGaming-only versus sports-only versus the overlap, and how perhaps the path of customer acquisition may be evolving?

So we haven't broken out the split in the states. We have shared in the past that overall, our mix is -- has -- over several quarters, let's say, it's run between 2/3 and 3/4 casino, and we were near the higher end in Q3, but that's also probably reflective of the sports calendar. So I might expect that to shift a little bit towards sports in the fourth quarter. And the other thing we've pointed out is that in terms of revenue and value that's generated from our players that a casino player is worth something like 5x what a sports-only player is, and someone who's in both is even 2x more value. So there's a lot of value to those states where we have both types of players. So it's one of the reasons we love markets like Ontario that will be going live here shortly, and we expect that to be a big contributor.

Makes sense. And then one last one, just to clarify. I think you have this slide in the deck that shows different cohorts. I believe you referenced this last quarter, but I just want to make sure that I understand kind of what's going on there. The 2020 cohort looks like it still has been softening. So I guess what's driving that? And will that eventually reverse out?

Yes. I think you and I talked about on this call 3 months ago, and it's actually -- it's a good question and a fair one, and it's really mostly about Illinois. And there's two things at play here that I'd point out. The first is that we had a head start in Illinois as everyone knows, before some of our competition entered the market. So part of that is just sharing the market with others from part of the 2020 cohort of the acquired players there. And that -- so those were helping the chart back in 2020 and early 2021. The second piece, which should reverse itself to some extent is more seasonal. So a lot of the acquired players in 2020 were from Illinois, and that's a sports-only market. So that means we'd expect to see a benefit from that Illinois 2020 cohort in the fourth quarter.

The next question is from the line of Dan Politzer with Wells Fargo.

So first, on just the promo spend, I want to drill in a little bit. One of your competitors recently said there was a misalign between cash and LTV and basically they're pulling back. I mean, as you've seen the level of competition and promotion certainly increased over the last few months, I mean, to what extent has your strategy pivoted or changed over this time period?

So we're still running at around 6-month payback, similar to -- since inception of the business. Over the last couple of months of cohorts, we've seen increasing little beyond that. So there is an additional competition edge, but we are seeing that return of those players in a faster time period than what we hear others are announcing. So I think it comes down to having strong conversion rates and retention rates because newer conversion rate's up, you're going to spend that money on marketing efficiently, get those players through the funnel and get them registering and making their first deposits. And of course, once they're there, how you treat them and how well they like your experience you offer is going to get those retention numbers, which are going to drive up those LTVS.

So I would just say that a lot of companies in the space are spending a lot of marketing and aggressiveness, but they don't have the product down to where it needs to be at, in our view, to be at the world-class level. You need to be competitive here. And even if you get the product right, you have to get the service right as well. So I think it just comes down to the ability to execute at a world-class level on both the product and the service side to be able to deliver results. If you're missing one piece of a puzzle, you're not delivering that consistency across all interfaces with the customer, you do have a real risk of not getting back that invested capital and needing to take some more time to probably mature the product or the services to get to the point where you are going to get those returns.

Got it. And then just a follow-up. To what extent can you just give any color on Connecticut and the early signs, and maybe the competitive environment there, given it's essentially an oligopoly? And maybe how that is compared with other markets such as Arizona that we're selling onto?

So Connecticut is really exciting. I'd say, as you know, only three operators have licenses, including us. I think what you'll see is FanDuel and DraftKings are two of the other competitors. And they have a large database starting out, and we expect them to jump off to a pretty strong lead in their positioning. But as we shared on this call, we are very happy with the start in terms of our ability to already have the size that we have there being one of the -- certainly being live for a few weeks. We're already, as we mentioned earlier, already at the top three site for us in terms of online sportsbook-only markets. Seven of those markets are in the three already after only a few weeks. So it shows you we have scaled there and opportunity to grow it. But I think what's really exciting about the market is, over time, we're going to be able to really grow that because players are going to try multiple sites and only have three.

They're going to try our site and I think they'll notice the difference of how we treat them when they try our site. On top of that, it was a great partnership with Sportech and the Connecticut Lottery with having these great retail locations that are opening up around the state. We actually mentioned yesterday there was a fourth sportsbook open and two more actually opening tomorrow. So we'll have a total of seven sportsbooks opened by the end of this week on the retail side, and three more coming soon after. So when we -- once those are open, we're going to work very closely with our partners there to drive a venue to the online site. And I think that's going to be a really useful strategy that will be successful based on seeing that strategy used in other markets. So we think it's going to be a -- Connecticut is a market where we may start off and just keep growing over time because we think that we have an opportunity to really put those assets to use in a way that will be really unique for us in that marketplace.

Got it. And then just one quick housekeeping item, and I apologize if I missed this. But did you give Colombia revenue for the quarter?

We did not give exact Colombia revenue. It will be in our 10-Q. It grew more than 100% compared to last year, but it's somewhere a little south of 10% of revenue.

The next question is from the line of Edward Engel with ROTH Capital.

I was wondering, is there -- or has there been any interest in launching -- or in licensing or trying to make increment to license a third-party brand that might be more widely known and sports fans, and then maybe use that for launching a complementary sportsbook product?

So we have two great brands that we use in the United States, and they're both regional and national in nature. The Rivers is a little more national. The SugarHouse brand is really regional that was expanded up from New Jersey to Connecticut. And at the end of the day, we look at all options to consider everything. But what we're really excited about is we've proven that the local nature of our local marketing, local brands really resonates a lot with them. Something that we are very comfortable the current strategy is working, as Kyle referenced earlier. Remember, four online gaming revenues in the country, spending a lot less and others already get to that level. And we feel that as a company, we always have to evaluate all options available. But having said that, we're very comfortable and very excited by the ability to continue doing what we're doing.

Great. And then just given some of the success that you've had with cross-selling in the iGaming to some of your social gaming customers. I was just wondering, do you think there's any opportunity to even think of an acquisition on the social gaming side, which would maybe give you access to an even larger database to target with iGaming's products?

Yes, that's definitely an interesting idea that we've definitely discussed internally. Certainly, that's a worthwhile idea if you can find a product that appeals to a casino demographic. Certainly, that's something that could be a nice fit with a company like ours, but you certainly have to look around for all the different options there. We have a really strong business development organization that evaluates those kinds of opportunities. And those are things that I think are -- could be relevant in the future if you look to build databases, which is something that I mentioned earlier, is something that we definitely would benefit from.

The next question is from the line of Mike Hickey with The Benchmark Company.

On Canada, just sort of curious how significant the gray market is there? And how competitive the operators are?

Sure. That's a great question. And I think it comes down to, really, no one knows the answer for -- no one really knows the answer on the skill and size. What we do know is that most of the market historically there has -- the gray market is really focused pretty heavily on the sportsbook side of things. So certainly, I think there's going to be some players already in databases or platforms and they also were competing in the core regulated market. On the casino side, though, one thing we're excited about is the ability to really promote the social casino product there to an audience that may not be as familiar with a casino brand as we're focusing on in the casino category. Get players early exposure to the type of experience that we have.

In a strange way, Michigan was the opposite where Michigan had a very large retail database from several of the operators there. And right away, you saw those players come online. The question will be how much of the grey market sites that are able to transition without any sort of delay. You've seen in some European markets -- some of those European markets delay the ability to kind of launch a grey market side into a real regulated market here that's going to be no delay. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how many of those brands do cross-sell to the sportsbook real-money marketing. But I think the advantage we have, as I said, is that the casino category really hasn't been one that's been heavily promoted in that market in the past. And now we're near as much as sportsbook, so for someone like us, who obviously is very attractive to the casino opportunity there, we think that market will be exciting for us.

Nice. Just to clarify, the existing operators, you would anticipate that they, in fact, would -- with the provincial licenses then as opposed to sort of staying under their current construct? Is that sort of -- or do they -- can they stay sort of in the gray market and continue to compete?

Yes. Well, it's kind of hybrid. My understanding is that we'll actually be able to convert from the gray market to a regulated legal market environment by applying for some licensed products that we will be applying for.

Okay. And then in New York, are you able to leverage the Rivers retail casino there in terms of the database or 90 other opportunities to sort of bringing advantage in that market?

Yes, the plan is to do so.

Certainly. All right. Last question, you said 20% share in Colombia. You're late, you sort of arrived on the scene lately. You've had a lot of success. Does that sort of encourage you to look beyond Colombia and sort of the broader Latin America landscape for sort of expansionary growth?

It does really -- it does give us extra confidence and validation that our strategy of going into that market and not giving it a short focus -- not being short-term focus or really building out product, localizing it, localizing the teams, developing strong leadership teams and really preparing ourselves for the next phase of expansion. We were correct when we anticipated years ago that, that market would be one that would have a great opportunity for growth, but also be a stepping stone for other markets in the region. Since then, you've seen Brazil's legalized sports betting. The regulations are still being worked on, but we're hearing some rumors of that may be nearing conclusion there, which will be a positive. Argentina has been legalizing. Mexico is legalizing. We're talking about large populations.

And what's exciting is that the payment vendors, the banks we use, the location providers, the teams, the products, the language of the site, all the things that we invested so heavily in are going to work really well for those other markets. And so we think we have a real advantage to be able to take the success we've had in Colombia and export that or really leverage that to other markets in the region. So I would say that the answer is yes. That's an area of high interest for us, the region. And I think the excitement to go there early and really build the technology of that market on our same platform that we're going to use for other markets was really helpful. A lot of companies now that kind of are coming in the market late are looking to buy local companies there.

But then you have the local companies already on their own platforms, different from the long-term global platform or the operator. So these terms exist -- co-exist in two different platforms, which creates larger efficiencies. For us, we are confident that when we do go to other markets in that region that obviously will be using the same platform that we use globally, which will create a lot of efficiencies to our development organization and making sure the marketing between all the different markets are all utilizing the same tools. So we're really excited for that region in the future given the success we're having in Colombia.

There are no additional questions waiting at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Richard Schwartz for any closing remarks.

Great questions. In closing, I'd like to repeat what I shared last quarter. At no time in our history at RSI have I been more excited about how strongly we are positioned to exceed in this dynamic industry. We are strong, and we are growing stronger by the day. We continue to successfully gain market share across new markets, including very heavily contested ones like we just experienced in New York and Connecticut. We have ample growth opportunities ahead of us. For example, in the last 6 months, we entered two markets, Arizona and Connecticut, with a population of 11 million people. In the next 6 months, we're going to enter Ontario, New York, Maryland, Louisiana, which is about 4x the population of 45 million people in these markets compared to 11 million in the last 6 months. So a lot of growth is ahead for us -- ahead of us. We continue to demonstrate our ability to grow the top line while remaining flexible and prudent in how we invest in marketing. And when the rest of the industry begins to rationalize how they market and bonus players, we believe we will have a sustainable competitive advantage as nothing will change for us as we're already operating rationally today. This is why the best is ahead for RSI. Thank you for joining RSI's third quarter 2021 call.

That concludes the Rush Street Interactive third quarter 2021 earnings call. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect your lines.