BetRivers and Rush Street Surge Amidst Market Changes
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00All right, we got some updated news here on Bette Rivers and Rush Street, a lot of earnings calls coming in.
00:10What did you learn from Bette Rivers?
00:12Yeah, so this was interesting.
00:14They had their earnings call, but then they went and they spoke to Needham at their technology, media, and consumer conference.
00:21And I thought it was really cool, Craig, because it's hard for a company like Bette Rivers, Rush Street Interactive,
00:28to be able to get across that they have a great product when you look at the states and you see the market shares and you figure out,
00:36okay, well, they must only have 5% because it's just not that good.
00:40And that's not the case.
00:42CEO Richard Swartz took his opportunity here to say, you know, other companies like FanDuel, DraftKings,
00:49they have massive marketing budgets, they have massive DFS databases that they can tap into,
00:55and we're doing things a little bit differently.
00:57And he talked, I thought it was interesting.
00:59He talked about a lot of the sexy topics in sports betting right now of prop bets and more parlays and variety of bets.
01:07And he said, you know, those are kind of like the stars on your football team, right?
01:11Those are your position players, your quarterback.
01:14But he said, we know that the war is won in the trenches.
01:17And so what does that mean from a business standpoint?
01:20That means some of the not-so-sexy stuff that goes into building a platform,
01:25like making sure the know-your-customer stuff, maybe it doesn't work one way for a customer.
01:32Well, they have two or three fallbacks that can then make sure it doesn't have to go to a manual review,
01:38drag things out, and create what they like to call in the industry friction for the user.
01:43Everybody just wants to make sure people can sign up, get their account funded, and start betting.
01:48And BetRiver says that they do that to a finer detail than everyone else.
01:53And it is interesting.
01:55They point to Delaware.
01:57Delaware is really the first state that they're in where they have a monopoly,
02:01and they're able to show all of this growth that they've been able to accomplish,
02:06even coming in and replacing a company who, from my personal experience living in Delaware, did not do a great job.
02:12But 888, they're now called Revoke, they're a legacy operator.
02:16They have 25 years-plus in Europe, and they know what they're doing.
02:22So BetRivers was able to come in, turn that market around,
02:25and so they think that this is really a great opportunity for RushStreet.
02:31Their stock hasn't been totally in the tank this year,
02:34but it has been bad since it fell off of $25 highs a couple years ago.
02:40But it's getting back in that $8, $9 range now.
02:44It's better than the $2.90 it was a year ago.
02:47And I think that RushStreet, now they're able to – they're showing profitability in their segments.
02:53They're showing that they don't have to be a sports betting specialist to do iGaming well,
02:59and they're showing that they are willing to put in the time to retain customers
03:05and build a better platform that helps retain those customers
03:08in order to shore up that segment of the market that they've chosen to make profitable.
03:13So Richard Schwartz is doing a pretty good job right now of selling the RushStreet story.
03:20And again, from my personal experience in Delaware,
03:23BetRivers platform has been operating fantastically.