Rush Street Logo overlaid on top of an image of a city at night with blurred lights of cars driving by. Rush Street CEO Hints at US Run it Once Poker Plans for 2023 Rush Street Logo overlaid on top of an image of a city at night with blurred lights of cars driving by. Rush Street CEO Hints at US Run it Once Poker Plans for 2023
Key Takeaways
  • Rush Street Interactive (RSI) CEO Richard Schwartz used the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call as an opportunity to praise its development team, which for the last two months has included Run It Once Poker (RIO).
  • During the Q&A portion of the earnings call, Schwartz stressed that a player’s experience is ultimately more important than marketing spend.
  • “Marketing is necessary to attract players, but long-term players will migrate to those sites that they like the best”

“[Building] innovation on the product side … is going to differentiate our user experience so that players have a reason to play with us when they have a choice” Rush Street Interactive (RSI) CEO Richard Schwartz used the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call as an opportunity to praise its development team, which for the last two months has included Run It Once Poker (RIO).

Schwartz also briefly mentioned online poker, a product that RSI currently does not offer. The fact that he mentioned the vertical while answering a question on where he saw opportunities to increase revenue strongly suggests that an online poker product is in the works and that it will likely play a role in RSI’s plans to be profitable by the second half of 2023.

“We’re very optimistic and excited by continuing to build innovation on the product side,” Schwartz said during Thursday’s call. “It’s going to differentiate our user experience so that players have a reason to play with us when they have a choice.”

Meanwhile, poker professional Phil Galfond, the founder of RIO, revealed that RSI has been following Michigan’s invitation to join the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA) and that both RIO and RSI believe the invite is a good sign that the US online poker market is heading toward a period of growth.