Phil Galfond hinted at it. On December 31, the longtime poker pro and founder of Run It Once Poker announced the online poker site’s closure. It stopped running on January 3 of this year. After many years of hard work to create a unique site that would cater to a range of players, the post-pandemic traffic decreases forced a decision. That decision was to close it.
Galfond shifted focus to his Run It Once poker training site, which had long been an industry leader. But he was also not done with the poker site completely. He simply said, “Run It Once Poker is now headed down a path to enter the legal and regulated US market.”
That was the cliffhanger. But the new season just started and answered a lot of questions.
Galfond Tweets
The news came from Galfond’s Twitter account on March 2.
“Run It Once Poker’s platform and team, myself included, were acquired by Rush Street Interactive (RSI), with the plan to solidify, enhance, and integrate our software into their platform. We spoke with many potential partners over the last 18 months and are very excited to be on team RSI! They share our values: honesty, integrity, fairness, and transparency – and not only with their players. They stood out to me in the fair and honest way they dealt with us.“RIO Poker created a platform that people loved, with features and innovations that the poker world was excited about, but we also heard things like ‘if only they could iterate on their software faster’ or ‘I’d move all my volume to RIO if they were bigger.’ Well, now we are bigger – much bigger. And now we add to our existing tech team the expertise and experience of those who have built huge poker platforms in the past. I’m extremely excited about what we’ll be able to accomplish together.”
What is Rush Street?
Those who pay attention to the US igaming and sports betting market probably heard the name. Rush Street Interactive is relatively young, having only launched in 2015 with a social gaming site. They linked that social gaming site with various casinos, starting with SugarHouse and then expanding to Rivers Casinos in several states.
RSI’s first real-money online gaming site was PlaySugarHouse in New Jersey. That launched in 2016 and expanded two years later to include an online sportsbook. Its online sportsbooks expanded to include Rivers Casinos in various cities as well. And then it expanded to Latin America, Colombia to be specific.
In the US, RSI is now live in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, Michigan, Iowa, Virginia, West Virginia, and Connecticut. All of its sites are licensed and regulated by state governments.
In the Details
If Galfond hadn’t tweeted the news, one may have found it in the details of Rush Street’s full-year 2021 results release.
The 2021 financials contained some interesting numbers. Revenue hit $488M, which was an increase of 75% year-on-year. And that allowed a prediction of 2022 revenue of $580M to $630M.
The company also made some moves in the fourth quarter of 2021. It added Louisiana and Arizona to its market list. RSI signed a partnership to open a retail sportsbook in the Hall of Fame Village in Canton, Ohio. And outside of the US, RSI looked toward an igaming launch in Ontario in Canada and signed a partnership with Grupo Multimedios in Mexico for online casino and sportsbook action to launch later in 2022.
Oh, and there was this: “Acquired the technology platform and onboarded the team from Run It Once Poker.” For the price of $5.8M, RSI absorbed a unique online poker platform for the US market…and beyond.
This will allow RSI to expand into the online poker part of the US market, capitalizing on its success in other verticals thus far. Galfond is able to remain affiliated with his platform and guide it into the future, more conveniently in the US where he lives with his family.
Details will likely become more transparent in the coming months.
https://twitter.com/PhilGalfond/status/1499177431323734016?s=20&t=BVZMVE36GBCwyJgsZ7x-GA
