Rush Street Interactive - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Rush Street Interactive second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note that this conference call is being recorded today, August second, 2023. I will now turn the call over to Kyle Sauers, Chief Financial Officer. You may proceed.

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. By now, everyone should have access to our second quarter 2023 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 fact 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 condition.

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 second quarter 2023 earnings release and our investor deck, which is available in the Investors section of the RSI website at rushstreetinteractive.com. With me on the call today, we have Richard Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer. We will first provide some opening remarks and then open the call to questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Richard.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Thanks, Kyle. Good afternoon, thank you for joining us today as we discuss our second quarter 2023 results. As an organization, we are executing very well and have achieved positive Adjusted EBITDA during Q2, ahead of expectations. We continue to deliver top-line growth while capturing meaningful operating leverage and efficiencies that are driving our bottom line. I want to touch on a few topics today. Let me start off with a few high-level takeaways from the quarter. We're really pleased with our overall performance. We generated $165.1 million in revenue, which was up 15% from last year, and which again exceeded the Street consensus. Additionally, in the first half of 2023, we've improved our Adjusted EBITDA by over $54 million relative to the first half of 2022.

We are proud that almost two-thirds of our improved profitability was driven by revenue growth and improving operations, with the remaining one-third for more efficient marketing spend. These results set us up well for the second half of the year, where we continue to expect to be Adjusted EBITDA positive. From my perspective, our results reflect our commitment to innovation, customer satisfaction, and sustainable growth and profitability. The ability for us to achieve these results also validates the quality and commitment of our team, which I believe is one of the best in the industry. We continue to build upon our strong foundation as we have solidified our position as a top five operator of online gaming and sports betting in the United States. Growth in our domestic markets was broad-based. As in the prior quarter, we experienced year-over-year growth in both our online casino and sportsbook-only markets.

In fact, when looking at U.S. markets launched after 2020, along with our international markets, we grew over 35% year-over-year in the second quarter. This further demonstrates our ability to launch and grow in new markets by building our brand and enhancing the player experience. On the international front, we had another strong quarter. We continued to perform very well in the highly competitive Ontario market, as we are generating outsized year-over-year gains as well as sequential growth. Ontario has recently increased the amount of data they're sharing. Two things jump out to us. First, further evidence that our ARPMAU is significantly higher than the market's, coming in at well over 2x that of our competitors. Secondly, this is also the first time they've broken out the difference between casino and sports, with casino making up almost three-quarters of the market.

This trend is similar to what we've seen in US markets with iCasino and should provide an outsized benefit to RSI as future iCasino markets launch. Colombia, once again, was a strong performer, with revenue expanding over 30% compared to last year. During the quarter, we achieved growth of almost 50% when measured in Colombian pesos. In Mexico, we remain on schedule to see a ramp-up in contribution towards the back half of the year. Our approach here is similar to a strategy we executed in Colombia over a several-year period, which is to consistently localize the platform, to foster a market-leading player experience and cultivate the RushBet brand. Turning to prospective markets, we continue to see positive activity on the legislative front.

Given the economic prospects and the potential size of the iCasino market relative to the sports betting market, we continue to see iCasino more and more as a topic on state legislative agendas post the 2023 sessions. As we touched on during last quarter's call, Ohio's House added language to its budget to study the future of gaming, including iCasino. In late June, both the House and the Senate passed a bill that calls for a joint committee to study on this topic, which is expected to include iGaming. In addition, since we last spoke, there have been advancements in Maryland. As part of the fiscal 2024 budget, the State Lottery and Gaming Commission has been mandated to submit an iCasino study to the General Assembly before year-end.

Notably, a prominent legislative member in the state has expressed optimism about the potential for passage of an iGaming bill when the legislator reconvenes in January. In his remarks, the legislator emphasized the state's need for new revenue streams and recognized the significance that online casino could represent as a valuable third leg of the stool, along with existing online sports betting and traditional land-based casino markets. The commission expects the work on the study to begin later this summer and be complete by mid-November. We also continued to participate in discussions in states such as New York, Illinois, and Indiana, where progress was made this past year, but for one reason or another, didn't cross the finish line. In most instances, in states where we see progress, the topic doesn't simply recede, rather, it tends to evolve.

Those are the types of discussions we continue to see where there was active legislation this past year. We've also seen more interest from governments in the Canadian provinces as they evaluate legalizing online casino for private operators, following the lead of Ontario. Based on our success in Ontario, these efforts are potentially very exciting for us. As we've said several times before, we continue to remain confident over the long term, given the potential economics to government budgets, especially when compared to inflows from online sports betting. Turning to our promotional efforts, in line with our objective to deliver sustainable growth and profitability, we are constantly refining and optimizing our strategies. We continue to allocate resources, including product development, bonusing strategies, and operating priorities, towards retaining and serving customers and segments that align with our long-term financial objectives.

In other words, we focus on the highest value players who we expect to be long-term profitable. Our MAU and rMAU numbers for the quarter reflect these efforts to emphasize greater investment in higher value players. With this focus on quality and a more rational promotional environment in the market, combined with improvements and new features available in our platform, we are well-positioned and excited to head into the fall and the upcoming football season. On the product and technology front, we continue to innovate in both iCasino and sports betting as we look to drive engagement and retention. In iCasino, in addition to the many ways we improve engagement and retention with features like slot tournaments, bingo, and wheel spins, we've recently introduced a jackpot hot mode feature. This feature is designed to enhance the excitement of daily and hourly jackpots.

The way these jackpots work is that they are guaranteed to be paid out. Ahead of payouts, players are typically informed and are aware that their chance to win a jackpot is growing as the guaranteed periods approach. Thus, the final minutes of the hourly jackpot and the last hours of the daily jackpot are designated as the hot period, offering players a higher excitement level in anticipation of possibly winning the jackpots because someone is guaranteed to win within a set period. In sports betting, adding features to enrich our parlay and prop bet offering has been a priority. We continue to add features to encourage more parlay and prop bets. For instance, during the second quarter, we aggregated player props by league into distinct listed views, providing easier findability, more prominently showcasing prop bet types. The impact has been immediate.

Baseball prop bets this year in the second quarter were up more than 60% compared to a year ago. We are very excited with this addition and other merchandising improvements we're planning to release heading into the NFL and NCAA football seasons. Another example of strong player response is the success in the quarter with the use of our proprietary squares game during the NBA playoffs to incentivize players to place parlay bets. When we configured squares to be issued during the NBA playoffs for a same-game parlay, the percentage of same-game parlay handled for the NBA increased by over 150% relative to where we were during the regular season before we implemented this configuration. This is validation of the behavioral change we drove in players and a direct result that this innovative product inspired in our customers.

As we reach the midpoint of the year, we find ourselves in an excellent position. We continue to grow revenues, improve operating leverage, and achieve our goals. We have a robust balance sheet and plans to advance our proven and proprietary technology platform and operational discipline to grow profitability over time. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kyle.

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Thanks, Richard. Second quarter revenue was $165.1 million, up 15% year-over-year, ahead of Street expectations and with well-balanced growth across the business. As Richard highlighted, we're excited to have reached Adjusted EBITDA profitability in the second quarter, coming in at a positive $1.2 million. This is significant progress compared to last year's second quarter of $18.6 million EBITDA loss and last quarter's EBITDA loss of $8.7 million. We're in an excellent position to continue this Adjusted EBITDA profitability for the second half of 2023 and into next year. I'll dive a little further into our outperformance during the quarter, where we performed better than expected on revenue, with growth across the board in iCasino, sports, and both U.S. and international markets. We get asked often about our approach to sportsbook markets.

We have a great product and a well-established presence in those markets, and this gives us an impressive opportunity when iCasino gets legalized in sports betting markets. To put it in perspective, in the second quarter, in sportsbook-only markets, we only lost a little more than $1 million in aggregate, providing minimal drag on our results. In fact, excluding New York, our sportsbook-only markets in the aggregate were profitable in the second quarter. Looking ahead, we have a great opportunity to be profitable in all of our markets as we continue to execute on our strategy. We also continue to attract and focus on high-quality players, and our industry-leading ARPMAU of $359 in Q2 reflects this strategy. In total, our North American ARPMAU was up over 10%, both year-over-year and sequentially, validating the high-quality experience we offer.

Consistent with our past statements, we've continued our focus on investments in markets with iCasino, with US and Canadian MAUs up over 9% year-over-year in those markets. Regarding hold percentage, iCasino was in line with our typical expectations. When it comes to sportsbook, we had meaningfully better hold during the quarter. Some of this was due to favorable event outcomes, but as Richard touched on, the shift in our mix has been a contributor to our better hold percentage as well. Due to the efforts Richard highlighted, we have significantly improved our bet mix and also our player mix, both of which we believe are sustainable. We believe our sports hold percentage will structurally improve moving forward as a result. Moving on to gross margins, we improved by 640 basis points compared to last year, coming in at 33.6% on the quarter.

As we've discussed on previous calls, we expect meaningful improvements for the full year in our gross margins. Turning to marketing, we decreased spend on both a year-over-year and a quarter-over-quarter basis, while still making the right investments in new player acquisition and retention. We spent $40.4 million in the second quarter, down from $44.2 million last year and down from $49.4 million in the first quarter of this year. We have scaled back as we focus more on those markets with the highest expected returns over the long term and while we wait for new market launch opportunities that we expect to come in future quarters. Looking at G&A, we increased costs modestly compared to last year, coming in at $13.9 million.

We had some favorable impact from foreign currency during the quarter, and we've also been mindful of new investments as a result. We expect G&A costs to be back near or above our first quarter levels in the third quarter. We ended the quarter with $128 million in unrestricted cash and no debt. As we turn to Adjusted EBITDA profitability, our cash use will slow, and we expect to be more than fully funded to reach cash flow positive. We are tightening the range on our guidance for the year to $650 million-$690 million, increasing the midpoint to $670 million, up from our previous guidance. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Absolutely. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by 2. To ask a question, press star 1. As a brief reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. Our first question comes from the line of Dan Politzer with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Zach Silverberg (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, it's Zach Silverberg on for Dan. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the quarter. Just seeing some of your recent success in the international markets and some of your past comments and some of the recent legislative momentum in Brazil, can you just kind of talk about that market and, you know, other similar international markets that you guys are looking at and the potential for growth there?

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Sure, Zach. Hey, this is Richard. Yeah, I mean, we're looking to take advantage of the head start we have in Latin America. You know, as you know, we've been, having a lot of success there, it's not a, short-term program we've put in place. It's really long-term focused, and we have a tremendous amount of talent and sophistication in how we operate down there. When you look at these other market opportunities, you know, they're sizable when you look at the populations. We use reference that Brazil finally just issued their regulations after several years. That's a market with over 200 million people, which is larger than Colombia and Mexico combined, which is about 180 million combined. You have a really large opportunity there in Brazil. Peru has 33 million people.

They just legalized online casino and issued the first draft of the, not the first, issued the regulations, and that market is going to be going through a regulatory process with expectations, perhaps as early as middle of next year, they should be launching in a regulated environment. Chile is making progress, Argentina is making progress. We have ample opportunities and are evaluating each of them and identifying the ones that make the most sense for us to enter. We're really excited about that region, and we think we have a head start over most of the sophisticated operators in the industry, and a chance to really deliver some outsized results in that, in that region.

Zach Silverberg (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Just one follow-up. In your prepared remarks, you talked about some of the state legislative agendas. Just recently, we saw Ohio double their sports betting tax rate, and there's been some chatter on other states. Can you just maybe relay anything you're hearing about, you know, potential states increasing the tax rates or, you know, anything of that sort, either the sports betting or-

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Yeah.

Zach Silverberg (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

regulator side.

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

I certainly think that in some of the sports betting only markets, there wasn't a lot of generation of taxes, perhaps meeting up with some of the expectations that were sold to the states. I think that's probably what happened in Ohio. Certainly, we haven't heard much more on that topic, and certainly think that in the markets where you have online casino, which is an area where we still have a lot of strength in, you are seeing that the vast majority of taxes being generated are coming from the casino category.

We think that bodes well for the ability for that, that category to continue to be legalized in additional markets, to it's create additional tax flow for states like Ohio, who are pretty active in moving towards, you know, progress towards legalizing iCasino, which would then add to the, the tax bases that is generated from online gambling.

Zach Silverberg (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for your question. The next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with JMP Securities. Your line is now open.

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Director of Research)

Great, good afternoon, thanks for taking my question. Last quarter, you talked about revenue kind of falling quarter on quarter, and with actual results, you know, coming up, quarter over quarter. Just kind of making the assumption that you maybe beat that guidance by about $5 million or so, it's about, you know, the same amount you've raised your guidance for the full year. Is it kind of fair to assume that your guidance raise for the year, was just kind of on the back of that beat, or are you actually seeing improvement kind of in the back half that's, causing that optimism?

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Yeah, thanks for the question, Jordan. You know, as we talked about, we did have really good performance across the whole business. We had a little help from sports outcomes in the second quarter. It's still early in Q3, but we're, you know, we're tracking well against our plans. To your point, I think we beat consensus by about $7 million, raised the full year by $5 million. That I think the second half for us, in terms of the guidance, looks similar to where we were before. I don't know that I would equate it exactly the same way you did, because we do, as you can imagine, go through and reforecast the back half of the year.

We look at all the different markets, we look at how things are trending, we look at player values, and, and ended up in this, in this range that we're comfortable with for the $650-$690.

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Director of Research)

Okay, great. Then just for the follow-up, Kyle, you talked about you reiterated your EBITDA positive in the back half of the year. You know, just given the better-than-expected EBITDA result in the second quarter, is there a situation or a scenario where you can be EBITDA positive for the full year of 23?

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Yeah. There, certainly, within that guidance range that we offer and then some of the other contexts we gave, with kind of the trends for marketing expenses and G&A expenses, there would be scenarios that would cause us to be profitable or Adjusted EBITDA profitable for the full year. You know, thinking about the back half of the year, specifically, in the prepared remarks, we did, you know, we commented, still very confident in profitability for the second half. Very excited about what we achieved here in the second quarter. You know, Q3 could well be profitable as well. It kind of depends on where revenue comes in. You know, seasonally, it wouldn't be unusual for Q3 revenue to be flat or potentially down from Q2.

We'll see where it shakes out, particularly considering we had some good sports outcomes in the second quarter. You know, so having said all that, if, if revenue comes in, let's say, even with the second quarter, Q3 could be profitable from EBITDA perspective. If, if, if revenue is a little lower than that, maybe it starts to get a little tighter, but still very excited about profitability for the back half of the year. To your, your original question, certainly within the guidance range we've given, it's possible for us to be profitable for the full year.

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst and Director of Research)

I appreciate the questions and nice results.

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Thanks, Jordan.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Hi, good afternoon. This is Aaron, on for Chad. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the really strong quarter.

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Thank you.

Speaker 8

Obviously, positive EBITDA on the quarter was a great result. I'm curious, has anything changed in terms of your expectations around the magnitude of your profitability in the second half, just given some of the operating leverage and operational improvements you called out? I mean, it seems like there's more confidence out there, just generally, that the U.S. can avoid a hard recession. Just curious whether that plays into your views for the rest of the year. Thanks.

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Yeah. Thanks for the question. I think, you know, we, we haven't offered a, a, a magnitude of, of profitability in the back half, publicly. As you can imagine, we have our own internal, expectations. But for sure, we've, we've felt really good about the results to date. Obviously, the second quarter profitability came in quite a bit better than, than the street expected, and certainly better than we expected as well. I think we're, you know, revenue was strong, we're more efficient with marketing, our gross margins were good, G&A costs were kept under control. I think if all those things continue to trend, and there's no, there's no signs that we're not, not operating well and not achieving those and won't continue to, I think our expectations are, are higher.

You know, to the point of the last question, is it possible that we could be profitable for the full year? It is possible in that guidance range. I think that alone tells you that we're optimistic about the back half and in the future.

Speaker 8

Okay, that's great. As a follow-up, just wanna touch on iGaming competition for a second. There's a major competitor who recently reported that they'll be introducing an upgraded iCasino product in the near future. Can you just talk about what you're doing or areas you're really focused on to protect your position and continue to grow? Thank you.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Sure. Yeah, that's an area of, of expertise for our business, and we're investing a lot of energy to ensure that we stay ahead of the industry trends, and in fact, and in fact, pioneer a lot of things that are new to the industry, not just in the U.S., but even globally. It starts with obviously content. We're very quick to launch new content and add new content libraries, and be the first to launch new libraries, is something that's very attractive to our consumer audience. We're focusing a lot on personalization and using all kinds of algorithms to ensure that we have recommendation engines, to ensure that players are, are playing the right type of games. If they like a certain style of game, we wanna make sure we serve up another game like that.

We've been enhancing the user experience as well on the flows of the games, the game lobby itself, and adding animations and all kinds of ways for players to sort of engage in the games in a way that makes it easier for them to access the games and to play the games they're interested in playing. We've also really continued to really emphasize these. We've built a lot of tools ourselves that are proprietary technology, promotional game engines that are unique in the industry, and we build these, and we continue to evolve and improve them.

For example, we have a slot tournament engine that's really compelling, and, and we're the really only ones operating it the way that we are, and it's delivering a lot of value to the players because they wanna constantly come back and visit us because we're giving them extra chances to win from there. I think we're adding traditional, exclusive content, continuing to innovate in terms of the types of ways we add value to players. We have a bonus store that's unique in the industry, where players are able to pick out different fun activities to do. For example, they can redeem their loyalty points for a wheel spin or a entry into a high-stakes bingo game. These are again, features that are unique to our, our, to our company and our industry.

We've also have a community. We pioneered community play, community chat room in our industry across all casino games. We have a staff that's very heavily involved in engaging with the players and offering them much types of fun, entertaining experiences that delivers a retention, that's very helpful for us, too. I think along all these areas, we continue to invest in bringing out new features, new games, new meta games, and, and try to constantly stay ahead of the industry. We feel very strong about our product, and it's getting better at a very fast rate as well.

Speaker 8

Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Kyle. Appreciate the color and congrats again on this strong quarter.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Thanks, Aaron.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Jed Kelly (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Hey, great. Thanks for taking my question. You know, looking at your presentation, it looks like U.S., Canada, iGaming grew 21%, and then you mentioned in your remarks, you know, how, you know, the underlying profitability of the sports betting markets. Can you give us, you know, taking out your international markets, where are the what, what's the underlying profitability of your iGaming in, in, in sports betting states combined, those states which are operating?

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Yeah. So Jed, I'll take it, and I wanna make sure I understood your question, but one of the things we shared in the prepared remarks is that, our, our sports betting markets, in total, lost around $1 million this, this quarter. Without, if you take New York out of that, sports-only markets would have been positive. When we think about contribution, profit from any given market, that's including all of our, all of our marketing expenses, obviously all of our costs to operate in those markets, and then we've got our, our corporate overhead that, largely ends up in the, in the G&A line.

You could, you could do some back-of-the-envelope math and, and get close to what the other markets are doing, outside or that, that include casino, that covers that G&A cost, essentially, to get us to profitability here in this quarter.

Jed Kelly (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Got it. Then, you know, you, you talked about a lot in your prepared remarks about, you know, the potential to, to cross-sell the OSB database to when iGaming legalizes. Are you getting more, incrementally more confident that, that we'll see some legislation break your way in the next, you know, in the next 12 months?

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Yeah, I mean, I, I'd say that it's always hard to predict, right? You are seeing more, more states introducing legislation. Putting really serious lobbying efforts towards making some, having some movement. I mean, in Canada, you have a couple of jurisdictions there. In particular, Alberta is one that's really seems to be moving, you know, fairly, fairly fast in terms of appreciating the tax benefits, the consumer protections available from the regulation in Ontario. You're starting to see that other jurisdictions there are being marketed to right now, consumers in those jurisdictions that are not by operators who aren't paying taxes there. They certainly would like to sort of take the lead of Ontario and be able to generate some taxes up in, up in Canada from those other jurisdictions.

There's Quebec and British Columbia as well that are, that are showing various signs of interest. When it comes to the United States, you know, we mentioned in this, in our prepared remarks, a range of states, you know, including New York, Indiana, Illinois, and the ones that we mentioned, when you add those together, you know, it's about 60 million-- over 60 million of population, in states that have-- are working actively on legalizing iCasino. Currently, for comparison, iGaming is really only, really active in, in a population of the U.S. of 34 million people. You know, there's almost 50% more available-- more than 50% more available that's, you know, being worked on. We certainly think there's opportunity.

Of course, we don't know the timing as, as no one really does, but I can tell you that as we talked about, there's a lot of efforts are being made and preliminary work's being done. These, these studies that are being prepared are being used, you know, are being used potentially to then drive a quicker adoption by the legislators. We're, we're, we're, we're feeling good about the progress we're seeing in across the, the different North American markets.

Jed Kelly (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thank you.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Thanks, Jed.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Edward Engel with ROTH MKM. Your line is now open.

Edward Engel (Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. It was nice to see the marketing expense down 9% year-on-year. I was just wondering, it was also a sequential decline, too. Is this a fair run rate, you think, for the rest of the year, the kind of $40 million per quarter?

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Yeah. good, good question, Ed. Thanks. We, we came in a little better in the second quarter compared to probably where we originally expected. It's likely that the spend is closer to flattening out from here from that Q2 run rate, maybe a little uptick into Q4. I think, I think you're on the right path there. Obviously, we're gonna, we're gonna remain flexible with the spend. We'll see where we get the best value and best opportunities for, for returns and acquiring players, but I think that's generally the right way to think about it.

Edward Engel (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Then as I kind of think for next year, again, marketing expense down 9% year-over-year, would it be fair to assume that states which have been around for over a year, that marketing expense is actually down a lot lower? I guess, is there any kind of range you could maybe give us?

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Yeah, I don't think I'll, I'll go as far as giving a range today. We, you know, haven't given any guidance for next year yet. I do think we would expect to get, to get leverage over the, over the marketing line in 2024. We expect to grow revenue. As a percentage of percentage of revenue, I would expect to see some leverage there, but I don't think I'd want to put a specific number on it just yet, this far ahead.

Edward Engel (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Then if I could sneak one more in. Similarly, on the G&A side, only up 3% year-over-year, a bit down sequentially. Is there any lumpiness as we think about it? I think I remember you talking about maybe G&A coming a bit higher, but it seems like it's trending pretty well.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Yeah. I think, as you know, you've followed us for quite some time. We've been pretty conservative with the way we've built, built costs over the years here, and we're always mindful of the investments we're making. One thing I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we did have a little bit of a benefit from foreign exchange rate that lowered G&A costs in the second quarter. Probably expect Q3 and Q4 to be back near or maybe even above the Q1 G&A rate that was closer to $14.7 million, I think it was. There was a little bit of a benefit in Q2 that wouldn't necessarily repeat.

Edward Engel (Senior Research Analyst)

Really helpful. Thanks, and, congrats on the positive EBITDA.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Thanks a lot, Edward.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ara Masias with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Ara Masias (Equity Research Associate)

Hey, good afternoon. Congratulations on the quarter, and thanks for taking my question. On the slide deck, you talk about the prop bet list views, which helped drive 60% year-over-year growth for the MAU. Will you be expecting a similar result for the NFL as well? What else may you be introducing that's new for the NFL? Thank you.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Sure. Yeah. No, we put a lot of investment into really surfacing the right type of bets for the right players and the right mix of wagers for them and really making it easier for them to find the bets they really want to, to place. So this list view change that we made, a change to really improve the ability for our players to discover the bets they want. In fact, we're going to be doing the same thing for, for football season, and we're going a step further. We've actually gonna be introducing a really beautiful new feature for football season that's gonna be really highlighting the props, we call Prop Central. Really allowing our players to find all player props in a single place.

Right now, players have to go to an individual game and click on the game and find all the players that are in that game and bet on those player props. Instead, we're going to sort of unify it and create it so that it's a single place where all the players can visit together at one time. A player, a bettor can visit at one time and see all the players at the same time. That kind of thing is gonna be a real game changer, we think, in terms of improving the volume of prop bets. I think if you, if you heard us talk before, you know, player props are very popular in the U.S.

I think the daily fantasy industry kind of created a lot of interest in the player re- statistics and player results in the U.S. market, even relative to some other international markets. We've been really putting a lot of effort into not just growing the parlay bets, as we talked about earlier, especially the same-game parlay, but also the player props and really expanding the lineup of props and adding more features, including also for a football season, we'll be adding more things like live for single game props, more live bets on things like touchdown scores and other player statistics that will be able to be made up as part of a same-game parlay. We're improving the same-game parlay offering and the prior player props in particular. We're also adding some more personalization capabilities to our platform.

Again, we're really trying to innovate in this area and ensure that we get those volume of the player bets on the bet types that we're interested in.

Ara Masias (Equity Research Associate)

Okay, great. That's all. Thank you.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Thank you.

Kyle Sauers (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. There are no additional questions in the queue at this time, so as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'd like to pass the call back to Richard Schwartz for closing remarks.

Richard Schwartz (CEO)

Thank you again for joining us today. You know, with a solid financial position, a strong technology platform, and effective operational discipline, as I just said, you know, we're very well equipped to continue to successfully execute our strategy and position ourselves for further revenue growth and profitability in the future. We look forward to updating you on our progress when we share our third quarter results in a couple of months. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.