Rush Street Interactive may be the latecomer to the New Jersey online gaming market, but with its game offerings, mobile apps and an enhanced new partnership with Konami Gaming, it is quickly finding its niche just months after officially launching late last year.
Rush Street Interactive operates the www.PlaySugarHouse.com – an online casino brand that piggybacks off of Rush Street’s brick-and-mortar SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia just across the Delaware River from New Jersey. Last September, the platform launched in New Jersey through a partnership with Golden Nugget in Atlantic City.
Last week, Rush Street teamed up with Konami to announce that PlaySugarHouse will be offering several of the game-developer giant’s titles such as Gypsy Fire and Fortune Stacks in the New Jersey market for the first time.
“These Konami games are found at hundreds of casino locations worldwide, and we’re the first to bring them to New Jersey’s online real-money space. Everything from the graphic animation to game play is the same as the land-based slot machines, and it’s right in the palm of your hand,” said Richard Schwartz, president of Rush Street Interactive.
The partnership builds off of a long-running relationship between Rush Street and Konami with www.SugarHouse4fun.com, a social casino site that served as a precursor to the current arrangement.
“This expansion of Konami slot content to SugarHouse Online Casino is a continuation of our longheld collaboration with Rush Street Gaming, dating back to the earliest years of our company,” said Steve Walther, senior director of marketing & product management at Konami Gaming, Inc.
“As gaming entertainment is evolving to mirror changes in consumer consumption, we’re thrilled to offer top Konami games to leading online platforms such as PlaySugarHouse.com,” Walther added. “They’re taking the same games you find at the casino and launching them online so players can wager and win on their favorite games through any personal desktop device or mobile smartphone.”
The addition of the games is a momentum boost to a brand that has enjoyed a strong showing since entering the market just four months ago.
While Rush Street isn’t able to disclose its user or revenue totals, Eilers & Krejcik Gaming estimate monthly revenues of $100,000-$150,000 for PlaySugarHouse. But there are indications that the true figure is well higher: the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement reports that the Golden Nugget – which has two other brands under its license – earned an average of $1 million in additional online casino revenue per month following the launch of the SugarHouse brand.
This includes a whopping $4.8 million haul in December 2016, the highest monthly sum in the brief history of New Jersey internet gaming and nearly $2 million more than the closest competitor for the month.
Indeed, while PlaySugarHouse may have entered the market three years after many of its competitors, it has quickly made up for lost time.
“We’re a bit late, but at the same time that was a decision that was made here in-house – that we were not going to launch until the product was ready for prime time,” said Mattias Stetz, chief operating officer at Rush Street Interactive. “What prolonged this period primarily was that we developed our own platform, which makes us very unique in the market.”
Delaying the launch not only afforded Rush Street the opportunity to build an exclusive and customizable platform from the ground up, it provided the time needed to launch with a full repertoire of games – something their market research revealed that gamers in the state were desiring. Just four months after launch, the SugarHouse brand now offers more than 300 games and is continuing to build its out library.
The respected SugarHouse brand, which draws significant visitation from western New Jersey, has also proven to be a key catalyst for attracting online players.
“People trust the land-based brand and are more willing to try the online vertical of that brand. Therefore, it’s very important that we keep our brand promises across the board,” Stetz said.
PlaySugarHouse’s fully-functional mobile platform – available in both IOS and Android – has also been popular among players.
“Often, operators scale down the mobile version. But we have the same functionality on the desktop version as we do on the mobile version,” said Stetz. “And we went live with both at the same time, which is something that is really appreciated by players.”
Rush Street’s foray into the state’s igaming market also could reap longer-term benefits in the form of an established operational track record in the space.
This could prove invaluable should other markets in which it has a land-based presence opt to legalize the activity in the coming years. In addition to its SugarHouse property, it also owns casinos in Pittsburgh and Des Plaines, Illinois – near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport – and it is opening a new facility in Schenectady, New York in February. All of three of these states have at least flirted with the idea of legalizing internet wagering in recent years.
“We wouldn’t have invested in our own technology and platform if we didn’t have the hope and belief that other markets in the U.S. would be considering legalizing or regulating online gaming,” said Stetz.
Stetz said that Rush Street’s internal philosophy of giving back to players what they deserve and being fair and transparent in its loyalty program has also resonated with clients.
“I’ve worked in this industry for over 13 years now, I’ve never heard customer feedback so positive and even using the word “fair” about online casinos,” he said, harkening back to his days in the European igaming space. “We’re getting tremendous feedback from our customers, and we also see that customers are coming back month after month – so it’s been a really good start.”
