No need for subtlety
Based on a series of posts made by Phil Hellmuth on X, it appears that the all-time World Series of Poker gold bracelet winner is about to be announced as a spokesperson for BetRivers.
On Tuesday, Hellmuth four videos and three pictures from a photo shoot in San Francisco in which he is decked out in BetRivers gear from head to toe. He never once says “BetRivers” in any of the videos, but it couldn’t be more obvious. He even tilts his cap slightly in one of the videos so the camera can better see the logo.
And though Phil Hellmuth is a poker player, it looks like he will be a pitchman for both BetRivers Poker and BetRivers Sportsbook. In one video, he poses at a poker table and in the one above, he is wearing hockey gloves and holding a stick and points out the other sports equipment with which he posed. Hellmuth also comments, “I bet on all these sports,” so again, not too subtle.
Hellmuth made bank with RSI stock
Hellmuth used to have sizeable holdings in Rush Street Interactive, the operator of BetRivers. In 2020, he invested $300,000 in dMY Technology Group, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Later that year, dMY bought Rush Street Interactive and became a public company under the Rush Street name and ticker (RSI) on the New York Stock Exchange.
After RSI decided to shut down its affiliate program this summer, Hellmuth announced in July that he sold his 165,000 shares of RSI for $10 per share. He claimed that he did not like the “macro economics conditions” at the time and did not mention the affiliate program.
RSI closed Wednesday at $14.30 per share.
BetRivers is in the poker business
BetRivers has an online sportsbook presence in 15 states and Ontario. Perhaps most notably, though, particularly because Phil Hellmuth is signing on, RSI launched BetRivers Poker in Pennsylvania about a month ago.
BetRivers Poker is the US-based reincarnation of Run It Once Poker, founded by poker pro Phil Galfond. Galfond took the risk of creating an online poker room from scratch in 2019 in an era when most use pre-existing platforms.
not enough people put their money where their mouth is and actually played
Run It Once was very well-regarded, but not enough people put their money where their mouth is and actually played. The online poker site shut down at the start of 2022.
All was not lost, however, as the attempt was a step towards Galfond’s goal of launching a poker site in the US. Rush Street Interactive bought Run It Once in March 2022; at that point, it was just a matter of time before RSI took the site live in the States.