BetRivers Builds a Small-State Poker Network
Rush Street Interactive is treating online poker as a customer engine, with Maine and New Jersey in view.
BetRivers Poker has built a small-state footprint that now stands out in regulated U.S. online poker. The operator is live in West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Michigan, and New Jersey is next in line once regulators approve the launch.
If that happens, BetRivers would become the first U.S. online poker network to span five states with shared liquidity. Pokerfuse says it is already only the second operator in the country, after WSOP, to connect multiple regulated markets under a single player pool.
The broader U.S. poker market has changed only gradually. Over the past six years, Connecticut, West Virginia, Rhode Island and Maine have legalized online poker, bringing the total number of regulated online poker states to nine.
BetRivers has been especially willing to launch where other operators have not. The report says the brand is currently the sole online poker operator in West Virginia and Delaware, and that it launched in Pennsylvania before expanding into Michigan, Delaware and West Virginia.
That makes the smaller states more than just side projects for Rush Street Interactive. Jesse Wilke, RSI’s director of poker marketing, told Poker Industry PRO that Maine is a market the company has strong interest in because of its track record in smaller and underserved jurisdictions.
Maine is a particularly small target. The state legalized iGaming earlier this year and has a population of about 1.4 million, making it one of the smallest regulated markets in the U.S.
Wilke’s view of poker is different from the way many operators treat it. RSI does not measure poker purely on direct revenue and sees it as part of a wider ecosystem that helps acquire customers, improve retention and strengthen engagement across the platform.
That idea also shows up in BetRivers’ Rakeback Revolution program, which rewards players based on the rake they generate and lets those rewards be used across the broader BetRivers platform, including casino and sports betting. The point is to turn poker into an entry point for other products, not an isolated vertical.
Delaware is one of the clearest examples of the model in action. The state’s igaming market is overseen by the Delaware Lottery, which awards a single contract covering online casino, sports betting and poker across its three racinos. RSI won that contract in 2023 after no competing bids were submitted, and Delaware’s online poker revenue has since run above previous levels.
West Virginia tells a similar story. The state legalized online poker in 2019 and joined MSIGA, which allows participating operators to combine player pools across states. Even with that opportunity, industry interest was thin, and BetRivers moved in within months while other operators already offering online casino in the state chose not to add poker.
Pennsylvania’s own move into the shared market widened the backdrop further. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said Governor Josh Shapiro signed the state’s MSIGA agreement on April 23, 2025, making Pennsylvania the sixth member of the poker pact and expanding the player pool by more than 50 percent to over 38 million Americans.
The board also said online Pennsylvania poker players could begin joining multi-state games on April 28, 2025, with BetMGM and PA Borgata Online included in the rollout and others expected to follow soon. For BetRivers, approval in New Jersey would give it the country’s first five-state shared-liquidity poker network.
