National casino operators are a great for people all around the country. Some of these large casino companies allow guests to find discounts and complimentary items at home and in Las Vegas. For years casino guests have visited Caesars Entertainment properties around the country to earn Total Rewards points to use in Las Vegas. Last year MGM Resorts International opened MGM National Harbor in Maryland and purchased 50% of Borgata in Atlantic City, NJ to add to their M Life Rewards properties around the country. They should be adding MGM Springfield to their roster of casinos next year.
Caesars and MGM Resorts are the two largest Las Vegas casino operators in the country. However, they aren’t the only Las Vegas casino operators with properties inside and outside of Las Vegas. Two companies recently expanded and should give access to Las Vegas to even more people.
Penn National Gaming And Boyd Gaming Expand
In total, nearly 20 casinos around the country will have access to Las Vegas through different casino operators. Penn National has agreed to buy Pinnacle Entertainment for $2.8 billion. In coordination with this deal, Pinnacle Entertainment will sell four Ameristar properties to Boyd Gaming. You can read about specifics of the deals here.
Once the deal is complete Penn National Gaming will operate a combined 41 casinos and racinos throughout the country. This deal will give Pinnacle casino customers from Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and other states access to the Penn National Gaming players club, Marque Rewards.
M Resort and the Tropicana are both owned by Penn National Gaming and a part of the Marquee Rewards program. It’s difficult to imagine that the current relationship between Pinnacle’s My Choice Rewards and MGM Resorts’ M Life Rewards will be affected by this deal after this deal is finalized.
In a separate but simultaneous deal, Boyd Gaming will acquire four of the casino-hotels. Ameristar St. Charles and Ameristar Kansas City in Missouri, Belterra Casino Resort in Florence, Indiana, and Belterra Park in Cincinnati, Ohio will become Boyd Gaming properties.
Boyd Gaming has 24 properties around the country including eight in Las Vegas. The properties include three in downtown Las Vegas – California, Fremont, and Main Street Station. Five properties are located in Las Vegas – Aliante, Gold Coast, Orleans, Sam’s Town, and Suncoast. Boyd Gaming operates Cannery casinos but they have a separate players club that doesn’t link with Boyd Gaming’s B-Connected and the other casinos.
National Casino Operators In Action
Before moving to Las Vegas, I used to spend most of my casino budget on properties that had a link to Las Vegas. I lived equidistant from the Connecticut casinos and New Jersey casinos. Since most of the casinos between the two markets didn’t have Las Vegas partners I would frequent Total Rewards casinos in New Jersey.
These casinos allowed me to use rewards locally or when I took a vacation. Las Vegas wasn’t the only casino destination I would visit. The rewards offered discounts in other cities that I could explore. The Penn National Gaming and Boyd Gaming deals will allow more people to have easy access to Las Vegas the way I did. Consolidation usually isn’t a good thing for business. In this case, there might be a small upside for casino visitors around the country.
