Identity & mgm rewards merger gossip

I heard end of year, June 1st, end of June and in the fall. As your title says "gossip". When I was there in March my host said she didn't know for sure but most likely end of the year and as soon as she knows I'll know.

 

I've heard both June and the end of the year.

What surprises me is it seems like it always takes FOREVER to switch over the players' club for any casino takeover.

 

I’ve heard from Cosmo people that the transition will not be soon. It is taking longer than originally expected. I think it took MGM about 3 years to integrate Borgata. Maybe wishful thinking on my part but I hope it takes a good long time.

 

I think one thing that may be complicating it is that they should be trying to match up existing Cosmo accounts with existing MGM accounts.

In the case of MGM selling Mirage, there didn't have to be any dealing with cash-equivalent comps. Everything you earned at Mirage while MGM owned it stayed with your MGM account. If you already had a Hard Rock account, you just started using their card. If you didn't have a Hard Rock account, and you wanted one, you had to set it up (I think - I don't remember seeing anybody say they automatically had one set up).

In the case of MGM and Cosmo, MGM is liable for any Identity Points you have on the date of the switch. And nobody wants people to end up with two MGM accounts. They should want to dump your Identity Points into your existing MGM Rewards Points bucket.

So they have to come up with a conversion scheme with a bunch of criteria as to what is considered a valid match between an existing Cosmo account and an existing MGM account.

And if they're testing it (fingers crossed), they may be running into a bunch of problems, because data is always dirty. So it may be an iterative process where they are testing it, finding problems, fixing them, testing again, etc. Until they get to a point where they have what they consider an acceptable number of exceptions kicked out that will have to be handled manually.

At least that's how it SHOULD be done.

 

Anyone that's worked on a major corporate data migration knows it's always more difficult than meets the eye. I'm sure their non-IT folks are asking what's taking so long...

Given the rate they're going, it might just make more sense to wait until January 1st for the conversion when MGM Rewards resets. If they convert Identity Points to MGM tier credits in Q3 or Q4 then it won't do much good as tier credits expire the last day of December.

 

Not to mention Cosmo TCs and MGM TCs are calculated totally differently.

Cash-equivalent points are easy, $1 here = $1 there.

But if you do $10,000 coin-in on slots at Cosmo, you get 4,000 TCs. At MGM, you can get anywhere from 4,800 (on a 6% hold machine) to 11,200 (on a 14% hold machine).

I'd be surprised if they try to convert TCs. And that's another problem they have to deal with - even if they flip the switch on Jan 1, some Cosmo players will be in the middle of their player year.

 

From the latest earnings call it sounds like it’s a least 3-6 months out. With no specific dates given Identity might be safe through 2023.


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Gonna hit Platinum just in time if that's the case. Curious to see what the transfer will look like. I am in the Restaurant business so my spend is drastically tilted toward F&B, which made Identity work well for me.

 

The incentive for them to do it ASAP is that they are paying out way more in points under Cosmo's system than they will under their own.

But operationally, I think they would benefit from doing it in early January. Due to the player year extensions Cosmo did due to covid, they ended up effectively converting a lot of people to a player year that ends Dec 31. So they will have way fewer people with "stranded" Cosmo tier points if they wait and convert people's tiers based on their Jan 1 tier status instead of trying to deal with actually converting tier points themselves, which obviously I don't know if they have a plan for that or not.

But If I was in the middle of my Cosmo player year when they flip the switch and I had earned 10,000 Cosmo tier points, I'd be pissed if I didn't get some number of MGM TCs added to my account.

 

Heard from host Jeff when there last week latest date is next Feb. He also said Kevin’s working at Tropicana who’ve hired his new firm. At least I think he said Tropicana, memory a little blurry that day

 

@FormerlyKnownAsCosmoSlotVP is this the secret? You don't strike me as a Tropicana guy but I guess it all comes down to $$

 

@jimbovegas it wasn't Fountainbleu?

 

Would have thought they would wait until after the Super Bowl.

 

I knew he was cooking something, and making plans for a new slot club somewhere. My guess would have been at the new Hard Rock AKA, Mirage for now. Before he came to Cosmo, he worked for the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood FL as their corporate vice president. So he has ties to them .

But he also has deep roots with MGM, who he came up through.

 

Well that would make my day if he was going back to Cosmo and MGM but I will be ecstatic if it's Fountainblue.

 

Pretty sure he soured on MGM, which is why he ended up at Cosmo. And once Cosmo was under MGM control, he was gone. Highly doubt he ever goes back to MGM. Fontainebleau could certainly use his talents! They are starting from scratch over there.

But reuniting with the Seminoles made a lot of sense to me.

 

MGM Rewards is significantly worse with benefits as a whole... Tier credits is only 1 aspect of a player's card. You earned point play (aka freeplay from playing the machines) much faster with Identity (especially being Identity Platinum). With MGM... no airport pickup, no $250 per year, no free nights for you, no free nights for friends, no half off buffet, no BOGO on show tickets, no bonus Identity games that Cosmo would offer throughout the year, etc.