MGM Resorts International reported that in Q2 2021 it successfully attracted more of its legacy players to sign up to its current BetMGM platform through incentives. But the company said fewer BetMGM players signed up for its M life Rewards program during the quarter.
The company, which jointly owns BetMGM with Entain, also reported a 40% increase in the number of Detroit customers who signed up for M life Rewards since the pandemic. Executives said the increase should help allay fears that its omni-channel advertising strategy is cannibalizing its customer base.
Programmers at BetMGM are also “working around the clock” to launch several product enhancements, including a single wallet option across most of its active jurisdictions, before the start of the NFL season.
The figures and pronouncements were included as part of MGM Resorts’ investor presentation for Q2 2021. BetMGM was also a topic of discussion during an Aug. 4 earnings call to discuss the quarter.
More Detroit Customers Sign Up to M life Rewards
Slides that accompanied the presentation show there are currently more than 36 million M life Rewards members. The company said all BetMGM players are enrolled in M life Rewards.
According to MGM Resorts, 15% of new BetMGM players in Q2 2021 were legacy players active with MGM, up from 10% in Q1 2021. The company defines legacy players as M life Rewards customers who were active in the 12 months prior to acquisition.
“We are heavily into our loyalty push.,” MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle said. “We have appointed several senior executives, both here and at BetMGM, who are marketing and focused on doing exactly that … [focusing on] the amount of interchange between BetMGM and M life and vice versa. We also have a strong push in moving regional play through BetMGM and the regional properties back here to Las Vegas.”
When asked during the Q&A portion of the earnings call what drove more legacy players to sign up to BetMGM in Q2, Hornbuckle said that, in Michigan, “a lot” was behind it. “We continue to push on programming and hosts in terms of incentives and to otherwise to get them to sign up our customers. And we just have more [people] active in the database in terms of making BetMGM known to them and available to them.”
MGM Resorts also said 31% of new M life players in Q2 2021 were from BetMGM, down from 44% in Q1 2021. But Hornbuckle seemed dismissive of the figure, focusing instead on how fast and strong the number of Michigan customers has become. The company “just saw that many more” in Q1, he said. “The volume between Q1 and Q2—and, in Michigan, how it grew—is overpowering. I think that explains it more than anything.”
COO Corey Sanders concurred. “We’re just touching the surface,” he said. “And when we talk about BetMGM and what it means to a property, our Detroit active M life customers in Q2 were actually up 40% from Q4 2019. We’re seeing that sign-ups in that market actually translate to brick-and-mortar customers. We had a record market share in Detroit.”
Data from the Michigan Gaming Control Board (MGCB) show BetMGM led all operators in terms of revenue and market share in June, at $33.8 million and 38%, respectively. The revenue figure includes online poker because the MGCB doesn’t separate it from online casino revenue.
Hornbuckle said the 38% shows that MGM Resorts’ omni-channel advertising strategy—where it focuses on the entirety of its customer base, both brick-and-mortar and online—is working. “The idea that omni-channel can and will work and not be cannibalizing is something I’m very excited about,” he said.
“Working Around the Clock” on New Features
MGM Resorts also presented a slide that showed several product enhancements to its BetMGM products were in the works, including customizable layout capabilities, Face ID and new payment options—including gift cards and Apple Pay.
It also showed a single wallet feature, where one set of login credentials could be used across all of the states it is active, excluding Nevada. The company said it expects to launch the single wallet feature “in the coming months.”
Said Hornbuckle: “The team at BetMGM is working around the clock on this to get it prepared for football. And I think it will speak to a lot of things of note—loyalty, retention and our ability to lower our ultimate CPA, which is the goal here, will stick.
