As Kansas becomes the first state in the nation to allow state-owned and operated casinos, one Sumner County casino developer is proposing to develop its first proprietary player club program for the Lottery.
    Marvel Gaming President Roger Wagner said the idea was formed to allow the state to also own its customer list and related information about its patrons.  
    “When a gaming company owns a casino, it also wants to own its customer list because the most important asset a casino owns is its data base of customers,” Wagner said.  “Information about customers is far more valuable than the computer systems, themselves.”
    Wagner said the idea to develop a player loyalty club for the state came out of initial discussion with the Kansas Lottery Commission.  The idea of leveraging the databases of both the Lottery players and the state’s four casinos was intriguing to his team, Wagner said.
    Wagner said after that meeting, they returned to Las Vegas where they began looking at criteria for a player loyalty club that cross-marketed between Lottery players and casino customers, “to promote revenue enhancement for both the lottery and the casinos.”
    The team was successful in developing such a plan, which has been clearly outlined by their technology group.
    “If we are selected as the facility manager for the Sumner County Casino, at our sole expense, we have volunteered to design a fully built patron loyalty system for the state that will, at a minimum, be connected to the Trailhead data base for cross-promotional purposes,” Wagner said.
    “With our past success in developing player clubs for casinos and integrating databases for cross-promotional purposes, we can design and implement this program for the state before we open the doors to Trailhead.”
    Their plan differs from the loyalty card programs of other developers, such as Harrah’s, which provide incentives to export customers from regional locations with high gaming tax rates like Kansas  to other gaming destinations, such as Las Vegas, where the rates are considerably lower.
    With each customer only having a limited amount of discretionary dollars to spend on gaming entertainment annually, Wagner said he’s committed to keeping those within the state.            Wagner said a rewards program that is not suited to the local region will not benefit the state, such as the Total Rewards Player Club touted by Harrah’s Entertainment for the proposed Sumner Resort Casino. 
    Harrah’s has said their program will call upon 40,000,000 members to patronize its new casino proposed at Exit 33 of the Kansas Turnpike.
    “Harrah’s is the ultimate industry expert in exporting players from regional casinos where the gaming tax rates are high into their resort casinos where tax rates are low, primarily Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
    “There is a finite amount of discretionary gaming dollars to be spent in any one regional market and Harrah’s through its Total Rewards Club will provide incentives for its customers to have a good part of that money spent in their casinos in other states where the tax rate will not be as high as it will be in Kansas,” Wagner said.
    “On the other hand, Marvel Gaming will design all of its promotions in a way that maximizes the spending of the regional discretionary gaming dollars in its Kansas casino.”