The Mirage closed recently, and as part of their final days they offered a promotion where they gave away $1.6 million in prizes as part of awarding the unclaimed progressive amounts left on the slots and table games before closure. One player didn’t like the idea:
More of an observation that I think this was a scam. They set the payout at $1.6m but with the influx of players trying to win a portion of that money, the Mirage likely raked in much more than that amount during the advertised days.
Sherry
It was most definitely not a scam. They publicly announced a prize pool and they awarded it.
This was one of the choices they had as covered in the gaming regulations. They could have considered other options – for example, the amount accrued on the progressives could have been transferred to another casino. This is what Bally did when the Tropicana closed. But instead they opted to have one last hurrah at The Mirage.
In the process, it was a boon for business for them – there were reports of lines awaiting to play the slots, and even people paying money to take over someone else’s seat to play. It certainly got The Mirage some attention, and they probably made some money in the process.
Does that make it a scam? No. They publicly announced a prize pool, they awarded that prize pool. It’s well within their right to use this as a marketing tool to try to drive some attention and business in the final days of the resort, where otherwise it would likely be slowly grinding to a halt.
There are plenty of things we can be disgruntled with casinos about. Being savvy marketers is not anywhere close to the top of the list. And players got to ultimately benefit from an unusually generous promotion as part of the casino’s closure.
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