Pinnacle Entertainment casinos to become part of Penn National Group & Boyd

https://www.reviewjournal.com/busine...-in-2-8b-deal/

Pinnacle Entertainment, which owns a lot of small casinos in the eastern US, will be bought primarily by Penn National Group, which also owns a lot of similar casinos, and also owns the Tropicana and M in Las Vegas.

Here is the way the existing Pinnacle casinos will be distributed:

https://res.cloudinary.com/stephens-...e_Dec19-17.jpg

The blue will go to Penn National, and the red will go to Boyd, which operates the Coast casinos, among others.

Penn National's best known brands are Hollywood Casino and Argosy Casino, but they have others, as well: http://www.marqueerewards.com/Locations

Pinnacle's myChoice Rewards program will be going away, but it's not clear what will happen to player statuses and reward credits.

Penn National operates Marquee Rewards, and Boyd operates the B Connected program.

With this acquisition, set to be completed in the summer of 2018, Penn National will operate 41 casinos, which will be second to Caesars.

However, 35 of those 41 casinos will be in the central or eastern time zones, with the only exceptions being properties in San Diego, Las Vegas (2), northeast Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. They also have no properties in the Atlantic City market, nor will they after the Pinnacle purchase.

Caesars also has more tourist-friendly locations, such as Lake Tahoe, North Carolina (near Smokey Mountain National Park), and Atlantic City.

Most of Penn's properties will be in locations primarily appealing to locals.

One thing I have noted with Hollywood casinos/Marquee Rewards is that unlike CET, playing at one of their casinos does not generate offers at others. I have only received offers from Hollywood casinos that I have actually played at, except once they acquired Tropicana I began receiving offers from there even though I had never played there. With CET once I played at one, I began to receive offers not only from Vegas but others in various locations that I had/have never played at. Even Mlife, once I played in Vegas, started sending me offers for Detroit, which while not that close to me is probably their closest location to me geographically, as well as Beau Rivage in Biloxi.

The only one of the new locations I have been to is Meadows in SW PA. I went there once for a few hours 2 years ago or so when I was driving in that area, and got some nice offers to return (which I didn't use as it was a one-off that I was in that area) and still periodically receive decent offers. This is unlike Hollywood which stops sending anything after a few months of no visits.

A Hollywood is also the only casino that has ever no-mailed me. There is one off I-80 in eastern Ohio that I used to stop at regularly as a rest stop, sometimes won a little sometimes lost a little but consistently got offers as my coin in was consistent. On a visit with my husband I won $2k on the way out the door and after that they quit sending me offers.