The True Cost of Casino Comps in Las Vegas

Hey everybody, I'm Josh.

And I'm Rachael.

And we've been going to Las Vegas for over 2 decades.

We've been able to bring you along with us to Las Vegas over 30 times to some of the nicest hotels and restaurants during our time on YouTube.

One of the biggest factors to us returning to Las Vegas as often as we do is by taking advantage of casino loyalty programs and comps.

Which are complimentary items and services given out by casinos to encourage players to gamble and stay at their properties.

In this video, we're going to show you how we've been able to do it.

We've tallied our comps over the past year and it equals almost $10,000 in free rooms, casino play, and dining credit.

Unfortunately, this year is the first year where the comps simply don't pay for themselves as they have in the years past.

Sadly, it appears that payback percentage is down and so is comp value in 2025.

Stick around to find out what comps we received, what tips we've learned along the way, and how much gambling it really cost us, including how much money we lost.

Let's go!

This video will focus on the casino programs we utilized most in Las Vegas over the past year. Including MGM, Wynn, Caesars, and Fontainebleau Rewards, but can be applied to many other programs in a similar manner since all Las Vegas casinos have their own rewards programs. To get started, you will need to sign up for a player's card during your next visit if you haven't done so already. Beware, you should be prepared to lose, but by taking advantage of these programs, you may be able to come out on top. In this video, I'm going to show you how to find and utilize comps, comps we got in 2024, 5 top tips to maximizing comps earned, and a breakdown of my gambling wins and losses to see what level of play is needed to attain them, and include value earned with each casino stay. So I wanna start off by showing you how simple it is to monitor your own loyalty status as well as your comp level. So this is MGM Rewards. I have found this to be the easiest program to work through. You can see you've got your name, your tier status, what our tier credits are, which we just reset, your MGM Rewards points, free play, slot dollars, And if you have any questions about them, all you have to do is click on it. It'll tell you how you get it. And this talks about how you actually get your MGM Rewards points by playing slot machines and also by spending. It'll tell you what you can get if you start increasing your tier level. So you can see if we went from Gold, we're getting resort fees waived, $100 dining credit, enhanced rooms. Platinum, if we move up get $600 in air travel credit, $200 tier status, and so on. But our big thing is gonna be coming over here to offers. So you can see right away it's already showing me that our offer right now is 4 comp nights, $225 in free play, and $100 in resort credit. So if we wanted to book that, it's very simple with MGM. Let's go ahead and let's say we're gonna book New York, New York. You just click Book Offer, and we want to go in February. You can see what nights you don't have comped, like here on February 13th, but almost every other night we could go ahead and book up to 4 nights. And the good thing is, if you decided, I don't want to stay at New York-New York, I want to stay over at Bellagio, which the good thing is you can see right here it says comped, so we go switch over to it and Bellagio's got us free. Let's go ahead and book Bellagio right now. So you'll see at the top we have the Premier King and Premier 2 Queen, 3 nights comp for both of them. Now if we want to spend a little bit extra, we could get a fountain view or ship view, but if we're looking just to have a free room, we're gonna go ahead and look at the Premier King. The nice thing is if you want to see how much value you're getting for the room, like what you would have to pay if you wanted to book the room yourself, You can see right here it would be $289 for the first night, $479 for the second night, and then $579 for the third night. So that's going to be your upcharge you're likely to see when you're going from a Thursday to a Friday to a Saturday night. We do not get resort fees because we are Gold. Otherwise, you could look at that, it's $50. So that's where I'm looking at later to see how much money I'm earning through these comps. So this would be $1,300 that we'd be getting for it. It's very simple, you click Add to Cart. Now with us switching to Bellagio, they do give a lower amount of free play generally for Bellagio versus like New York-New York, but you'll see that when you're booking it. And then if you need any enhancements, you can do that. Otherwise, you just click Checkout.

And there you go.

For $0, we could book 3 nights at the Bellagio in February. And then that's where we can see the amount of value that we're getting for it, $1,347. Proceed to payment and you're done. I do want to also point out that with MGM Rewards, I think it's the easiest program to be able to monitor your wins and losses. So I can actually go back all the way to 2017 Let's just pick 2018, all the months, and see how much I played. So coin-in was $27,000, coin-out was $13,000, but jackpots of $11,000, leading to a loss of $2,600. I can go to 2021, see how things were then. You can see I definitely lost a bit more, but it's very easy to track. And this is going to be something that we're looking at later when we talk about value and wins and losses.

Free hotel rooms is how you can expect to get the majority of value from the casino loyalty programs. Some of them will require you to pay resort fees while others will not depending on your player status ranging from $30 to $60 per night. We spent 17 nights in Las Vegas hotel rooms based solely on my casino play in 2024 and paid $0 for our hotel rooms. The price of rooms fluctuate based on demand which is driven by conventions, sporting events, concerts, weekend and holiday rates, and anything else pulling people to Las Vegas. Now I'm going to show you the rooms that we got and the values placed on them, and include resort fees that we did not have to pay. In February, we stayed at Aria for 3 nights in a deluxe 2-queen room valued at $1,133. In April, we stayed at the Flamingo for 3 nights in a Flamingo Premium room valued at $938. In June, we stayed at the Bellagio for 2 nights in a fountain view king room valued at $846. In September, we spent 3 nights in a Blue King Mountain View Room at Fontainebleau worth $1,586. During that same trip, we spent 2 nights at Wynn in a Wynn Panoramic King valued at $1,045. In December, we stayed at Wynn again in the same room valued at $825. And wrapping up the year, we spent 2 nights in a Terrace 1 Bedroom Suite at Cosmopolitan Valued at $1,250 for a total room savings of $7,623. Free play is another way casinos try to entice you to stay at their property that can be used at most slot machines, video poker, keno, and other games. For free play in February, we got $125 at Aria, $125 at Bellagio in June, $100 at Fontainebleau in September, $100 at Wynn in September and again in December, and then $225 at the Cosmopolitan. For a total free play of $775. Resort credit is another way to get comps, and for us, we generally use it at restaurants and bars. In February, we got $100 at Aria. In June, we got $100 at Bellagio. In September, we got $100 at Fontainebleau. At Wynn, we got $100 in September and December, and at Cosmopolitan, we got $100 for a total resort credit of $600. When you add up the room value, free play, and resort credit, it comes to $8,998. The These are not the only comps you can get, but are the most obvious. No resort fees is one of the biggest tier perks that you can get and can quickly save you $100 to $250 per stay. Complimentary room upgrades with MGM Gold is one that we were able to utilize to get a better view, and in the past we've been able to get a suite upgrade with that. Skip the line at check-in is easily one of my favorite perks. Some even have VIP check-in areas outside the standard check-in line. Some hotels have taxi line skips and buffet line passes. With MGM, free concerts were offered multiple times, but we were not able to take advantage due to work schedule. We have also received slot tournament entries which offer free food and liquor along with possibility of much higher free play than normal. Free cruises are offered by both MGM and Wynn. In the past, we have done a free cruise on Royal Caribbean based on our status with MGM, and we will be using a free cruise offer with Holland America through Wynn, which was valued around $1,400 of actual value after you take out taxes and port fees. Complimentary late checkout is something that we have been able to get with our status. At Wynn, we were both able to utilize $150 birthday food and drink credit for a total of $300 in value. There are also backend comps that can be added at the end of your stay if your play qualifies. See a host at the end of your trip to see if you can have anything charged during your stay removed. Let's talk tips. Number 1 is very easy. Sign up for a casino loyalty program. There should be a desk on every casino floor where all you have to do is be 21 years old and have a valid ID. Once you get one and Ensure that you use it at every machine you gamble on and give it to your dealer at table games. Tip #2: Link your players card to your room reservation and charge everything you purchase to your room. That way you can ensure all spend is accounted for. Tip #3: Focus your gambling to as few programs as possible, preferably 1 to 2, to get the most out of your comps. We like to stay, play, and dine at MGM Rewards and Wynn properties the most, so the majority of our gambling budget went to these properties. Bonus tip: If you're unhappy with one casino program, check out others. This past year I was unsure about MGM Rewards program, which is why we tried out other programs like Caesars and Fontainebleau, and you should too if unhappy with a casino program. Tip number 4 is to tier match when able. Casinos want your business and are willing to match statuses to lure you away from your current casino. This past year we were able to match status from MGM to Fontainebleau and then from Fontainebleau to Wynn. Both allowed us to get additional perks like dining credit at both. We were also able to offer match at Fontainebleau this year to get us free stays without gambling along with free play and resort credit. Each time you're signing up for a new loyalty program, ask them if they tier match to ensure you get the best outcome. They may not, but what does it hurt? Tip number 5 is to stick to your budget and don't chase comps. You will generally pay a lot more money trying to get to the next tier status than the amount you would gain from it. All right, before we get to my actual play, here's something to take into account. The hold percentage over the past 20 years has increasingly gone up, up, up, where downtown and the Las Vegas Strip have gone from 5.87% and 6.52%, up to now 8.63% and 8.12%. That means that for every $100 that you gamble, you should expect to lose at least $8. Here's an idea. Why don't you give me half the money you were gonna bet? Then we'll go out back, I'll kick you in the nuts, and we'll call it a day. All right, before we start digging into my ugly numbers for 2024, I do want to remind everybody that when the casino is looking at your comps, they are looking at theoretical loss, not actual loss. This focuses on your coin-in or dollar cycle through games, and many of them take into account hours of play per day as well. House advantage on the game you are playing also matters, so don't think that you will gain the same comps from table blackjack versus video poker versus penny slots. Typically, you will earn the most comps from slot machine because it is one of the worst games for the player advantage perspective. They are still very popular because they tend to be more fun and don't rely on perfect play. All right, and here is the difficult reality of gambling in Las Vegas, at least for me in 2024. We're going to start on the left-hand of the screen. This is my spreadsheet that shows basically all of our stays, how much resort credit, free play, room value we get, coin in, coin out, and net. So on the top left, you can see where our trips were, which hotels we stayed at, how many nights we stayed in each room, what rooms we stayed in. Extras is if we got an upgrade. So like we got upgraded to the fountain view. A couple of big things to point out on this is going to be coin in. This is going to mean how much money you cycle through a machine. Since all of these were slot, I did not do any table games in 2024. So you can see there was $84,000. I'm uncertain what the Flamingo was because I can't find that on their website yet. And then Wynn does not tell you exactly how much coin in and coin out you have. Instead, it just tells you whether you're a net positive or a net negative. I found out that I was negative $3,735 at Wynn, and I was able to come up with my coin based on how many points I had earned in the year. So that's where the coin in, coin out comes from for win and why you've got a little different color scheme going on here. The problem is losing every single trip is what kind of put me in a really bad spot. You know, $14,000 down gambling with one trip that was absolutely horrible, which was $4,800 at Bellagio. The only thing I can look at and say I'm a little bit okay with on that is that I was playing with a buddy of mine and so we were increasing our bets. But we obviously were not hitting with it. And then over here, I take my net gambling, I guess losses, because all of them were losses, and look at it versus the room resort credit free play net. And there's only 2 trips where I actually came out on top, you know, $38 at the Flamingo and then about $1,200 at Cosmo in December. For the first time that I've ever done this, my net value is actually in the negative. And so a negative $5,000, which is a really hard pill to swallow. You can see right here. In 2021, '22, '23, '24, every year our average comps has gone down, you know, from $2,600 down to just under $1,300 per trip. So since 2021, things have gotten cut in half. When I look at my value of comps versus my gambling losses, again, I said this is the first time I've ever had it where we've lost money in that, and it's a big loss. You know, we went from in 2022 a positive $12,000 to last year was $2,600 and now $5,000 loss.

It's really hard.

Um, definitely part of it is just bad run on gambling. You know, our payback percentage was 84%, which in years past I was able to look back and I think I was 87.5% to 91% payback. So this means that where the average casino is holding about $8 Out of every $100, they were holding $16 out of my $100. So that's obviously a really bad run on gambling, but it just went all year long. And then to do an even closer look, MGM, which I have the most data for, you can see here that my coin-in is almost double what it was in 2022. My losses are double, and my resort credit and free play is a third. Uh, 2021 was a bit of an abnormal year because Las Vegas was trying to bring back people during the pandemic. But in 2022, we had $1,100 in resort credit and free play. And this past year we got $300 and $450. That's total. That's a hard pill to swallow. And I think it's a part of the reason why we're probably going to cut back on our trips to Las Vegas this next year, unless we can see, you know, the payback percentage come back up or the, the comps come back up. But I like to be very honest with everybody. You know, I follow these rules, but clearly last year it did not work. I think I need to probably set my budget a little stiffer, and we'll see where we go. If you're enjoying our videos, don't forget to hit that like and subscribe.

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