How PLAYSTUDIOS Uses Las Vegas Principles To Outplay Its Competition

“It’s just so refreshing to come across a company that actually gives back and cares about their players,” Stephanie Hall told me, summarizing her relationship with PLAYSTUDIOS (NASDAQ: MYPS), the mobile gaming company where playing slots on a phone can earn free trips to Las Vegas, cruises, restaurant experiences, and more.

As the 2024 million-dollar Grand Prize winner of the social casino’s inaugural myVIP World Tournament of Slots (WTOS), the small business owner initially thought she was being scammed when the company first contacted her with an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. “Don’t give them your information,” her husband warned. “They just want your social security number.”

But Hall had been playing MyVegas on her phone for over a decade after being introduced to the platform through an infertility support group forum. She took her chances. What started as a coping mechanism during a difficult period became a gateway for her and her husband to pay off tax obligations and high-interest debts. They reinvested the remaining money into their HVAC business, doubling revenue and securing their retirement plan in the process.

“We went from struggling to keep the business afloat to having the financial freedom to actually grow,” Hall shared. “It wasn’t just the money. It was knowing that a company we’d trusted for years actually delivered on something this big.”

PLAYSTUDIOS Built The Las Vegas Experience Inside Your Phone

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PLAYSTUDIOS operates a unique space within mobile gaming, providing free-to-play social casino games rewarded through real-world experiences. Unlike traditional casinos where players gamble for money, myVIP loyalty players earn points via time investment, unlocking hotel stays, dining experiences, and travel opportunities the more they play. Fifty thousand freely earned loyalty points sent Hall and her husband to the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort for the world’s largest slot tournament, ultimately changing their lives forever.

“When you’re building beautiful hotel resorts, it’s all about creating an experience for a player,” David Pascal, Head of Corporate Marketing, explained to me. He began his career as a lead game designer and marketing manager at Silicon Gaming before entering the Las Vegas casino and resort world by co-founding Qurious Mobile. “So even though we’re building a game, we always think about it as, in a strange way, a guest experience.”

PLAYSTUDIOS’ DNA stems from his brother, Andrew Pascal, the company’s founder, chairman and CEO, whose Las Vegas pedigree includes leadership roles at Golden Nugget, The Mirage, Bellagio, and later as President and COO of Wynn and Encore Las Vegas. The company operates on Sin City’s VIP principles, rewarding consistent platform allegiance with real-world benefits. Since going public via SPAC in June 2021, PLAYSTUDIOS has maintained a focus on relationship-building over user acquisition.

“For our most engaged players, they actually have a host, just like casinos’ most engaged customers have a personal host,” Pascal continued. “So if I was coming to town, I would call up. ‘Hey, Dean [an executive with PLAYSTUDIOS], I’m going to come down this weekend. Can you take care of it for me? And while I’m here, I’d love to go to Nobu on Friday night.’ And he’ll say, ‘hey, great, thanks. Stand by.’ An hour later, I’ll get an e-mail. My room’s booked, my reservation’s booked.”

The company has strategic partnerships with MGM Resorts, Virgin Voyages, Wolfgang Puck, IHG Hotels, and more to drive the virtual gaming experience offline as players earn myVIP points through time spent playing games. The platform has distributed over 17 million rewards valued at $864 million to 11.7 million players worldwide.

PLAYSTUDIOS’ Surprise-And-Delight Las Vegas-Style Power Plays

Building a mobile-first business is not without its challenges. For a casino, “All you have to do is stand there and look around the room and you can tell if your product is working: if people are happy or if they’re not, because you’re living in and amongst your customers,” Pascal compared. “But when you build a game, we code, we do presentations and then we ship it and it just goes out. And so you have no idea unless you’re at an event like [the WTOS] how it impacts the players.”

For an industry with high customer acquisition costs, where player retention averages about 30 days vs. Hall’s ten year journey, PLAYSTUDIOS very much understands what drives the pursuit of luxury. It develops emotional currency with players by giving first without asking anything in return. With 2.63 million active users daily, the company has clearly done something right in designing games, yet Pascal insists it’s not just about the games. The company employs a systematic approach of “surprise and delight” to keep players engaged.

Take the “surprise and delight” of this year’s WTOS: Wheel of Fortune legend Vanna White ran a social media campaign partnership encouraging followers to comment with their favorite PLAYSTUDIOS game for a chance to win a trip to the Bahamas tournament. When the winner posted an offhand comment about wanting to have her wedding during the all-expense paid trip, Pascal’s team arranged for a dream double wedding with a myVIP player who also wanted to get married during the tournament. What neither couple knew until minutes before their nuptials was that White would be walking both brides down the aisle.

“This is the favorite part of what I do,” Pascal said. “This whole surprise and delight thing. When you get to grow really above and beyond – if you talk about companies like Nordstrom’s and customer service stories for Zappos or restaurants like 11 Madison Park or resorts like Wynn – you’ll find these stories of people going way above and beyond doing specific things that are not in the normal course.”

Pascal’s team has coordinated marriage proposals at Nobu with engagement rings delivered on sushi platters and secretly flown families across continents for tournament reunions. When a Toronto couple who’d won a trip last year couldn’t afford to return to support the man’s sister, who won a place in this year’s tournament, PLAYSTUDIOS flew the couple down as a surprise.

“We were interviewing the sister and the brother and sister-in-law came out and surprised her, and everybody was screaming and crying,” Pascal recalled. “The family had just gone through some really hard stuff with illness in their family and they definitely needed a good moment.”

The PLAYSTUDIOS Poker Playbook: Six Las Vegas Style Lessons For CMOs

Meeting Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, the 2025 World Series of Poker champion and owner of eight WSOP bracelets, during the 2025 World Tournament of Slots was another of PLAYSTUDIOS “surprise and delight” twists for their players. He was invited to try his hand at slots while supporting his mother, one of 500 contestants competing for another million-dollar grand prize. Over our interview, Mizrachi offered poker strategies CMOs should add to their corporate playbook.

1. “I’m not afraid to lose. That’s what got me where I am.”
   Test and fail fast while learning even faster. PLAYSTUDIOS has endured market shifts, competition from sweepstakes-based gaming, and a post-SPAC valuation reset, yet analysts maintain a “Buy” rating because the company keeps iterating with speed and conviction.
2. “You’re not playing the hand. You’re playing the person across from you.”
   Understand emotional psychology. Much of PLAYSTUDIOS success comes from structuring its games through four core emotional drivers: anticipation – from qualification paths; achievement – via VIP progression; belonging – using community events; and possibility – with life-changing prizes. All four exert influence on a player’s desire to continue playing, especially during challenging life moments.
3. “I want them to have a good time because I want them to come back. I’m looking for blood, but making it a fun experience.”
   Extract maximum value while making customers feel welcomed. Traditional freemium games nickel-and-dime users while PLAYSTUDIOS makes them feel like VIPs even when they’re not spending. Its business model balances the equation, overdelivering with incentives that ultimately leads to profits.
4. “I might fail 100 times, but that one time will make up for the 100 times you lost.”
   Think long-term customer lifetime value over instant conversion. PLAYSTUDIOS accepts lower short-term gain over immediate revenue extraction to build emotional equity and advocacy compounding over time. This creates success stories like Hall’s, inspiring others to continue playing.
5. “I’m more instincts and feel player. It’s experience. It’s all about position hand selection, when to bluff, when not to bluff.”
   Understand each customer journey stage and know how and when to play your hand. Early-stage users need nurture and reassurance; mid-stage users need momentum; high-value users need recognition. The wrong offer at the wrong moment bluffs out your position and undermines your strategy.
6. “I’ve been in situations where I’ve been at the worst parts of my life, but I just never gave up. I know how talented I am. And I just knew my time will come at certain situations and it might take a day, might take months, take a year, but don’t worry just keep pushing. Keep pushing and you’re going to make it.”
   Loyalty is a long game. Long-term customer relationship building requires resilience through market cycles. Public companies facing a maturing market with declining revenues will sometimes cut experiential marketing. PLAYSTUDIOS flew 500 people to the Bahamas and gave away over a million dollars to players who’ll tell friends and family how they won without needing to spend a dime.

Smart CMOs understand the world is shifting from a transactional economy to an emotional one. Consumers don’t want to be managed; they want to be remembered. They want recognition and belonging, not retargeting and segmentation. They want possibility, not personalization for personalization’s sake.

“People ask if winning changed our lives,” Hall said, reflecting on why she continues to tell others about PLAYSTUDIOS. “Honestly, it gave us back our lives. We weren’t just surviving paycheck to paycheck anymore. We could actually plan for the future.”

As Las Vegas battles declining tourism, the social casino market is projected to grow from $8.15 billion in 2025 to over $15 billion by 2034. Success comes from engaged users who stay longer and spend more. But knowing customers aren’t loyal if they’re only rewarded when spending, PLAYSTUDIOS makes its games sticky by bridging virtual and physical worlds, where the time investment players make on their phone unlocks IRL opportunities to win real life money.