Casino operator MGM Resorts has launched a real-money mobile casino tournament offering to guests using the WiFi system at nine of its Las Vegas properties.
On Wednesday, MGM announced that it had teamed with mobile gamers oneLIVE Inc on a new mobile gaming platform, easyPLAY Mobile Tournaments, which offers guests the chance to play against each other in regularly scheduled casino contests for cash prizes.
MGM’s new platform is accessible via the InteractivePro Tables at the Aria, Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Mirage, Monte Carlo, Luxor, New York-New York and Excalibur casinos. (Circus Circus’s WiFi system is apparently not sufficiently robust to handle the system.) MGM guests can also play anywhere on the property using their personal mobile device or laptop.
The tournaments feature classic casino games such as slots, bingo and video poker plus other social, casual and console games. The games include popular titles from developers Spin Games and Touchstone Games. and MGM promises that more games and tournaments will be added in due course.
To kick things off, MGM is offering the All Summer Long Winner Takes All Progressive Slot Tournament, which costs $5 to enter and offers the grand prize winner a minimum payday of $10k. There are also free-play contests but you still have to be 21 years or older to play.
MGM’s senior VP of biz-dev Tom Mikulich said the new mobile tournaments were “extremely user-friendly” and offered a new “element of competition” for MGM’s guests if they couldn’t be arsed to drag their weary asses all the way to the casino floor.
MGM is calling its new offering “the first digital and interactive tournament to be offered by a regulated casino in the United States.” The company held a beta test of the system last month and Nevada regulators have given their royal assent. Lovell Walker, MGM’s executive director of Interactive Gaming Development, told CNBC that easyPLAY would “lay the foundation for what we do in the future.”
