Earning Tier Credits at MGM Rewards: Empire City Edition

After my visit to MGM Springfield to scope out the tier earnings situation, I realized I had another option that I could check out roughly a similar distance in a different direction.

I hadn’t been to Empire City Casino since their acquisition by MGM, as I had moved closer to the more traditional CT casinos and MGM Springfield. But for a few years, Empire City Casino was in fact the closest one to me, a less than 45 minute drive from my apartment when I was working in New York City.

So, I thought it’d be a great time to check the place out, see what had changed, and see what the tier earnings situation looked like.

First off, I was quite surprised at how little had changed. Unlike most other MGM casinos I had visited since the pandemic, the amount of change at Empire City was nominal at best. Machines were still in long, compact rows, an aspect abandoned in most of the other casinos in an era of social distancing. Many of the games that I had seen on my first visit in 2017 were in the same locations nearly five years later.

There were some new games, installation expansions of popular games that had been hard to get on previously, and so on, but it was most of an incremental evolution than anything else. That said, it was incredibly busy, so that incremental evolution is probably not hurting them much.

Like in Springfield, I monitored $100 worth of coin-in on 15 slot machines. Empire City doesn’t have real video poker, so I did not attempt any play on those for a comparison. Also worth noting is that I did not earn a single MGM Rewards Point, but there was the old Empire City meters accruing points on screen. So I’ve replaced the MGM Rewards bucket from my first chart with this one.

Also keep in mind that I’m a Gold member of MGM Rewards, so these numbers would presumably factor in the 20% bonus for Slot Dollars and on-screen points:

Machine	Denom	Tier Credits	Slot Dollars	On-Screen Points
Midnight Eclipse	1 cent	96	$0.17	16
Thunderhorn	1 cent	88	$0.17	16
Red Hot Tamales	1 cent	104	$0.17	16
Jinse Dao Tiger	1 cent	80	$0.16	16
Wild Fury	1 cent	80	$0.17	16
Eureka Reel Blast	2 cent	80	$0.17	16
Bier Haus	1 cent	88	$0.17	16
Quick Hit Mechanical 5-Reel Wild Blue	1 cent	65	$0.17	16
5 Treasures	1 cent	80	$0.16	16
Tree of Wealth: Jade Eternity	1 cent	80	$0.17	16
Triple Double Diamond Free Games	5 cent	80	$0.17	16
5 Frogs	1 cent	88	$0.16	16
Quick Hit Mechanical 5-Reel Wild Red	1 cent	64	$0.17	16
Very Cherry	1 cent	80	$0.16	16
Ultimate Fire Link: By the Bay	5 cent	80	$0.17	16
15 SLOT TOTAL	—	1,233	$2.52	240

Like with the data at MGM Springfield, there are things we can learn here.

Tier Credit Earnings Vary, But Are a Bit More Uniform

The nature of the way these games are set up means they are likely to be a bit less diverse than slots in the nature of their structure and payback, and that seems to bear our here. A full half of the slots offered exactly 80 tier credits, roughly the midpoint of the ratio I saw in Springfield.

There was only one slot that fell below that number, and I intentionally played two variations, in two banks in different parts of the casino, to see if that was a blip, No, the Quick Hit mechanical reel slots gave a full 20 percent less in tier credits than anything else.

One can surmise that these machines potentially pay better than the standard penny denomination and above, if MGM is using the strategy that tier credit earnings are based on the house advantage of the game. All machines in New York under this lottery-overseen format must pay 90 percent or above, so perhaps the Quick Hit machines are more like 92 percent.

My earnings of 1,233 tier credits against $1,500 coin-in isn’t drastically far off from the 1,318 I earned in Springfield. Springfield earnings could vary much more wildly, depending on the game selection, as a lower house advantage machine would accrue much more slowly. So I don’t consider the two to be that far away from each other, given that understanding.

Slot Dollar and On-Screen Points Earned At a Consistent Rate

The slot dollars on every machine earned was either $0.16 or $0.17, and the on screen points was always 16 points (worth 16 cents). So in the case of Empire City, the earnings are not based on the tier credits, at least today.

If both buckets are indeed their own credits, which I’m struggling to understand if that’s really the case given to my knowledge you can’t spend Slot Dollars at Empire City, even though it showed accrual while there, that would mean 40 percent of the comps earnings rate at Empire City vs. MGM Springfield. So that’s kind of a depressing thought, even factoring in the potential for the games at Empire City to pay a bit better given that mandatory payback minimums.

Of course, the comps earned at Empire City can only be spent at Empire City, and there is a more limited base of options to select from while there. Still, the fact that $1,500 of coin-in yielded about $5 in comps, including my Gold tier 20 percent bonus, whereas it yielded $13 at Springfield, feels a bit underwhelming by comparison.

Of course, that $1,500 of coin-in would only yield $3 in comp dollars with Caesars Rewards, so it could always be worse.

Slot Dollars Can’t Be Spent at Empire City

In the write-up for the new MGM Rewards, it explains that you earn VLT Dollars that can be spent for food at Empire City. My assumption is the on-screen points are what those are, since that’s how it worked before the MGM takeover – the onscreen points were your comp dollars.

But at the same time, I saw Slot Dollars accruing on the app, and showing up on the kiosk. But there’s no way to redeem Slot Dollars on the machines like at other MGM properties. There’s no interface, buttons, or anything that let you access that, which is clearly a limitation of the system that these machines run under in this New York Lottery scratchers model.

Each bucket was accruing at a slightly different pace, and were at different values throughout the day. I had 523 points on my account, presumably points left over from the pre-MGM days, showing on my account upon arrival, but my Slot Dollars bucket was at a different number.

I didn’t attempt to spend my points before leaving, so I’ll have to see what happens when I do. But on the surface it looks like half of your comps earnings can be used for actual comps, spent on site, and the other half will await you when you visit an MGM property that accepts slot dollars, like MGM Springfield or Borgata.

No MGM Rewards Points Earnings

Perhaps not surprising, but yet surprising at the same time to me, was there was no MGM Rewards Points earnings. That is where more than half my comp dollar earnings were located (and therefore probably the missing 60 percent of the comps vs. playing at Empire City).

That’s a bummer, and even a bit frustrating, as I don’t know why one should get punished for playing at one casino vs. another. I could see if the machines pay better earning less comps (and tier credits), but instead Yonkers players just get punished overall.

Certainly this could change, especially if MGM gets permission to convert from a lottery sanctioned facility to a more traditional casino with Vegas-style slots and live table games. But for now, it’s certainly not going to deliver the best value when it comes to comps.