TL;DR:
Casino loyalty programs remain largely transactional — spend to earn, earn to spend. Sports fandom is emotional, and it’s free real estate on every TV in the casino. Chalkline CEO Dan Kustelski argues that casino marketers should borrow from sports: lean into local teams and events (not pricey league sponsorships), fix the basics of mobile (can a guest even check their points easily?), and treat personalization as a series of small, measurable tests rather than an all-or-nothing bet. He also makes the case that direct mail has become a crutch — not because it doesn’t work, but because teams keep running the same campaign year after year without rethinking the experience.
Walk into almost any regional casino, and you’ll see the same thing: TVs tuned to whatever game is on, a sports bar packed during football season, and a loyalty program built almost entirely around how much someone spends. Those two things, sitting in the same building yet disconnected from each other, are the gap Dan Kustelski has spent the better part of his career trying to close.
Kustelski is co-founder and CEO of Chalkline. Previously, he ran an online sportsbook within a large multi-property casino group and spent two decades in sports marketing and sponsorship, including a stint at Octagon brokering fan-engagement deals between brands and teams. On a recent episode of Drivetime Marketing, he sat down with host Julia Carcamo to discuss what casino marketers are still missing in fandom, mobile, and loyalty — and where to start fixing it without a Vegas-sized budget.
Why Sports Fans Make a Better Loyalty Model Than Points Programs Do
Transactional Loyalty vs. Emotional Loyalty
Kustelski’s central argument is simple: sports fandom is one of the most powerful — and underused — models for guest loyalty casinos have access to, yet most aren’t using it well.
“A lot of America” has a favorite team, a favorite college program, and a favorite local rivalry. That attachment is automatic and emotional — it doesn’t need to be built from scratch. The opportunity for casinos is to associate their brand with those existing passion points rather than relying solely on building loyalty around their own product.
The contrast he draws is between transactional and emotional loyalty. Most casino loyalty tiers are still structured so that the only way to move up — or earn anything — is by spending. That’s the model other industries are already moving away from, and Kustelski expects gaming to eventually follow. “It’s really about less transaction and more emotive,” as he put it.
What this means for casino marketers:
If your loyalty program’s entire value proposition is “spend more, get more,” you’re competing on the same mechanic as every other property within driving distance. Emotional loyalty — the kind sports create — doesn’t have that ceiling.
The Local Sponsorship Lesson: Soaring Eagle and the Detroit Lions
Kustelski pointed to Soaring Eagle Casino’s sponsorship of the Detroit Lions as an example of doing this well — not because of signage, but because the property leaned into the relationship. Instead of a few sponsor logos, the casino hosted watch parties, fan gatherings, and merchandise giveaways tied to the team. The difference is whether a casino merely tells people it’s a sponsor or actually gives fans a reason to show up and feel like fans.
That distinction matters more than the size of the sponsorship. A casino doesn’t need to be an official team sponsor to borrow some of that energy.
The Mobile-First Mindset Casinos Still Lack
What a New Customer Actually Does on Their Phone First
Sportsbooks, fantasy apps, and team apps have trained an entire generation of consumers to live on their phones. Kustelski’s challenge to casino marketers: consider what a brand-new guest’s first interaction with your property actually looks like.
It’s not about walking through the door. It’s a phone search — checking how far the property is, what it offers, and what other people are saying about it. “I know I want to go to a casino. I’ve got three or four options within an hour and a half. How am I going to pick the right one?” The answer, almost always, starts with a mobile search.
That reframes what “mobile presence” means. It’s not just the loyalty app. It includes the website’s mobile experience, how the property appears in search and on social, and — critically — review volume and sentiment. A property with zero reviews creates hesitation. A property with thousands of mostly positive reviews creates immediate comfort for someone who has never been there.
The One Mobile Feature Almost No Casino App Gets Right
When pressed on where casinos leave the most value on the table, Kustelski didn’t point to anything exotic. He pointed to something basic: most casino apps make it surprisingly hard for a guest to simply check their loyalty points balance and understand what to do with it. He compared it to checking points in a Chick-fil-A app — fast, obvious, and satisfying — versus the friction he routinely encounters in casino apps.
His broader test for any app on his phone: if it doesn’t add value quickly, it gets deleted within minutes. Casino apps compete for the same limited phone real estate as every other app a guest has — which means functional basics (point visibility, redemption clarity, fast load) aren’t a nice-to-have; they’re table stakes for staying installed.
Email and SMS fall into the same bucket. Most casino marketing emails are still read on phones, not desktops — which means the design and length decisions made for desktop-first email are often wrong for how guests actually consume the message.
Where to Start: A Data-First Framework for Fan-Based Marketing
Start Local, Not Big: The NASCAR and High School Hockey Example
When asked where a marketing team should start if they wanted to build their strategy more like a sports franchise, Kustelski didn’t recommend a big swing. He suggested starting with what’s already happening locally — and his own company’s data backs this up: localized sports promotions tied to a specific local team consistently outperform generic national sports content.
The bar for entry is lower than most marketers assume. You don’t need to be an official sponsor. A casino near a NASCAR race could offer a discount to anyone who shows a ticket stub. A property near a state high school hockey championship could do the same for parents and fans attending the tournament. “It really starts simply,” he said. “But that shows all your customers that we care about what’s happening in the local sports environment.”
He called sports “the most underutilized promotion in casino marketing” — explicitly distinguishing it from sports betting. The opportunity isn’t about gaming on sports outcomes. It’s about tapping into existing fan passion through low-cost, locally relevant gestures: for example, a QR code on the sports bar table that asks guests to name their favorite NFL team in exchange for a jersey giveaway. That same QR code doubles as audience research and an engagement tactic in one move.
What this means for casino marketers:
If every TV in your sports bar is already tuned to a game, you already have a built-in fan base in the building. The cost of testing a local-team promotion is low, and the data you get back is valuable regardless of whether the promotion hits.
How to Test Personalization Without Overcorrecting
Julia raised a tension many marketers feel: personalization can build loyalty, but it can also go too far and feel invasive. Kustelski agreed the pendulum can swing too far, but his recommendation for casino marketers specifically was to err toward more testing, not less, because most casino marketing teams aren’t testing enough to find their own line.
His suggested approach: structured A/B testing, one variable at a time — subject lines, offers, channel, and timing — on a defined segment, with a clear plan for service recovery if a test fails with a guest. The point isn’t to get every test right. It’s to build the organizational permission to test in the first place.
Key Takeaways
- Loyalty tiers reward spend. Fandom creates attachment. Most casino loyalty programs are structured around point-per-dollar mechanics. The next evolution of loyalty borrows from sports fandom, which builds an emotional bond that doesn’t depend on transaction size.
- Local beats large. Chalkline’s own data shows localized sports promotions consistently outperform generic national sports content. You don’t need a multimillion-dollar league sponsorship to borrow fan passion — a 15% discount tied to a local high school championship ticket works too.
- Mobile is more than the app. A new customer’s first interaction with a casino is increasingly a phone search, not a drive-by. The mobile audit has to include the website, search presence, social profiles, and review volume — not just whether the loyalty app exists.
- If a guest can’t easily check their points and know what to do with them, the mobile experience is already failing. This was called out as one of the most basic, fixable gaps across casino apps today.
- Personalization needs small, deliberate tests — not an all-in bet. A/B test one variable at a time on a small segment before scaling, which limits downside and makes service recovery easier if a test misses.
- Direct mail isn’t the problem — repetition is. The tactic still works, but many teams default to reusing the same piece year after year. The fix is treating it as an experience design problem, not a habit.
What This Means for Casino Marketers
None of this requires a sponsorship budget or a departmental overhaul. The fastest entry points from this conversation:
- Audit your loyalty program for transaction-only mechanics, and identify at least one emotional-loyalty lever to test (a local team tie-in, a fan experience, or a watch party).
- Check how hard it is for a guest to find their points balance in your app right now. If it takes more than a couple of taps, that’s the first priority to fix.
- Pick one local team, event, or rivalry and run a low-cost test promotion around it — a QR code, a ticket-stub discount, or a giveaway — before considering a larger sponsorship spend.
- If your direct mail program hasn’t changed in substance over the past year, that’s the signal to redesign the experience, not necessarily to cut the channel.
Connect with Dan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielkustelski/
FAQs
What’s the difference between transactional loyalty and emotional loyalty in casino marketing?
Transactional loyalty is built around spend — guests earn points and tier status based on how much they put into the casino. Emotional loyalty is built around attachment — guests come back because the property makes them feel something, the way sports fandom does, independent of how much they’re spending that visit.
Do casinos need an official sports sponsorship to use this strategy?
No. Dan Kustelski was explicit that casinos don’t need to be official sponsors to borrow fan passion. Simple, low-cost gestures — a discount for showing a ticket stub from a local game, a QR code giveaway tied to a favorite team — can create the same engagement effect without a large sponsorship contract.
What should a casino’s mobile marketing audit actually include?
More than the loyalty app. It should cover the mobile website experience, search visibility, social media presence, online review volume and sentiment, and whether marketing emails are designed to be read on a phone rather than a desktop — since most guests are reading casino marketing emails on mobile.
Is direct mail still worth using in casino marketing?
Yes — the channel itself isn’t the problem. The issue is that many teams reuse the same mail piece year after year without rethinking the experience. A better approach treats direct mail as an experience design problem (e.g., a QR code offer tied to capturing an email and mobile number) rather than a routine mailing.
How should casino marketers approach personalization without overdoing it?
Through small, structured tests rather than broad rollout. Test one variable at a time (subject line, offer, channel) on a limited segment, track the result, and have a service-recovery plan ready if a test misses with a guest. This limits the downside of getting personalization wrong while building the internal comfort to keep testing.
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