According to Jeffrey Compton, renowned slot club expert and author of The Las Vegas Advisor Guide to Slot Clubs (now out of print), it all started in Atlantic City in the early 1980s.
The world’s first slot club debuted at the Atlantic City Sands in 1982. The Sands’ slot managers recognized that their customers were, in Jeff’s words, "cost-conscious day-trippers playing quarter slot machines, and unless their bread-and-butter customers were recognized and rewarded, they would walk next door." The Galaxy Slot Club was born. Originally, the Sands identified its top slot players, invited them to special events and parties, and gave them gold lapel pins to signify them as casino VIPs. Jeff says that after the first year, the Galaxy Slot Club had "600 customers and was considered a rousing success."
In 1984, Harrah’s Atlantic City took a big step forward in the burgeoning slot-club movement by devising a new system in which slot players received a bonus ticket for every $100 they put through a machine. Tickets could be redeemed for various amenities in the hotel -- room, food, gift-shop items.
From there, slot clubs have grown much more sophisticated, with plastic ID cards, electronic player-tracking systems, multiple-point promotions, point-of-purchase redemption, and endless variations on the theme of "the more you play, the more goodies you get." In fact, as the history shows, slot clubs have been undergoing non-stop technological and marketing improvements for nearly two and a half decades.
