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MGM Grand Detroit has a new person in charge of getting players in the door … and it poached him from the casino down the street.
The Detroit casino named Ryan Bufalini its vice president of marketing Thursday, putting him over direct marketing, communications, advertising, and the casino marketing functions that include player development and player services.
He takes the job with 25 years in gaming, nearly all of it spent in this city.
Bufalini’s last stop was vice president of marketing at Hollywood Casino at Greektown, one of the other two commercial casinos competing with MGM Grand Detroit for the same downtown market. He ran marketing, advertising, loyalty, entertainment, public relations, and VIP operations there. He was the one who steered the property through its 2022 rebrand from Greektown Casino to Hollywood Casino, a top-to-bottom overhaul that changed the loyalty program, the technology, and the name.
Who is MGM Grand Detroit’s new marketing boss?
Bufalini is a Detroit native who started his gaming career in the city in 2000. He worked his way up through player development, hotel operations, and marketing over more than two decades, all of it inside the same three-casino market he now helps MGM Grand Detroit compete in.
Bufalini is a Michigan State University graduate with degrees in marketing and economics. The company credits him with a Global Gaming Business Award for consumer technology excellence.
MGM Grand Detroit President and COO Matt Buckley signed off on the hire, saying Bufalini’s “deep roots in the Detroit gaming market” made him a fit for the leadership team.
The kind of fit his last employer just lost.
Detroit’s three commercial casinos – MGM Grand Detroit, MotorCity Casino, and Hollywood Casino at Greektown – draw from the same limited pool of local gamblers and the same loyalty dollars. Every time one pulls a marketing executive from another, that is the clearest sign of where the competition is actually being fought, in database marketing and player rewards rather than on the casino floor.
Bufalini also served on the Greektown Casino Charity Board, which raised more than $4 million for local nonprofits during his tenure.
He won’t have a new commute. Hollywood Casino at Greektown sits about a mile from MGM Grand Detroit, on the same downtown stretch where he spent years building the marketing operation he just left.
