Michael Minniear – Engineering the gaming industry with a passion for disruption

Michael Minniear once dreamed of becoming Maverick from Top Gun.

Growing up on Edwards Air Force Base in California, Minniear, a self-described aeronautics nut, wanted to become a fighter pilot until he was told his eyesight was not up to Top Gun standards.

Instead, the airplane enthusiast became one of the leading analytical strategists in gaming. Minniear is a thought leader and gaming guru who helps bridge the gap between raw data and practical business applications. His work focuses on helping casino operators better understand their operations and improve profitability.

In a true bootstrap story, his path to becoming a casino data strategist began when he worked the graveyard shift as a janitor at Pechanga Resort & Casino during college. After graduating with a degree in aeronautical engineering, Minniear worked with the Navy at NAVAIR North Island on F-18s before later serving as a quality engineer in the medical device industry.

Obsessed with airplanes
Both Minniear’s parents were from Sidney, Ohio. His father served for 20 years as a B-52 avionics technician in the Air Force, while his mother worked in civil service supporting NASA. Though his family moved several times, he spent most of his childhood at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

“Edwards was the only unclassified flight test base in the Air Force, so all the coolest aircraft were flying there. This was the 1980s during the Cold War era, so it was an awesome time to grow up in the military. I got to see so many incredible aircraft. I went to every air show, where I would watch Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier to kick off the show every year. I saw many, many Space Shuttle landings. F-117s would fly over my baseball practice. It’s hard not to fall in love with aviation growing up at Edwards.”

“Of course it was the 1980s, so there was Top Gun, and I wanted to be a fighter pilot. That was the dream. I went to the Air Force recruiter’s office to sign up for ROTC, and they immediately told me my bad eyesight wouldn’t qualify me to be a fighter pilot, no matter what I wanted to do,” Minniear said.

Jimmy Doolittle
In an interesting side note, Minniear’s lifelong fascination with aviation is also reinforced through family. His brother-in-law, Jeff Doolittle, is the great-grandson of World War II aviator General Jimmy Doolittle, who led the historic bombing raid on Tokyo in 1942 and later commanded the Eighth Air Force in Europe.

“The Doolittle name is legendary in the Air Force,” Minniear said. “There’s an entire wing of the National Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson dedicated to General Jimmy Doolittle and the members of the Doolittle Raid. I attended the grand opening with Jeff and my sister. They rolled out the red carpet and honored Jeff as the last direct descendant of Jimmy Doolittle, at least until my nephews came along!”

Meeting Amy
Minniear attended Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo, where he deepened his lifelong fascination with aviation by pursuing a degree in aeronautical engineering. It was also where he met his future wife, Amy.

“I met Amy when I was a freshman,” he said. “We were both studying engineering, but we were very different personalities. I was really introverted. Amy was incredibly outgoing and involved in leadership, service, and campus life. She was student body president in high school and became Chair of the Board of ASI at Cal Poly. She was a constant inspiration to me to get out of my shell and be a leader. Thanks to Amy, by the time I graduated I was an engineering ambassador and president of three college clubs,” Minniear said.

Amy is also a member of the Pechanga Band of Indians, and through her, Minniear was introduced to the reservation and the community during the early years of tribal gaming development. “It was an exciting time,” he recalled. “Gaming was just beginning in California, and everything felt so daring and new. I watched the tribe build what would become one of the most successful gaming enterprises in the country.

In the mid-1990s, as Pechanga’s gaming enterprise was just beginning, Amy became an intern at the small startup casino, working in the offices during the summer. That same summer, Minniear took a temporary job there as well.

“The only temp job available was a janitor position,” he said. “So that was my first job in gaming, working as a porter on the graveyard shift. I’m employee number 731 at Pechanga, and I’m proud of that number because you never lose your original gaming license number. For perspective, Amy is employee number 16.”

After graduating, the couple married and moved to Temecula, California, where they have remained for more than 25 years. Amy went on to serve on the Pechanga Development Corporation Board and today serves as Treasurer of the Pechanga Band of Indians.

Aerospace
After graduation, Minniear began his professional career in aerospace. “My first job was at NAVAIR North Island in San Diego, working on F-18s, so I was happy to at least still be around military aircraft,” he said.

The draining Southern California commute took its toll, and he transitioned to Guidant, a medical device manufacturer, where he worked as a quality engineer and was later promoted into research and development.

Around the same time, Amy was elected to the Pechanga Development Corporation Board, an elected tribal position overseeing the business enterprise. As Amy took on this new leadership role, Minniear stepped away from his career for several years to focus on raising their young children.

He later reflected on that period with humility. “I really thought that was going to be a lot easier. It was incredibly hard, but it sure taught me a lot of patience,” he said.

From financial analyst to data scientist
After several years focused on raising his family, Minniear began preparing to return to the workforce. The economic upheaval of 2008 sparked a growing interest in finance and analytics.

Minniear obtained a job with Pechanga in 2009 as a financial analyst, a role that would ultimately launch his career as a thought leader and disruptor. His journey into casino analytics began when he recognized the underutilized potential of optimizing reinvestment strategies. He began applying analytical and data-driven approaches to understanding the value of top-tier players and improving the performance of slot operations.

“There seemed to be so much opportunity to use data to improve the business, and I was excited to do everything I could to help make the enterprise as profitable as possible,” Minniear said.

That motivation was shaped in part by the unique perspective he brought to the role.

Tribal spouse
“I was in a unique position as a tribal spouse, so my perspective was a little different,” Minniear said. “My focus wasn’t really on building a career path. I was heavily focused on helping the property succeed, because its success directly impacted the tribe and my family. That really shaped how I approached the work.”

“I started digging into any numbers I could get my hands on, looking for opportunities to improve performance, and the more I looked, the more potential I saw,” Minniear stated.

A passion for slots
In his effort to understand the business more deeply, Minniear started by examining sources of revenue.

“It didn’t take long to realize that slots accounted for the vast majority of revenue. So, when I was invited to attend my first slot performance review, I was really eager to learn how slots were analyzed and managed,” he said.

Though that meeting focused on established industry metrics such as win per unit per day and floor averages, Minniear found himself seeking new approaches.

“At the time, those methods were fairly standard,” Minniear recalled. “But with the floor growing so quickly and operating near capacity during peak periods, my interest was in understanding slot supply, demand, and pricing rather than focusing on daily win,” Minniear said.

That shift in perspective shaped what would become one of his central professional interests.

“Even though most of my analytical work has been in marketing, my passion is slots,” Minniear said. “That’s what customers come to play. To me, getting the product right is critical. It really comes down to getting the balance right between supply, demand, and price. That’s how we know we’re running optimally,” he said.

Seeing the whole picture
Working in finance gave Minniear a unique vantage point across the entire operation. “I was responsible for building the budget, which allowed me to see the whole picture,” Minniear related.

As he reviewed years of historical revenue, certain patterns stood out immediately. “There were huge spikes in coin-in on specific midweek days that no longer appeared,” Minniear recalled. “I asked around and learned they were monthly gifting events that had been discontinued due to concerns about revenue displacement and long lines.

“But when I looked at the data, I didn’t see displacement. It was all incremental growth.” he said.

That insight led him to propose bringing back a weekday gifting event to measure the results. The impact was immediate. “The coin-in on Tuesday was as high as a weekend day!” After repeating the promotion successfully for several months, the results were difficult to ignore.

“I’ve always looked for patterns in the data. Unexpected spikes usually mean something worked. Drops usually mean something didn’t. If you pay attention, the numbers tell you where to lean in and where to adjust.” Minniear said.

Building the data science team
As analytics began demonstrating measurable impact, Pechanga expanded its investment in advanced data capabilities.

“There was a lot of industry buzz around ‘big data’ at the time,” Minniear said. “Leadership wanted to build a formal data science team, and I was asked to lead it and oversee the hiring.”

He assembled a small group of specialists with diverse technical backgrounds, bringing new modeling and analytical approaches into casino operations.

“It was an exciting period. We started applying predictive models, optimization, and more advanced statistical thinking to real business decisions,” he said.

The experience deepened Minniear’s commitment to data-driven strategy and expanded the scope of what analytics could accomplish within gaming operations.

Expanding the vision
As his work gained attention, Minniear began speaking at industry conferences and collaborating with organizations exploring advanced analytics and emerging technologies. Those conversations opened the door to applying his ideas across a wider audience.

That broader perspective eventually led him to Power Promotions, where he found an opportunity to combine analytics with operational impact across multiple properties.

“I was asked to help with strategy and analytics. The role quickly expanded as we began building tools to help operators better understand performance, optimize promotions, and make more data-driven decisions,” Minniear stated.

Today, as a member of the Power team, Minniear works with multiple gaming properties, applying predictive modeling, optimization strategies, and advanced data structures to a growing range of operational challenges.

“It’s exciting to work across different properties,” he said. “You start to see patterns at an industry level, and that opens up entirely new possibilities.”

Disruption
When asked about the greatest challenges facing the gaming industry today, Minniear points to the pace of innovation.

“Sometimes it feels like the industry believes this is as good as it gets,” he said. “But the technology available today is extraordinary. Graph databases, artificial intelligence, large-scale data systems, real-time analytics, advanced modeling tools — these are awesome capabilities. They let us understand relationships, behavior, and operations in ways that simply weren’t possible before,” Minniear said.

So why hasn’t adoption moved faster?

“A lot of it comes down to infrastructure and data protections. Many of the core platforms were never designed to talk to each other easily, and integrating new technology into legacy environments is tough. Data can also be hard to access, share, and collaborate on. When systems don’t connect and information doesn’t move freely, progress slows,” he said.

Despite the challenges, Minniear remains deeply optimistic. “The tools exist. The data exists. The opportunity is enormous,” Minniear stated.

Relentless passion
I asked Minniear what he thought was the secret to his success.

“I would say my relentless passion,” he said. “I genuinely love this work, and once I see a way something could be better, I can’t really let it go.

“I’m an engineer, and engineers are obsessed with optimizing. An F1 car is never fast enough — there’s always another improvement to find. I approach gaming the same way. How do we make it better? How do we make it smarter? How do we make it perform at its full potential?” Minniear said.

Over time, that mindset shaped his professional identity.

“My strength has really been taking complex data and turning it into practical and profitable action. Models and analytics are powerful, but they only matter if they improve real decisions, operations, and profitability,” he said.

Unique thought leader
What sets Michael Minniear apart is his ability to leverage complex data, predictive analytics, and machine learning in a way that advances profitability. His self-appointed purpose is to help casino industry leaders span the gap between data and practical programs that advance the industry. Minniear remains committed to advancing tribal gaming through innovation and is a unique thought leader in the industry who continually works to elevate strategy through disruption.

Or another way to say it is that a passionate innovator found his way from aeronautical engineering to become the Top Gun Maverick of casino analytics.

Entries in the Faces of Gaming series:

Tom Osiecki is a casino consultant who writes an occasional column for CDC Gaming called Faces of Gaming, about interesting and engaging people in the gaming industry.

Tom Osiecki is a marketing and management consultant for Raving Consulting and can be reached for consulting engagements at 775-329-7864.

If you know of a fascinating personality in the gaming industry you would like to see profiled, please send Tom Osiecki an email at tosiecki@cdcgaming.com

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Michael Minniear – Engineering the gaming industry with a passion for disruption — CDC Gaming

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