Caesars Drops Wyndham Business Earner as Status Match – What to Do Now

Like a shot heard round the world, Wyndham added new terms to its Tier Match page that shuts down the Wyndham Business Earner as a path to Caesars Diamond, effective with the next Caesars program year (Feb 1, 2025).

As is clearly states, you’ll no longer be able to match as the result of being a cardholder. (Also affected is the personal Earner+ card which gives Platinum status. This was enough for a free Caesars stay at Atlantis – albeit more limited than as Diamond – so it’s a double blow.)

Also of note is that the amount of points you can transfer between programs is reduced from 60,000 a year to 30,000 a year. This is notable because you can transfer back and forth to extend the hard expiration on Wyndham points (4 years after the points are earned).

PS: The Caesars site does not reflect this yet…

Obviously, this is a MASSIVE blow to the Status Match Merry Go Round®.

After Caesars stopped “rematching” from Wyndham due to their offset program years in 2022, the Wyndham Business Earner Credit Card quickly became the onramp (an onramp that began in 2020).

In fact, while Founders Card remains the only other path to Caesars Diamond, the Wyndham Business Earner (“WBE”) was the far cheaper route at $95 a year (and with 15,000 points each year at card renewal offsetting that.

Thinking that Founder’s Card will save you? Don’t bet on it. For those with short memories, in February of 2024 (i.e. this year!) Caesars tried to reneg on their arrangement with Founder’s Card which then removed it as a listed benefit – only to have it come back a short while later. I strongly believe this was a result of Caesars being “too late” to change the deal as the program year had started – and that this won’t be an onramp to Caesars Diamond next year either. I’d obviously love to be wrong.

So what now? 

I have lots of thoughts and while I’m still digesting this like the rest of you, I can offer some guidance.

1. If you already have the Wyndham Business Earner card and haven’t matched to Caesars yet, do it now! Why not?! There was never a reason to wait anyway (since it had been renewable in February anyway), but now that it’s not, get that Cesars status for as long as you can because….
2. The name of the game for the foreseeable future of the Merry Go Round will be “keeping things alive.” That means having status wherever you can get it for as long as you can get it.

Examples of how you might be able to keep things going at least for another year (minus Caesars Diamond, of course):

• If you have been on the Atlantic City Merry Go Round in 2024, you have Hard Rock Icon Status through Feb 28, 2025 (and Ocean Prime through June 2025). You may even have MGM Gold if you matched before September 30th from Hard Rock Icon. And you may also have Bally’s Superstar (though that would end, at the latest, December 31, 2024).
• Ballys will rematch every 13 months if I understand their match correctly. If you haven’t matched yet to Ballys in Atlantic City, do that in January 2025. Then use that to rematch to Hard Rock in March 2025. 
• Hard Rock will match from Ocean to Icon (or MGM Gold+). So if you have Ocean now you can rematch in March to Hard Rock and use that to match back to Ocean after your 18 months of inactivity are up.
• Bring your highest card to a Rivers casino in January. Ballys Superstar (which you can match from Caesars Diamond) in January would be a great move as you can match that to Rivers – at least in Chicago. Hard Rock Icon will match to Ballys Superstar. Philly doesn’t always match but when they do they will rematch (match someone who has matched before) while other Rivers casinos are one time only. However, you can match to each one separately for now (i.e. at different times) which can be advantageous. 
• It’s still going to be worth trying to match your Wyndham status via the credit card. It probably won’t work but you never know. People also (rarely) have had luck matching at a Caesars property on-site. You are not supposed to be able to do this but who knows.

All of the above can keep you cruising (i.e. the MSC cruises from Ocean and any additional cruise matches you can get) for at least another year.

I need some time to game everything out, but there may be ways to keep this going, sans Diamond, for a little while.

Please add your thoughts in the comments. Together we find more ways to keep things going round and round for at least a while longer. And don’t fret too much. We’ve seen the “death of the Merry Go Round” many times and it has risen from the ashes just as often. 

We’ll be discussing this over on the MilesTalk Facebook group in this thread. I suspect it will be quite a long thread. And yes, I know – you’ll be cancelling your Wyndham Business Earner. I wonder if Barclays will wonder what’s up with the wave of cancellations!

HT to Professor_Toke on Reddit.

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Thoughts?