Slot King Reveals $250K Secret: Social Media Gold Mine | Vegas Matt DSH #941

But I don't like to give a lot of whole lot of free advertising out.

But there are certain hotels that really show the love and they understand social media.

You know, we've come a long way in this whole gambling influencer thing from getting kicked out of hotels for bringing our phone out and filming to the point where there are properties that'll send a jet to pick us up to bring us into their casino.

I mean, it runs the gamut.

All right, guys, Vegas Matt Part 3, former celebrity Pokétour winner in the building.

Whoa.

Just won the last event, right?

Yeah, imagine that.

That was crazy because you don't really play that often.

No, I mean, even a broken clock's right twice a day, they say.

But if you do it this time, I mean...

This could be the other, the other 12 hours.

I'm feeling pretty good.

You've been practicing?

No.

I haven't played since then.

That didn't invigorate you to get better at poker?

I mean, it's just

how the gambling gods are smiling on you.

You know, I just was on a roll that day.

I'm feeling pretty good.

Got up, went for a walk.

Nice.

I learned most of my health health news, it seems, from clips of your podcast.

It's all I see on my news feed.

Yeah.

You've had some interesting ones.

You've grown a lot since I, it seems like really early in our career when we came on your show.

And then,

I mean, you have a lot of cool guests.

What was this deal with all these aliens?

Like, you're interviewing people with aliens.

A lot of alien experts.

Well, now that the government has basically announced that there's UFOs and stuff, it's interesting to me.

That's official?

Well, they released all the videos and they're blurry, but I mean, yeah, they officially released UFO footage.

Really?

What about the oceans?

I heard there's UFOs in the ocean.

Yeah, had a guest basically said 95% of the ocean is unexplored, and he theorizes that there's aliens that live there and they come out of there.

And if you look at where a lot of sightings are, a lot of them are by large masses of water.

I get all my news from the digital social hour.

Have you had any UFO sightings or experiences?

I have not.

They don't, they ignore me.

Damn.

Do you believe in aliens, though?

I don't know.

I mean,

I guess

I really don't know.

I mean, it's like, I don't have a strong opinion.

I mean, imagine that in all the vastness of the universe to think that we're the only, you know, beings,

that's a stretch.

So, yeah.

But I'll leave that up to you and your other guests.

I'll focus on the slot machines.

That's my expertise.

How's the P ⁇ L looking this year for slots?

P ⁇ L is looking good.

I mean, you know, certainly gambling is a losing proposition.

I don't know if this is new information for people.

The house has an advantage.

Every time you push that button on a slot, you are giving them a percentage mathematically.

But we're fighting the good fight.

I think we're down, I don't know, in the last, say, 12 months or so, probably down like 250,000, something like that.

A little less, maybe.

So

that's just the cost of doing business.

Yeah, losing 20K a month.

I wish the IRS saw it that way.

You can only write off like $8K, right?

Well, you can't write off your losses

except against winnings.

But you can't say like, oh, you know, I have YouTube revenue and it was I have $250,000 of gambling losses.

I'm going to write that off my active income.

Like, my understanding, you know, and I'm not a tax expert, is that that's not the case.

I think there's some people that are challenging that right now, but for the time being, we just kind of just take the loss and suck it up.

Damn.

Yeah, I feel like someone like you could get away with it, but why risk it, right?

I mean, there's one very, very smart person in the space who rather than do what a lot of people are doing and writing off their losses as against ordinary income.

And then, like, say, five years from now, they get audited.

And then they go back and then they say, no, you can't do that.

And they get just going to owe massive penalties and additional taxes.

There's one guy who's going back and filing amended returns for previous years.

And then he's going to challenge it.

And he's already paid the taxes, so there won't be any penalties.

So that's a smart way of doing it.

And if that one goes all the way through the tax courts and he wins, which I think is unlikely, then that would be

big for all of us.

Interesting.

Well, shout out to him for taking that risk because I wouldn't want to do that.

yeah um you've been gambling all over since you last came on I saw you went on a cruise we have we've gone on two cruises now really fun you know it's one of the most fun things about it is the fans that we've attracted are just absolutely amazing and it seems like you know our show is kind of like a podcast you know we're gambling but we're also talking about everything you know current events whatnot and

your vibe kind of attracts your tribe and we just have the nicest fans so like my first cruise i was a little scared I'm like, I'm wondering who's going to show up.

You know, is it going to be like the Misfit Brigade or something like that?

And everyone was cool.

And second cruise, same thing, just like the greatest group of people.

And so we gamble, do group polls, play on the ship the whole time, you know, go on excursions together and a lot of fun.

And we just did a big event in Michigan.

Our first ever.

We sold out a theater, like where like, you know, like Theo Vaughn or whomever would go and like for a concert or whatnot.

And we had a 1300 seat theater in detroit and uh we did a night with vegas matt and it was really really fun still about 1300 seats yeah with a thousand person waiting list holy crap yeah just to watch you gamble well we we uh just to kind of meet and greet talk answer questions try to throw out a few you know some entertainment and wow and then we had um in michigan online gambling is legal so we had fan duel did a great job putting the event together or fan duel casino i should say and we gambled live live on stage on our computer.

And then the audience was playing along.

And we played a game called Crazy Time, which is a lot of fun.

And we bought some bonuses.

And we, yeah, we played a couple of our favorite games, just kind of live with the big audience.

It's awesome.

I don't think anyone's ever done anything like it before, but we're definitely playing it on a world tour.

That's amazing, man.

It's been cool to see your growth because I remember the first time you came on, you were just losing money doing this for fun.

Yep.

And now to see where you're at now, it's incredible.

Yeah, thanks.

You too, man.

It's like, it's just fun.

Social media is the new horizon.

I mean, I literally don't watch TV.

I don't think a lot of people watch TV.

We're looking at our phones, looking at those reels, looking at that TikTok, and it's just, it's incredible.

And then to be in, you know, like we're here at the Celebrity Poker Tournament right now, and to be a celebrity is a trip.

Unreal.

It's cool to see you embrace that.

And I think you and E.J.

are a really good pair together in business.

Yeah, it's unusual for me to be alone without E.J.

on the pod.

Hopefully I won't say anything dumb.

He's watching you right now.

Yeah, he's over there, you know, compliance.

He's doing PR crisis.

Yeah.

You have any PR crisis moments yet?

Nothing, nothing to speak of, really.

No cancellation attempts?

No, I've been behaving myself.

And then we don't do much live stuff, so if I say anything inappropriate, he edits it out.

Smart.

I mean, I'm smart enough to know.

I mean, you know, these days you can't really say whatever comes to mind.

You got to be conscious.

And

for the most part, I'm conscious.

That's good.

Yeah, you got to be careful once you're a celebrity, man.

Yeah.

How about you?

Have you been behaving yourself?

No.

Anytime I am part of a cancel attempt, it's my guest.

It's usually not on me.

Yeah.

So I'm good.

But that doesn't like blow over to you ever.

Sometimes I'll get heat.

Like Bryce Hall came up to me yesterday at the dinner and he was like, why do you have Harry Sisson on the podcast?

Like you folded.

I was like, you know, I like having on both sides.

Oh, I've seen, I saw a lot of his stuff during the election cycle.

Harry Sisson.

All I care about is that I don't talk politics, but I do like politics in regards to October is a huge month for YouTube revenue.

Oh, because of politics.

A lot of ads.

Actually, you're right.

My October numbers were pretty nuts.

Yeah, it's all election.

The spending was ridiculous.

I mean, it was insane.

So I love elections.

I'm neutral.

I don't talk politics.

You got a good PR team.

I love it.

So you've gambled with some big people lately.

Steve Woodua, Dana White.

Who's next?

I'm doing a couple of collabs.

My agent

arranged a couple of celebrities.

I mean,

I've never heard of anybody.

I mean, there's all these famous athletes.

I don't watch a lot of sports.

I don't really know anything.

I guess it's part of my charm.

But there's a couple of celebrities that we're going to collab with tomorrow for F1.

Nice.

Guys with big followings on Instagram.

EJ knew him, but I didn't.

Okay.

Yeah.

And but yeah, Steve was a lot of fun.

I mean,

he was probably

a real big shot in the arm for us when we started streaming with him.

And then we did that one video with Dano where he's like, slots are stupid.

And

Steve was like, fast spitting $250.

And I'm like, slow down.

And then we hit a $44,000 bonus.

And Dana was like, what the heck?

Of course, it's the one day Dana's there, too.

That's crazy.

Well, that guy's got, I mean, he lives a charmed life, it appears.

I mean, he can do no wrong.

I mean, he's one of those rare individuals who can, you know, open up a Trump rally and still doesn't get very much heat.

He's uncancelable.

Yeah, he's uncancelable.

Is that the word?

Yeah.

There's a few people, like maybe like a handful.

Yeah, he's uncancelable.

I like it.

Did you make that up?

Nah, there's a few people.

Like Dave Portnoy from Barswool Sports, I would say it's uncancelable.

Nelk Boys, pretty uncancelable.

And yeah, there's a few people on that list.

Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan, I'd say too.

Because he endorsed Trump.

That was a big move for him.

That was an incredible thing.

It was like watching a movie, the whole thing.

Yeah, it was a pretty wild election.

I never really cared about politics up until this one.

Yeah.

You know.

Well,

yep, there you go.

You into crypto at all?

You gamble on that?

I love crypto.

I would love that it's at, I mean, not that I check it every 15 or 20 minutes, but at 90,300,

93,327 as I walked in the door.

Get an all-time high yesterday.

Yeah, that's fun.

I mean, I've just been a holder, a hodler for the longest time.

I mean, if I look back and I could just, you know,

I was for a while there, I had a lot of Ethereum and I was just like using it to live on and, you know, selling it at like $300 a coin.

Damn.

I had probably, if I had kept every coin I ever owned, I'd be very wealthy.

So you were in it early.

Why were you in it that early?

A friend of mine came over over to my house one time in like 2014 or 15 and said, I got to tell you about this thing.

It's called Bitcoin.

And I'm like, oh, whatever.

And he goes, just buy one.

I bought one.

I think it was $500 or $600 or $380, like somewhere in that range.

And then probably sold it at $1,000 and bought back and forth.

But I was involved in it off and on.

And then EJ really was smart about it.

And we did quite well.

And now I have a percentage, a reasonable percentage of my portfolio.

And it's just kind of a long-term hold.

I hope Michael Saylor's right.

I was watching a clip this morning, and he was talking about a $13 million Bitcoin in the next 20 years or whatever.

On Patrick Bed David's show, right?

I do not know whose show it was.

Okay.

Yeah, I saw that.

I mean, he's either going to go down as the best investor of all time or the biggest loser.

Right.

I hope he's the best investor of all time.

It's hard to bet against him.

Yeah.

He's already up so much.

Yeah.

It's like crazy, and he's still buying it.

What about you?

You like crypto?

I love crypto.

Yeah.

I love it.

I mean, it changed my life.

Yeah.

XRP had a little bump.

I didn't get in that one.

No.

But my friend got in at like 10 cents.

It's like a dollar now.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember I bought my first at like 3 cents a long, long time ago.

Went up to $3 in that first run in 2018.

And

yeah.

So there's been so many.

So many.

EJ had a funny one.

He had bought a bunch of Dogecoin at like, you know, one, one millionth of a cent, you know, and he had like literally millions of them or something.

And

damn.

He had hundreds of millions of them.

And it was on a USB.

And in one of his attempts to organize everything, he was, he said, oh, this is a dog and

got rid of it for like $13

or something like that.

That would literally, how much would that be worth now?

It's 60.

It's 60 cents now.

So that would be worth $50 million.

Yeah.

So we've had a couple of those oops moments.

Wow.

Not as bad as the pizza guy, but.

Oh, that guy.

He must.

Actually, I did see an interview interview about him recently.

He said he doesn't regret it.

Yeah.

Because it's one of those things, like, yeah, you see the price, but would you have sold it along the way up, too?

Probably.

I mean, you're not going to hold all the way.

You never know.

You got to live a life with no regrets.

Yeah.

Well, you've always been pretty diversified.

I know you got real estate too.

Yeah, and love the real estate.

I have a lot of real estate down in Costa Rica, and I still have a property management company down there.

It's funny because that used to be my whole life, you know, in my semi-retirement.

And now the business, I never even have time to go down there anymore.

I haven't been there once this year, and the business is still doing just as well without me paying any attention to it.

So it just shows I was just goofing off before.

And now, I mean, we're literally working all day, every day.

I mean, it's amazing.

I'm 61 years old, and I haven't probably worked this hard in my whole life.

I'm working as hard as I've ever worked.

You know, because I mean, it's work, right?

I mean, we get up, we are looking at stats and coming up with a new title for our post, which is 11:45 every day, and then

go to a casino, decide what machine to play, play, film an intro, take a profile or a, what's it called?

A thumbnail, a thumbnail pick, and then, you know, do the wrap-up, you know, play the film the shorts, then, you know, change shirt, maybe try to film two some days so we don't have to work seven days a week.

Yeah.

For the most part, we work seven days a week.

But it's always fun.

And more and more, you know, we'll go to a casino and we'll just see like so many people wearing our merchandise, like my let's enjoy this shirt that I've got on, Sando hats.

I mean, it's just like there's this whole community of gamblers, and it's just so fun to bump into them in the casino, take pictures.

So it just, we end up usually in the casino for about eight hours a day and then add all the other work and calls with lawyers.

And I mean, one of the things that's annoying is there's so many fake, you know, fake accounts.

And there's this, you know, then there's people in the comments that are like saying stuff that's not true or pretending to be us and messaging our fans.

And it's just like a constant battle dealing with the scammers online.

Wow.

So what's their scam pitch?

Like, how do they get people?

You know, they just pretend to be me and then they engage with the fans and then say, oh, you know, send money for this or that.

And then they just beat them.

beat them for money.

And we have a full-time person on it, like an IP person on it.

Holy crap.

Get very little help from the platforms themselves.

I think that that's an area influencers should somehow unionize because it's impossible to get a human being

from any particular platform under the bus.

But some of them are particularly bad and you just can't get a human being, can't get any help.

You could tell them any, you know, there's the biggest horror story in the world, biggest scam, biggest rip-off in the world, just crickets.

No help, no reply.

No.

I put them on blast.

Like, I'll put them on my story.

I say report this page.

They're gone within an hour.

Because if you get, like, 50 to 100 people reporting them quick, they'll take down the page.

Oh.

Try that out.

Got that, EJ.

I don't know if that still works.

I used to do that years ago when I was in crypto heavily.

People were trying to scam using crypto.

Well, it's a constant battle.

I don't know how I got on that topic, but that, you know, there's a lot.

There's a lot going on, but it's, you know, focus on what's fun.

I mean, like, events like this are so much fun.

You know, events like we did in Michigan last weekend, so much fun.

The cruises, so much fun.

I mean, it's just like, what a neat, you know, rather than just being like this boring old retired guy, now I'm like, you know, just living the dream, gambling, doing what I love.

And it's funny, I still gamble.

Like, we'll get done gambling.

And then sometimes I'll call my wife.

I'll be like, what do you want to do?

It's like, I don't know.

Well, let's meet down at GVR and

go play a little bit.

You just play for fun without even a camera rolling.

Like, I still enjoy it.

So I think that that's the thing.

I mean, if you can get paid to do what you enjoy, then I think you're really winning the game of life.

I love that.

Took you 60 years to find it.

Yeah.

Well, I think I've been doing it most for the most part my whole life.

I mean, I've never really been a big job person.

You know, I've usually like find something I'm into and then promote that or put deals together, connect people.

I've always just been pretty good that way about not having to have like a nine to five.

I'm way too ADD for that.

Yeah, I have ADD too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got diagnosed last year.

All right.

Well, that's good.

I've never gotten diagnosed.

I just throw it out.

Self-diagnosed.

Yeah.

When I was a kid, they called it B-A-D.

B-A-D.

Yeah.

Oh, bad.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That was a joke.

How'd you like it?

I got it.

It took me a second.

It took me a second.

What's the Sando stand for?

Well, the CPT did these hats for us.

So Sando is kind of like a word that is now, I think, in the urban dictionary and Wikipedia and whatnot.

I started saying, like, we'd get a bonus, you know, playing a game like Dragon Lake, a real popular game, and you get the three pots bonus, and you're like, yeah, bonus.

You're down $2,000.

And I get a bonus on a $50 bet.

And then the bonus is like $32.

You know, that's a real bad bonus.

And then, so instead of saying shit sandwich, I started saying Sando, and it just caught on.

So we made a Sando shirt kind of with this stardust design.

And I mean, now our merchandise is just incredible.

I mean, we sell our merchandise at El Cortez, we sell our merchandise dice online.

We sell it at the peppermill and Reno.

And I mean, we sell just a ridiculous amount of t-shirts, coffee mugs, you know, hats,

hoodies.

We got some really good hoodies.

And yeah, so that's a whole nother business.

We have to, we were doing it out of one of EJ's rental properties and it's literally bursting at the seams, bins, floor to ceiling.

We're looking at buying a big warehouse now for our merch business.

Geez.

Yeah.

That's incredible because a lot of creators have a following, but to be able to sell merch is a whole different level of engagement with your fans.

You know,

I look at sometimes, you know, a lot of people look like, oh, I have, you know, millions and millions of followers.

And then I look at the amount of views that they get and stuff like that.

And the numbers just don't seem to match.

You know, we have only 860-something thousand followers on YouTube, but our watch time is just ridiculous, you know, because our average video is about 40 minutes long.

Yeah.

And I mean, we have about 350,000 core fans that watch all 40 minutes.

So our view time is just off the charts.

Comments, likes are ballistic.

So yeah, we do have a real special relationship with our audience.

We hear all the time people come, they say, I feel like I know you, you know, because we talk about everything.

Like they know about us.

they know about our family, they know about, you know, every probably too much.

And they really feel like they know us when they meet us, which is really fun.

I feel the same way.

You know, I really, we really do have a great audience.

Yeah, that's real cool.

And you're diversifying the content.

I see you're doing other games now, like Baccarat and stuff.

Yeah, we coined this phrase, the get-even or get even worse.

So like, let's say we're gambling on slots and we're down $3,000.

We'll go over to Baccarat and play a $3,000 hand to get even or get even worse.

And so that's now one of our best-selling t-shirts.

Get even or get even worse.

And yeah, earlier today I played a, what was it?

A $5,000 get even or get even worse hand and it didn't work out so well.

So we went from down five to down 10, but then we fought back and ended up only down four for the session.

Well, if you win tonight, it's a 100K tonight, right?

Or 50K?

I don't know.

50K, I think.

50K.

There's 100K field.

Okay.

So the winner gets 50.

Oh, because I think it was only 20 or 25 when I went last time.

Each event's been getting better and better with the lineup and the prize pool.

We figured figured with all the different people, like, you know, as they call it, celebrity, it was more like internet celebrity poker tour, really.

But if you look at the followings of everybody in this room, you know, many of us are like, we're streaming it on Twitch, Facebook, and X, I believe.

And,

you know, I think last time was one of the most viewed poker events in online history.

In all time, yeah.

Yeah.

So tonight, I think, will be even more.

And I really hope I win again.

Yeah.

Tonight might break the record.

I mean, we got Sketch tonight, Ninja.

Oh, he's Sketch here?

Yeah.

Oh, he's funny.

I did a, what's up, brother?

Did a $10,000 hand of blackjack at Red Rock with him, and we lost.

Was it his money or your money?

Our money.

But he said, brutal.

It was great.

It got a lot of views.

I don't know if we made the $10,000 back, but it was fun.

He's a nice kid.

I love that.

I saw you on Howie Mandel's show.

Have you gambled with him?

We did.

We did Deal or No Deal.

Oh.

The slot machine with Howie, and then we were on his podcast.

That's cool.

Yeah, he's very nice.

He has a really cool warehouse studio in Hollywood.

It's like the museum.

He has like the original, the last cue cards from the Johnny Carson show, and he has some of the chairs from the set, and he's got all kinds of memorabilia, some AI company that he invested in, and just some real neat stuff.

He's a cool guy.

I love it.

Which hotel have you been gambling at the most lately?

Well, it's an interesting question.

I'm not trying to be like Mr.

Monetization, but I don't like to give a lot of free advertising out.

But there are certain hotels that really show the love and they understand social media.

We've come a long way in this whole gambling influencer thing from getting kicked out of hotels for bringing our phone out and filming to the point where there are properties that'll send a jet to pick us up to bring us into their casino.

I mean, it runs the gamut.

I guess if I was...

If push came to shove and someone said, what's your favorite casino?

There are two that I really, really like.

I wish I lived in Reno.

If I could, I'd play at the Peppermill every day.

They just have a really good, player-friendly philosophy.

It's just a great property.

They just take incredible care of us.

They understand social media.

They got a great social media team.

So I don't mind giving them a plug.

Adam down at El Cortez has been amazing.

I mean,

we have our merch there.

And the number of people that come down to Little Old El Cortez, you know, from ARIA, from the wind, from the bigger properties, big money players coming into the El Cortez to buy our merch or hope to watch us filming.

So

I tend to support the casinos that support us.

And

there are some good ones, and there's some that still don't get it.

A lot of these companies, they're so like syrup.

You know, like they, it's just impossible to get anything done.

A lot of these executives and these big companies, like working for the government, their favorite thing to do is just say no and not take any risks whatsoever.

Yeah.

But I mean, the reality is, is we have an audience of 3 million gamblers.

Those 3 million gamblers are the same 3 million gamblers that play in their casinos.

So I think eventually, gradually, more and more, we're going to start showing the love.

So I never speak ill of any particular place, and I love all the casinos.

But some have caught on quicker than others, I will say.

100%.

Well, Matt, what events are next for you, and where can people watch your stuff?

Well, I mean, we have a website.

It's actually pretty good now, finally.

We got a good VegasMatt.com kind of has everything, all of our socials and stuff.

Our main focus is YouTube, and it's Vegas Matt on YouTube, Vegas Matt on TikTok, and so forth.

And just,

you know, we're all out there and we'll be doing events.

Our plan is to be doing a tour this next 12 months and selling out theaters for our meet and greets, our night with Vegas Matt.

If you're watching, I hope you come out and say hello in person.

I'd love to meet you.

And what else?

No real big events.

You know, we're going to do another cruise probably in the spring.

And things like this CPT, one of my favorite events.

This is my third one, I believe.

And yeah, and I'm open to anything.

Love it.

Link it below.

Thanks for coming on again, brother.

Yeah, man.

Thanks a lot.

It was fun.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye.