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He would gamble there, and in return, he’d swarm the lmct casino floor with a convoy of his fans. He hopes that one of those gleaming casinos on the Strip—away from the low-slung ceilings of the El Cortez—will offer him an exclusive deal. Morrow would like to replicate this business model across Las Vegas. Wiesberg has leaned into the partnership to the point that the casino’s gift shop is brimming with Vegas Matt–branded shirts and sweaters. The El Cortez was packed on this languid Friday afternoon, and there was no question that Vegas Matt was the main attraction. “We did the first blackjack stream, and my phone was blowing up,” he said. If players could record the intricacies of casino procedure, would they then be able to scratch out an advantage?
However, there is one time when hitting the jackpot might not be as satisfying as you’d expect – when you’ve had to put in more money to actually get it. He has mixed business with pleasure, and naturally, business is winning out. The next day, after a couple of way-too-strong gin and sodas, I withdrew the $100 I had, at the beginning of the trip, made peace with losing. “This is cliché, but for someone who had a hard time getting a date to the prom, or who wasn’t picked to be on the basketball team at recess, it’s fun to be like, Hey, maybe I am doing all right.” “Even at 61 years old, it’s a rewarding experience when people from your past, going back decades, reach out. Yes, Vegas Matt has managed to nullify the perils of gambling, but he has done so by leveraging social media—yet another casino, replete with long odds and enthralling opportunity—where the numbers can always get bigger.
At the end of the night, Morrow decompressed in the casino lounge, toasting both his winnings and the viewers who’ve come along for the ride. There are plenty of things I will always envy about Morrow, but I’m glad that the sacred, brain-healing ritual of a Saturday night at the casino with the boys will never become routine, or even boring. It’s a sentiment that clarifies the twinge of humiliation I felt after watching him cut out a baccarat bet of roughly the same value as my 401(k). “People come in here to buy my merchandise, and then they lose $5,000,” quipped Morrow, unshy about the revenue he generates for the game room. On the day of my visit, Morrow entered the game room with a Starbucks coffee in hand. But by far, the place Vegas Matt is most famous is the El Cortez, where he films the bulk of his videos and, therefore, where people know they have the best chance of running into him. He uploaded video after video of his trips to the casino, fleshing out the character his fans know today.
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The old world was calling, the one I shared with the other 40 million tourists who come to Las Vegas every year, composed of $10 baccarat bets and gouging ATM premiums. I remembered that in a matter of hours, I would no longer be in his orbit. (“Are you up or down?” asked an inquisitive Mandel at the beginning of the episode.) Morrow, along with the rest of his group, is a special guest of Mandel tonight. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Morrow told me he was bullied as a kid and felt like an outcast growing up. It has made Vegas Matt a celebrity, which, as I learned, is much more of a thrill for him than the money is. The horrible truth is that the iridescent desert sun can be refracting through the tinted windows of your blacked-out Rolls-Royce, and still the only thing on your mind is the next bet. “We’re looking for cool people,” he said, advocating for Vemma. So it was a little surprising that he’d adopted such a defensive posture about the method he used to get here.
Biggest Wins and Viral Moments
Vegas Matt, on the other hand, is unable to take a break from reality with the intoxicating assistance of excess. All of my frugalities are thrown out the window, bad ideas become good ideas, until, before long, I’m buying a pack of Marlboro Reds at 4 in the morning. A great Vegas trip, for my money, consists of a sudden and violent psychological displacement. And when I do lose, there isn’t a private dinner of stone crab claws waiting to balm my sorrows. The thrill of risking money that I can never recover, with YouTube metrics or otherwise, is one of my most cherished sins. I was actually on a bit of a hot streak by the time I hit the poker table, where a quintet of players much richer than I bled me dry in record time. Now it was time to become reacquainted with the city as I’ve always understood it. My eight hours as a high roller were officially over.
Because I too have sat at a blackjack table deep into the witching hour, and even on my best nights, I don’t think I’ve ever wandered to the payout window feeling totally satiated. I was attracted to his videos for their effervescent bachelor-party texture, a vision of a life unencumbered by anything but gratification. For the first time in our entire day together, there is a flash of venom. Wiesberg has put faith in the idea that people like me have become immune to the traditional ways the gambling industry has marketed itself. And despite his loss-heavy record, you never quite feel as if you’re watching an addict burn it all down, because it’s clear this enterprise is at least somewhat moneymaking. Naturally, I have watched this disruptive gambling renaissance meld with my social rhythms in real time, as more and more friends embrace the titillation of risk.
The Vegas Matt persona is a stubborn gambler who cherishes his wins and mourns his losses without ever growing outright despondent. My Instagram algorithm is littered, alongside Vegas Matt, with deep-fried, postironic gambling memes, all of which seem to simultaneously celebrate and parody the impotence of this enterprise. While I’ve thought of him mostly as a gambling cryptid—Bigfoot if he were in way too deep at the roulette wheel—I was also mystified by his persona. Because that’s what we do every day.” “What would happen if you were in Vegas, every day, and gambled? “Our watch hours on YouTube in December were, like, 5.7 million hours. “People give estimates of what they think we’re making, and it’s always way low,” he told me from the plush interior of his Rolls-Royce, which was still scented with a synthetic new-purchase aroma. All told, in 2024 he reportedly suffered $404,000 in gambling losses.
Merchandise
Over and over again, he told me that the only thing he’s ever wanted to do with his life is have fun. To become a gambling influencer, one must already be pretty rich, and that tracks with the single ambition Vegas Matt seems to have. They say, ‘Oh it’s a scam,’ ” he said. “So many people fail, and they don’t want to take responsibility for their failure. He lived in Los Angeles, where he unsuccessfully tried his hand at stand-up comedy and ended up helping finance a couple of kitschy horror movies in the late 1980s, including the infamous Night of the Demons. And yet, after several hours together, I’m still unable to pierce Vegas Matt’s gaudy persona. We zoomed into the sky on the express elevator and gazed through floor-to-ceiling windows at the shimmering rooftops of hotels far less regal than ours. Halfway through my day with Morrow, it became clear that he intended to impress me.
(The description on the video read, “Nobody should gamble like this, my friends got a little carried away.”) A year later, he managed to blow through about $43,000 in a single afternoon. Usually, the dealer wordlessly organized Matt’s money into thick columns of $100 bills, pleating their edges at a slight diagonal so she could slash through them all at once with counterfeit-detecting iodine ink. I’d been with Vegas Matt—the YouTube tycoon whose millions of followers salivate over his every bet—for only a few hours. His gray hair was molded into a tight crew cut, and he wore a knitted gold necklace low across his collarbone and a Super Bowl–sized ring with a Ruby 777 jackpot dangling from his hand. At a private baccarat table near the back of the El Cortez Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on a chilly January afternoon, a crowd of fans gathered to watch one of the world’s most famous gamblers at work. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. He doesn’t need to publicise the specifics, and it’s smarter not to. He needs attention and enough capital to survive downswings.
