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

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Discover how a gambling influencer turned his $250,000 slot machine losses into a social media empire! 🎰 Vegas Matt shares the incredible journey from getting kicked out of casinos for filming to having private jets sent for him. Learn how he built a massive merchandise business, sold out 1,300-seat theaters, and created a dedicated community of gambling enthusiasts. Get the inside scoop on running a successful gambling channel, managing massive losses, navigating tax implications, and turning social media influence into multiple revenue streams. From celebrity collaborations with Dana White and Steve Will Do It to hosting sold-out cruises, Vegas Matt reveals how he transformed his passion into a thriving business empire. Experience the evolution of gambling content creation, merchandising success, and building an authentic community. Whether you're interested in the business of social media, gambling entertainment, or building a loyal following, this episode is packed with valuable insights from one of the industry's most successful creators. Watch as Vegas Matt shares his journey from retirement to working harder than ever at 61, proving it's never too late to build something extraordinary in the digital age. 🚀 CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:25 - Matt's Recent Win 01:00 - Aliens and Extraterrestrial Life 04:00 - Matt's Recent Events and Updates 05:48 - Matt's Personal Growth Journey 07:40 - Matt's Recent Collaborations 09:19 - Bitcoin Insights and Trends 12:14 - Dealing with Scammers Effectively 16:30 - Meaning of "Sando" Explained 18:41 - Get Even or Escalate Conflict 19:15 - Howie Mandel and His Impact 20:48 - Casinos That Show the Most Love 22:58 - Where to Find Matt Online APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Vegas Matt https://www.instagram.com/vegasmatt/ https://www.vegasmatt.com/ https://www.youtube.com/vegasmatt LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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But I'd like to give a lot of free advertising out, you know, 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 like, you know, 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 Map Part Three, former celebrity poker tour 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. So now 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 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. 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 news, it seems, from clips of your podcast. It's all I see on my news feed.

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, you have a lot of cool guests. What was this deal with all these aliens? You're interviewing people with aliens, all kinds of stuff.

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 Yeah, 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. Let's all have you had any UFO sightings or I have not they don't they ignore me Yeah, I don't believe in aliens though. I don't know. I mean I Guess I I really don't know. I mean it guess I Really don't know. I mean, it's like I don't have a strong opinion

I 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, yeah, but I'll leave that up to you and your other guess. I'll focus on the slot machines That's my expertise. How's the the PNL 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 you know new information for people The house has an advantage Every time you push that button on the 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 like 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.

You can't say like, oh, you know, I have YouTube revenue and I have $250 and it was I have two hundred fifty thousand dollars of gambling losses I'm gonna write that off my active income like my understanding you know and I'm not a tax expert is that that's 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 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 gonna 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 a big for all of us. Interesting. Well, shout out to him for taking that risk because I wouldn't want to do that. 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's kind of like a podcast, you know, we're gambling, but we're also talking about everything, you know, our show's 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 gonna show up, you know, is it gonna 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 pulls, play on the ship the whole time, 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 Theo Vaughn or whomever would go for a concert or whatnot. And we had a 13.

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It's an Uber account that allows your team to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your team to your Uber account today. 100 seat theater in Detroit and we did a night with Vegas Matt and it was really really fun So about 13 hours. Yeah with a thousand person waiting list. Holy crap. Yeah, just to watch you gamble Well, we just to kind of meet and greet talk answer questions try to throw out a few You know some entertainment and then we had in Michigan online gambling is legal So we had Fanduel did a great job putting the event together,

or FanDuel Casino I should say, and we gambled 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 a big audience.

It's awesome. I don't think anyone's ever done anything like it before, but we're definitely planning 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. And now to see where you're at now, it's incredible.

Yeah, thanks, you too, man. 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, we're looking at those reels, looking at that TikTok, and 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 EJ are a really good pair together in business. Yeah, it's unusual for me to be alone without EJ on the pod. Hopefully I won't say anything dumb.

He's watching you right now. Yeah, he's over there in the compliance department. He's your PR crisis. Yeah. You have any PR crisis moments yet? Nothing to speak of really. No cancellation attempts? No, I've been hating myself.

And then he, we don't do much live stuff. So if I say anything inappropriate, he edits it out. Smart. I'm smart enough to know. These days you can't really say whatever comes to mind you got to be conscious and I'm for the most part I'm conscious. That's good yeah you gotta 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. 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 like I've seen I saw a lot of his stuff during the election side. 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 cuz 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 there was it was insane. So I look I love elections. I'm neutral Politics you got a good PR team. I love it

So you've gambled with some big people lately Steve will do it 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 gonna collab with tomorrow for F1. Nice. Guys with big followings on Instagram. EJ knew him, but I didn't. Yeah, but yeah, Steve was a lot of fun. I mean, he was probably a real big shot in the arm for us when we'd started streaming with him, and then we did that one video with Dana

where he's like, slots are stupid, and Steve was like fast spitting $250, and I'm like slow down you know 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's lives a charmed life it appears you know I mean you 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, 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 Barstool Sports, I would say is uncancelable. Nelk Boy is pretty uncancelable. And yeah, there's a few people on that list. Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan, I'd say too cuz he endorsed Trump Yeah, that was a big move from that was I was 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 90,000 393 93 327 as I walked in the door 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 I was for a while there I had a lot of aetherium then I and I was just like using it to 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. Like damn, I had probably if I'd kept every coin I ever owned, I'd be very wealthy. The all new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications.

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Why were you in it that early? A friend of mine came 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 five or 600 bucks or 380 bucks, like somewhere in that range.

And then probably sold it at a thousand and bought back and forth. But I was involved in it off and on. Then EJ really was smart about it and we did quite well. And now I have it, it's a reasonable percentage of my portfolio and it's just kind of a long-term hold. I helped Michael Saylor's write. 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 McDavid show, right? I do not know who show it was. Okay, yeah, I saw that. I mean, he's either gonna 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. 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. Oh. It's like a dollar now. Yeah. I mean, I remember I bought my first at like three cents a long, long time ago. Damn. Went up to three dollars in that first run in 2018.

And yeah, so there's been so many, so many. 18. And, and yeah, so there's been so many, so many, EJ had a funny one. We we had a, 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 said, oh, this is a dog and got rid of it for like $13, or something like that, that will literally,

how much would that be worth now? 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 about him recently. He said he doesn't regret it.

Yeah. Cause 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 gonna hold all the way. You never know. You gotta 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, 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 on a new business. 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 my whole life or I'm working as hard as I've ever worked. You know, it's work, right? I mean we get up, we're looking at stats and coming up with a 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 what's it called?

A thumbnail. Thumbnail pick. And then, you know, do the wrap up, you know, play the, film the shorts, then, 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 most for the most part we work seven days a week and yeah but it's always fun and more and more you know we'll go to a casino and we'll see like so many people wearing our merchandise like my let's enjoy this shirt you know 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, you know, 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. 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 what's their scam pitch? Like how do they get people? You know, they, they just pretend to be me and then they engage with the fans and then say, oh, send money for this or that and then they just 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, you know, from any particular platform or 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 know, you could tell them any, you know, there's the biggest horror story in the world, biggest

scam, biggest ripoff in the world, just crickets, no help, no reply. 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. Try that out. Got that, E.J.? 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 it got on that topic, but there's a lot going on, but it's, you know, focus on what's fun, I mean, events like this are so much fun. Events like we did in Michigan last weekend, so much fun. The cruise is so much fun. I mean, it's just like, what a neat,

rather than just being like this boring old retired guy, now I'm just living the dream, gambling, doing what I love. And it's funny, I still gamble. We'll get done gambling, and then sometimes I'll call my wife and be like, what do you wanna do? It's like, I don't know, well, let's meet down at GVR and go play a little bit and 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 for the most part of my whole life. I've never really been a big job person. 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, I've never gotten diagnosed. I just throw it out there. Self-diagn diagnosed. Yeah. When I was a kid, they called a BAD. BAD. Yeah. Oh, bad. Yeah. Yeah. That was a joke. How'd you like it? I got it. 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 game like Dragon Lake, real popular game. And you know, you get the three pots bonus and like, yeah, bonus, you know, I'm down $2,000. I get a bonus on a $50 bet. And then the bonus is like $32. You know, that32. 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 online. We sell at the pepper mill in Reno. And I mean, we sell just a ridiculous amount of t-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, hoodies. We've got some really good hoodies. And yeah, so that's a whole nother business. 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. Jeez. Yeah. That's incredible. Cause 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 God, 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 eight hundred and sixty something thousand followers on YouTube but our watch time is just ridiculous you know because our average videos about 40 minutes long yeah

and I mean we have about 350,000 core fans that watch all 40 minutes so our damn 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 and they say, I feel like I know you. Because we talk about everything. They know about us, they know about our family,

they know about, probably too much. And they really feel like they know us when they meet us, which is really fun. I feel the same way. we really do have a great audience Yeah, that's real cool and you're diversifying the the content. I see you're doing other games now like backer out 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 Bach rot 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 didn't work out so well So we went from down five to down ten But then we fought back and ended up only down four for the session well if you went tonight It's a hundred K tonight right or 50k? I don't know.

50k I think. There's a 100k field. Okay. So the winner gets 50. Oh because I think it was only 20 or 25. Yeah each event's been getting better and better with the lineup and the prize pool. We figure with all the different people like you know

if they call it celebrity it was more like internet celebrity poker tour really. Yeah. But if you look at the followings of everybody in this room you know many of us are like our worst 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, 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 a sketch here. Yeah. Oh, he's funny. I did again. Yeah, tonight might break the record. I mean, we got sketch tonight, Ninja. Oh, a sketch here? Yeah. Oh, he's funny. I did, what's up brother? Did a $10,000 hand of black jacket, Red Rock with him and we lost. Ooh. Yeah, and then he-

It was his money or your money? Our money. Okay. 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, the slot machine with Howie. And then we were on his podcast. That's cool. He's very nice.

He has a really cool warehouse studio in Hollywood. It's like the museum. He has the original The Last Q 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 out the most lately well it's an interesting question I I'm I'm not trying to be like mr. monetization 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. 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. It runs the gamut. I tell, 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 Pepper Mill 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 El Cortez from Aria, from the wind, from the bigger properties, big money players coming into the 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, you know, 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 that it's just impossible to get anything done. A lot of these executives in these big companies just like working for the government, their favorite thing to do is to say no and not take any risks whatsoever. But I mean the reality is is we have an audience of three million gamblers. Those three million gamblers are the same three million

gamblers that play in their casinos. So I think eventually, gradually more and more we're gonna start showing the love. So I never speak ill of any particular place And I love all the casinos That 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

I got a good Vegas Matt calm kind of everything, all of our socials and stuff. Our main focus is YouTube, and it's Vegasmat on YouTube, Vegasmat on TikTok and so forth. And just, 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 Vegasmat.

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 below. Thanks for coming on again, brother. Yeah, man. Thanks a lot. It was fun. Keep up the good work. Thank you. All right