Fontainebleau Opens High-Limit Slots Salon with Vegas Matt, $5M Dragon Link

^{The Vegas Matt team – consisting of Vegas Matt (center), his son and cameraman EJ Morrow (left) and his friend and partner Robert “WBG” Goldfarb (right) – gathers at Fontainebleau for the ribbon cutting of a new high-limit slots room. (Photo: Christina Bradfield / Casinos.com)}

LAS VEGAS – The Fontainebleau celebrated the opening of its new high-limit slots salon on Saturday with a celebration as extravagant as its surroundings. Guests were treated to live music, showgirls, caviar, and $150,000 worth of slot-credit giveaways.

“We’re super proud of this room,” Senior Vice President of Slot Marketing and Operations Kevin Sweet told Casinos.com. “We believe we have the best rooms, the best dining, and now we provide the full package with our gaming experience.”

Ahead of the event, players were able to earn tickets according to points earned on their Fontainebleau rewards card, and those tickets put their name into spinning drums starting at $2,500 and growing toward a $50,000 top prize.

Serving as emcee was Vegas Matt – an internet-famous gambling content creator known for his polished, yet approachable presence that has made him a favorite among a combined 3 million-plus followers across YouTube and Instagram.

I happened to be one of those fans that day.

Seeing the Vegas Matt Influence

Walking up the Fontainebleau stairs, sculptural silver walls patterned with concentric circles separated the regular casino floor from the semi-private area for high-limit slots.

The new salon is actually an extension of the high-stakes table game area. According to Matt, Fontainebleau knocked down a wall to expand a high-stakes slots area (at his suggestion) and cut a pathway from that room directly to the high-stakes table games area.

Vegas Matt, aka Stephen Matt Morrow, is a Las Vegas-based gambler and creator of video content consisting of high-limit slots and table-game play. Wearing t-shirts and hoodies that celebrate casino culture and the ups and downs of pressing one’s luck, he moves through casinos with a small entourage of friends, who are followed virtually by legions of fans eager to share in his adventures.

The new room, which has a geometric carpet design, white-and-gold chairs, and gold-leaf wall coverings to match the high-limit table games lounge, provides a comfortable space for 135 machines.

These slots include popular Dragon Link games with a $5 million jackpot, and $1 million jackpot versions of Phoenix Link, Lightning 10-year Storm, and Monopoly Big Board Bucks. The low-end cost to play here is $50/spin, with bets as high as $3,125/spin allowed. The room also has classic video poker machines. 

The official opening was still more than an hour away when a violinist appeared out of nowhere, playing Dua Lipa behind me. The music suited the environment’s ambiance of luxury gaming rooted in the present.

She stood near the prize drums, next to a showgirl in a gold sequined dress who happened to also be a dancer for the Golden Knights.

Every time I turned, something new and completely Vegas was catching my eye – like another showgirl atop a silver platform with glass beading down the sides. She matched the platform with silver sequins and a feather fan that gave me a glowing smile.

As I’m still looking for Vegas Matt, a server offers me a delectable buffalo mozzarella kebab. Ooh, trés chic, but I don’t want to interview someone with spicy cheese breath. The server followed with an offering of bougie chicken salad between two fancy buns.

Again I declined, as tempting as it was. Before long, I found Morrow waiting to cut the ribbon to officially open the new room later that day.

Through ‘The Vegas Matt Arch’

Morrow became someone casinos began to pay attention to in 2021, when he was living a semi-retired life in Las Vegas, and a video of him winning $78,000 on a royal flush went viral. He was playing Ultimate X video poker at the M Resort. His son EJ filmed his reaction to winning and posted it to TikTok, having no idea where that would lead five years later.

Along with EJ, Robert “WBG” Goldfarb is an integral part of the team. He and Matt became friends in 2015 and shared their passion for gambling. The WBG stands for “World’s Biggest Gambler,” and he also has a background in poker with more than $500k in live tournament winnings and a WSOP Circuit ring to boot.

“Robert and I were gambling buddies, and this all just kind of happened organically,” Morrow said.

I went with Morrow, Goldfarb, and EJ to the table games area through the breezeway in the high-stakes slots area that Morrow calls “the Vegas Matt Arch.”

“It’s the get-even or even-worse corridor,” he called it in his video preview of the redesigned salon.

While Vegas Matt is the face of his video content operation, Goldfarb served as a connector, introducing Morrow to Sweet, Fontainebleau’s SVP of Slots.

I asked Matt what his favorite slot game was, and his response surprised even WBG: “If someone said to me, you can only play two games the rest of your life, I would say give me a Buffalo link machine and an Ultimate X 10 play video poker machine.”

Goldfarb said he was surprised Morrow’s answer wasn’t “whichever one I’m winning on.”

Reality of the Internet: Can’t Win ‘Em All

Morrow, EJ, and Goldfarb manage to balance high-stakes gambling with a light, humorous tone. I asked EJ if this had been intentional, and he said he feels that it’s something that Morrow naturally does well.

“Everything that we do, we do it because it’s fun for us first,” EJ said. “And if it’s fun for us, it makes it fun for other people.”

Morrow compared his team’s YouTube videos to a reality show. “[Viewers] have it on while they’re cooking dinner,” Morrow said.

He says people enjoy the banter, the father-son relationship, his friends, and just talking about gambling together. Morrow adds, “We talk about movies; we talk about TV shows. We tell jokes, [talk about] our lives.”

EJ added that striking a balance between posting content about Matt winning and losing is part of making the content feel relatable to the audience. He says the highs aren’t as high without the lows being included as well.

“Something I realized early on is, when we would lose,” EJ said, “people who gambled related to that. They don’t want to be lied to and see that somebody’s always winning, because they know that’s not true.”

As seems fitting with his personality, he adds that they “try to keep things positive and just have fun, [show] a couple of friends gambling together.” And he adds that he always tries to “do good for the city of Las Vegas.”

“I love Las Vegas,” Morrow says. “It’s the greatest city. I don’t understand why some people feel they have to tear down Las Vegas or tear down a property to get views.”

His role in the gambling world made him a hot commodity downtown at El Cortez, and now it’s exactly why bigger Strip properties like Fontainebleau are now courting him too.

On top of that, he’s even struck up a partnership with Virgin Voyages, and their upcoming cruise to the Mexican Riviera next week is already sold out.

“You know, your vibe attracts your tribe,” Morrow says he used to always say. “And we have the nicest group. We have so much fun, and the energy on our cruises, like the casino was packed.”

“Like, never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate it would get to what it has.”

Same Vegas Matt, same.