YouTube Slots Influencers Hit The Jackpot

TAMPA — It seemed both surreal and natural for her all at the same time.

As Lady Luck HQ, the online slots influencer clad in a pink and black polka dot dress, she strode through the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino trailed by an entourage of family, friends, and content capturers. She mugged in front of a video board advertising her appearance that night with three contemporaries — the so-called “Slot-tastic Four” — and dutifully fielded questions from the casino social media staff on a makeshift red carpet.

A few minutes later, Francine Maric, a 40-year-old former automotive call center worker from Detroit, sat in the event center that within an hour would be mostly filled with fawning fans. She seemed momentarily daunted. Or, at least, reflective.

“I was never trying to break through. I never really thought this was going to go anywhere,” Maric told Casino Reports. “This was just something fun that my husband and I could do together. That’s really all I thought that it was … until it wasn’t.”

Projecting personality and relatability for nearly 900,000 YouTube subscribers is no easy task. Facing a thousand or more fans in close proximity, all of them within earshot and many interacting with a call-and-response of references to past videos, well, that would be another thing entirely. It was a real-world demonstration of this otherworldly rise to niche gambling fame that began in 2017. 

Chartered jets to the helipad.

Helicopters to the casino.

She’s not sure how it all happened. But it’s a good gig.

The other three stars of the show — Narek “NG Slot” Gharibyan, Scott “The Big Jackpot” Richter, and Michael “Mr. Mike Slots” DeArmey — clattered in for a brief rehearsal. The overt personalities that transformed them into some of the most successful slots influencers in the world quickly filled up the room. 

A plastic cup of champagne in hand, Maric joined them for a jaunt to the green room with the run-through complete. A squad of cocktail waitresses then choreographed the presentation of ceremonial Hard Rock guitars to them that would close the program.

“This is just dumb luck,” Maric conceded. “It’s quite literally what this is.”    

Hobbies go viral, slot influencers are born

More than 2.6 million follow Lady Luck HQ on the numerous social media platforms she fills with hours of content each week. She trades on her enthusiasm and relatability, and viewers patronize videos with ALL CAPS! titles trumpeting her and husband Miran Maric’s latest exploits around the United States.

The journey to becoming one of the most popular slots influencers on the internet began in a much more understated fashion.

A career with Fiat Chrysler took her from a call center desk in Detroit to a job as an area sales manager in Chicago, where she met her husband, then a salesman in the company. Both enjoyed casinos, but their move to the gambling deserts of Utah and then Atlanta would have in theory shuttered Lady Luck HQ before it was ever concocted.

But working in the automotive industry sent them to Las Vegas frequently, where she would work booths and Miran would cater to car dealers.

A trip in 2017 unwittingly turned a pressure-release into a career.

“After we would get done with the days of work, we would play slot machines just to unwind,” Francine said. “And [Miran] created this account and called it Lady Luck HQ.

“We would post pictures on Instagram. And people on Instagram were like, ‘Oh, my God, we would love to see you play.’ It was just a picture of a screen, of a jackpot that said I won $1,200 or whatever it was. There was no real video. It was just pictures.”

But it was the beginning.

There were very few slots creators at the time. (Richter was among them.)

“I’m like, ‘We could totally do that,’” she remembers.

The birth of the genre was complicated by casinos then strongly discouraging players from filming on the casino floors. Seminole Hard Rock didn’t even allow Lady Luck HQ to start until 2020, she said.

Back in Las Vegas in 2018 for another automotive show, the Marics secured permission to shoot their first videos from their host at the Wynn, as long as they didn’t film other players.

The viral break occurred just a month after the channel launched, with another milestone at the Wynn.

“I got this bonus game on a game called Rio Dreams. It was a $30 bet. I won $18,000,” she recalls. “The video went bonkers. The video went freaking bonkers. And that right there, I knew in that moment, when that video posted, when I woke up the next day and I saw how many views it had, I knew. I’m like, ‘Wow. This, whatever this is, this has legs.’”

That video, entitled “MASSIVE $18,000 HAND PAY JACKPOT,” has accrued 7.2 million views.

“It’s one of the most-viewed long form videos in this niche, in the world. It’s a big video,” she said with a smile, seemingly still somewhat surprised.

Maric sensed immediately that this thing with legs was going to require work and skills she didn’t possess if it were to grow.

“I’m like, ‘We have to figure this out,’” she said. “Because at that time, I didn’t know how to edit. I didn’t know how to make thumbnails.

“We didn’t have connections at all with these different casinos that allow filming and allow this type of stuff.”

By 2021, the part-time gambling influencer gig had begun to conflict with her full-time job in sales for an automotive software company. She’d work a full day, edit at night, then travel to casinos on weekends to avoid taking time off from the software company.

“I waited until I got to a certain point where I knew the money was secure, making money off of YouTube that was going to replace my day job,” she said. “And then I let my boss know: ‘This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to quit.’”

Miran Maric’s work as vice president and chief marketing officer at Asbury Automotive Group in Atlanta soon became more stressful, too. And unnecessary.

“We continued to travel, continued to do this on the weekends and for fun,” Francine explained. “But now it started to get to the point where the casinos wanted us to come during the week or come and spend a Thursday-to-a-Monday and he couldn’t keep taking days off work. And it’s like, well, once this gets to a level where we feel comfortable … ”

Miran quit his full-time job in November and the couple moved to Las Vegas. He travels for her many casino trips, often appears in videos, and edits them.

“For a poor kid from Phoenix to be able to fly around the country with my wife and play slots, with the privilege of entertaining wonderful people, is really a dream come true,” Miran told Casino Reports. 

The Big Jackpot went from ‘Spam King’ to influencer fame

Richter quips that his path to becoming “The Big Jackpot” began “after I injured my foot being a Chippendale,” but the reality is less exotic. A former restaurateur and “spam king marketer,” he had a former girlfriend who began recording his slots play and posting videos in the nascent days of the genre in 2014. His eventual signature raucous style would take even longer to emerge than others because of casino rules.

“The whole thing getting into this was just total random,” he acknowledged to the Tampa Hard Rock crowd. “Never in a million years would I have thought I would be here in front of all you guys. It’s hard to put words into it.”

NG Slot was out to show YouTube the other side of slots

Gharibyan just wanted to watch some poker on YouTube in 2017. Then the site’s algorithms began pumping disingenuous slots videos into his feed.

“I said, ‘You know what? I’m gambling already, so many years, and I have enough knowledge about YouTube, I’m going to start a YouTube channel and show the reality,’” he said. “All my losses, all my wins, and just keep it real, and explain to people that a casino’s a place for fun. Just go, play, have fun, play the money that you can afford to lose.”

Mr. Mike Slots just wanted to go to the casino more

DeArmey was a subscriber to Gharibyan’s channel who decided to combine his hobby and his flair for performance.

“I just wanted to have an excuse to gamble more, I guess,” he said, chuckling. “I would tell my wife, ‘I’m going to work right now.’”

Scores of other slots players have come to the same conclusion since, but few have so captured audiences like the group at both Hard Rock properties in Florida early this month.

Maric, Gharibyan, Richter, and DeArmey collectively boast more than 1.6 billion views on YouTube alone. Filming upward of three days a week, they’re able — or their employees are now — to collect enough whirring and chirping material to push out content to several social media platforms.

The quirks of each platform’s gambling content rules — TikTok is particularly strict — send viewers from app to app looking for each little bit of unique content, from Gharibyan winning $800,000 on Huff N’ Even More Puff to DeArmey pumping $300 a spin into Golden Century.

Connecting with viewers as the big wheels spin

The influencers readily admit that despite the hefty jackpots they post about, slot machines remain a losing venture. The videos, therefore, have to touch something in the viewers deeper than a series of objects often not aligning in the proper order. 

“It’s just basically based on the banter and the conversation that you’re having,” Francine Maric explained. “I think the reason why people are so drawn to our channel is my husband and I play together. And we have goofy conversation together.

“And a lot of couples that play can relate to that. They feel like they’re in the casino with us playing. More recently, we’ve been bringing [friends and employees] Jon and Kat [Sullivan] with us all the time. Us four will all play together. And that banter and that conversation amongst friends, people can relate to. And I think that’s why people keep coming back to the channel because it’s funny.”

It’s been crucial for each to exude personality and create a niche because, although viewers can dare to dream while watching Richter win $1 million or NG Slot win $800,000, most cannot relate to such success. They just remember how quickly their player’s club card expired last weekend.

“The bets that we’re doing, they’re not relatable bets. We bet big. We’re big gamblers,” Francine said. “We were big gamblers before we started the channel, but now we’re even bigger gamblers. I think people like to live vicariously through what we’re doing. And I think it’s just fun for somebody, especially somebody that wants to go to the casino that can’t or wants to go to the casino and they want to see what the games are before they go play them.

“And this gives them that outlet of feeling like they’re in the casino. They’re seeing how the games play, if they want to play it. If they don’t want to play it, they can see what it does when you do a $200 spin. And I think that’s fun for the viewer.”

Notoriety and cash have at times also made slot influencers targets. At the group’s stop in South Florida, a Mississippi man was arrested for allegedly stealing nearly $100,000 from Gharibyan’s account.

Losing, truth, entertainment, and more losing

With Richter, the hook is antics, running onto casino floors on a mad dash from the airport, smashing buttons with his head, hammering two machines at the same time with massage guns.

And even though they have posted big wins, all acknowledge that they lose. A lot. Partly because their audience knows how the slots game works, the influencers were able to build online empires being transparent.

The medium determines how much of the complete truth viewers can find. YouTube provides the opportunity for full disclosure because videos — some routinely an hour or longer — can span a full day of playing in a casino.

“If you watch just Instagram, you will see only my winning sessions there,” Gharibyan said. “Instagram is kind of where the girls are just posting always-nice pictures with make-up. [Instagram influencers] post too many jackpots. So for the reality, you have to watch the YouTube channel to start watching from start to the end and see how much I start and how much I finish [with].

“If you watch the last, like, two, three weeks, you will see I have some videos where I lose, like, $20,000 in 35 minutes, $50,000 in 45 minutes, all my favorite games.”

“There’s videos where I literally lose $10,000, $20,000,” Francine added. “In the video, though, there’s a lot of highs. I’ll get a jackpot. And then I spent it all. And then I got another jackpot. And then I spent it all and have to put more money in. So there’s always those highs and lows.

“But ultimately, at the end of the day, we don’t win gambling. It’s entertainment for us. It’s fun. And now that we’re making videos and posting them online, it’s entertaining for other people, too.”

Richter, the only influencer to have won a million-dollar jackpot, said he probably loses “about 50-50.”

“The thing is, just like all of us probably have experienced, we lose straight out, but those few times when we win, it makes up for so many of those losing trips,” he explained. “It’s just pure luck. I wish I had the secret sauce. Some of my best videos are my losing videos.

“There’s one video I lost like $100,000 in a half-hour. That’s one of my top videos. And I think my No. 1 video of all time was my 50th birthday when I lost a quarter-million dollars.”

Ultimately, DeArmey said, the fun and the mania should be kept in perspective.

“Forget about the wins. Forget about the losses. This is all just entertainment,” he said. “You’re here to have fun. So just take what you have to afford to lose and just enjoy your time. Just like going to a movie, right?

“You’re going to spend 50 bucks at a movie theater to watch a movie. If you enjoy that, then take your 50 bucks and put it on Huff N’ Even More Puff.”

Feeding an enterprise that consumes cash

For high-level slots influencers, at some point fame becomes the commodity in this money-consuming enterprise.

Maric posts her yearly cash flow online, with losses at a single casino often surpassing $100,000.

In a 2021 video, Maric revealed that Lady Luck HQ was generating around $39,000 monthly with 120,000 subscribers. Various online tools estimate the value of the site now at around $100,000 per month.

Influencers also rely on ancillary forms of income. Lady Luck HQ launched an apparel line. Some have Patreon pages.

In an interview with The Iced Coffee Hour Clips show, slots influencer Stephen Matt Morrow, known to his 1.2 million YouTube subscribers as Vegas Matt, revealed that 70% of his revenue comes from from YouTube ads, while merchandise and sponsorships each comprised 15%.

A YouTube channel that purports to track influencers’ YouTube ad revenue claimed Lady Lucky HQ generated $40,740 from June 7-13, trailing only Vegas Matt ($104,169). NG Slot came in third at $19,727.

Fame reaches beyond the screen for influencers

Even with always-on interaction — “You need a very thick skin,” Maric said of some comments on her posts — some of the slot influencers were stunned how social media fame begot real-world recognition.

“Today at the airport, a couple of people came up to me at stores,” Richter, also known as “Raja,” related. “I have twins, Michael and Joe. So Joe texted me the other day and he goes, ‘Dad, some lady just stopped her car while I was walking with my girlfriend into Olive Garden. She was like, are you Raja’s son?’

“It’s crazy. I mean, it’s just crazy how big this has gotten. I have a feeling it’s just going to get a lot bigger.”

Maric says she loves meeting people. That’s a good thing.

“It’s tough for me walking through a casino without getting recognized,” she said. “It’s to the point now where I’m getting recognized in an airport, in a shopping center, in a grocery store.”

Considered a disguise?

“I’ve thought about it,” she said, laughing. “I’m not going to lie, it’s crossed my mind. I always make the joke that I’m going to come in in a [beekeeper] costume.

“[But] without people watching the channel, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today. I’m extremely grateful for everyone that watches. I think it’s amazing.”