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Watch: Check In at Wynn with Nate Bargatze
Host Valerie Lee checks in with Nate Bargatze, an Encore Theater headliner since 2019.
Bargatze is having one of the busiest and most exciting years of his life and career. He hosted Saturday Night Live, broke an attendance record at Bridgestone Arena in his hometown of Nashville, and released his first comedy special on Amazon.
In September 2023, Bargatze busted through Bridgestone Arena’s all-time attendance record, selling out to 19,365 people.
“Bridgestone [was] built before I started comedy,” he says. “The dream was to play there. I never thought about [breaking a record]. We started selling tickets, and it just was getting to that point where it was looking like we could beat the record. It's beyond. None of this feels like it's happening to [me] to be honest. It feels like it's happening to someone, and I'm watching."
He says to keep his record from being stolen, he took one chair home after the show. “When they call me and go, ‘we need the chair back,’ that’s when he will know it's over.
And those aren’t the only numbers he has shattered recently. When Bargatze released his special on Amazon Prime “Hello World,” he broke the record for comedy debut on platform.
He attributes it to the off-the-charts popularity of stand-up comedy right now. “It is becoming a lot more mainstream than it ever has been. When comics get their start now, they can hopefully just be stand ups and they don't have to always have a television show or do all this other stuff.”
Another major career milestone, Bargatze hosted Saturday Night Live in 2023, noting that the experience was a “wild ride.”
“Coming from live performances, it's the most fun I've ever had. They want you to do good there. They're not trying to make you look bad. When you're done you don't know what happened,” Bargatze says.
At the end of the day, he still loves coming back to Las Vegas, and to perform and play at Wynn.
“I remember when I first came to Vegas, I was blown away by seeing escalators outside,” he says. Now, Bargatze is most touched by the phenomenal audiences he encounters at Encore Theater. “The great thing about coming to Vegas is that it’s a different audience every time but it is nice to play the same theater with some consistency. And I’m a big golfer so having the Wynn Golf Club — it was my favorite hotel before I even got asked to come here.”
Make sure to catch Nate Bargatze the next time he plays at Wynn’s Encore Theater.