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Last year, Bruno Mars wrapped up a residency at the Park MGM in Las Vegas that lasted for a whopping nine years before coming to an end. There was some speculation that those performances were linked to a sizeable gambling debt, and he addressed them head-on while kicking off a concert tour in Sin City.
It’s been a little more than 15 years since Bruno Mars burst onto the scene en route to becoming one of the biggest pop stars on the planet with the help of solo hits and featured performances including “24K Magic” and “Uptown Funk.”
That first song was the titular track on the album he dropped in 2016, which also marked the start of a lengthy Las Vegas residency that was officially billed as “Bruno Mars at Park MGM.”
The singer and the casino on The Strip initially announced he’d committed to a two-year run a couple of months before his first show on December 27th of that year. However, when everything was said and done, he performed more than 100 times before officially wrapping things up a little more than nine years later with his final one on New Year’s Eve in 2025.
The length of that residency spawned a rumor that asserted Mars had an ulterior motive for performing at that venue for as long as he did, and while he didn’t outright deny that was the case, he did downplay it at a concert in Vegas last week.
Bruno Mars said he paid off his gambling debt “a long time ago” while addressing rumors about his Las Vegas residency
In 2024, NewsNation published an article that asserted Mars had linked up with Park MGM as part of a deal to settle a gambling debt that had gotten as high as $50 million, with a source claiming the powers that be at the casino “basically own him.”
They quickly denied that was the case, saying “MGM and Bruno’s partnership is longstanding and rooted in mutual respect. Any speculation otherwise is completely false; he has no debt with MGM.” However, the rumor continued to proliferate, with some people going as far as to claim Mars had been told he wasn’t allowed to physically leave Las Vegas until the debt was settled.
He was very candid about his affinity for gambling in a GQ profile that was published in 2013, and he has poked fun at the rumor since it surfaced.
On Friday, Mars kicked off The Romantic Tour with a two-night gig at Allegiant Stadium, where he was joined by longtime collaborator and fellow Silk Sonic member Anderson .Paak.
The latter took the opportunity to reference the debt rumor while engaging in some onstage banter, and Mars got the chance to clear the air, saying, “I’m debt-free. I paid the casino off a long time ago.”
Bruno Mars tells Anderson .Paak that he’s “debt-free” at The Romantic Tour in Las Vegas:
“I paid the casino off a long time ago” pic.twitter.com/mYjUvoq4dj
— Pop Base (@PopBase) April 11, 2026
That should settle that.