Gambling addiction is one of the biggest problems nowadays. Fighting it is especially difficult when almost everyone has access to the Internet and popular content creators lure their fans to try their luck at online casinos (even if it's not articulated). The situation is exacerbated by the fact that there are quite a lot of underage viewers on streaming services. For example, de jure, Twitch prohibits the use of its service by children under 13 years old, but in practice, this rule is barely followed. No platform will be able to verify the age of each viewer, which means that they must more strictly moderate the content on broadcasts.
Twitch has been combating gambling broadcasts for years. It regularly introduces new restrictions, bans streamers for advertising online casinos, etc. However, statistics show that all these have little effect.
Skins gambling issue
Online casinos and betting companies advertising can now be found anywhere on the Internet, but the most convenient way to look at this phenomenon is through the example of streaming platforms. Twitch — one of the largest live streaming services, focused on gamers — can be singled out among them. The gaming broadcasts here were the first trigger to lure viewers to online casinos.
Back in the mid-2010s, gambling sites that allowed betting with in-game skins from CS:GO and Dota 2 were very popular among gamers. These skins are not full-fledged currency but have a certain value on the Steam, and in case of a win, they could be sold to another player for real money. Some users began to make bets on such sites between matches, thereby sharing with their viewers the excitement of waiting to win. Such content was in high demand on the platform, so streamers began to pay more attention to it.
Streamers who only played on certain skin sites appeared on Twitch around the same time — not only did they make bets on esports match outcomes, but they also opened loot boxes or gambled skins in other ways. In fact, many of the popular sites back in those days were online casinos in its purest form, only under the guise of gaming. The owners of such sites actively cooperated with content creators and even reportedly "adjusted" their chances of winning. The logic was simple: viewers should see that you can win a large sum/expensive skin on this site, and then he will come to play there himself. Some dishonest streamers colluded with roulette site owners to cheat more viewers and make money from it.
PhantomL0rd's gambling stream
In the mid-2010s, Twitch began banning such streamers for scamming. Some of them indeed appeared to be co-owners of casino sites, but there were also random victims. For example, the platform blocked PhantomL0rd's channel for advertising CSGOShuffle roulette in 2016. Twitch claimed that the streamer was a co-owner of the site and adjusted the winning chances in his favor to mislead his viewers. The streamer denied all allegations and even sued the service. Eventually, after much litigation, he did win his case against Twitch in 2021. The American streamer received $20,000 in compensation from the company for the unlawful ban, although he initially demanded $35,000,000.
The excitement around the game roulettes on Twitch has decreased over time. Valve, which restricted the work of trading bots on Steam, largely helped it — the company introduced a temporary ban on the transfer of items from account to account, which for a while made it very difficult for skin sites to operate.
Demand for online casinos
The story of gambling with in-game skins showed that Twitch has quite a large audience of people who are interested in gambling. This was quickly realized by the owners of real online casinos, where users play slots, blackjack, poker, roulette, etc. Such websites started to actively cooperate with top Twitch streamers like xQc, ROSHTEIN and Trainwreckstv, offering them huge amounts of money for advertising. Just a few slots broadcasts could make a streamer a millionaire, so it's not surprising that many agreed to such dubious collaborations. These streamers rarely played with their own money and most often used accounts provided by administrators, where the chances of winning could also be inflated. At the same time, they frankly said that gambling is addictive, so viewers should not do it. The worst thing about this situation is that few viewers actually followed such advice, and broadcasts with gambling content were in high demand.
xQc with gambling stream
However, not all Twitch streamers liked that broadcasts with gambling content massively appear on the platform. Many drew attention to the issue of the morality of such broadcasts.
An interesting case happened in 2021 to streamer dDandis from Slovakia. He broadcast his e-poker game live, as a result of which his Internet provider blocked access to Twitch in the whole country. The reason was a violation of local laws related to gambling. Over time, the situation began to spiral out of control. Online casino broadcasts on Twitch grew more and more, and roulette with in-game skins returned and adapted to the new Steam rules. The community began to see more and more situations where streamers were blatantly luring their viewers to casinos or begging them for roulette money. One such streamer, Sliker, got so involved in gambling in CS:GO that he collected a total of $200,000 in debt from his viewers and colleagues. After this incident, many popular streamers like Mizkif, Pokimane and Devin Nash threatened to go on strike because of Twitch's lax gambling policy.
How Twitch began fighting casinos
The topic of gambling broadcasts remained alive in the community for a long time, and Twitch finally decided to take more radical measures only in the middle of 2022. Firstly, it banned broadcasts of slots, roulette, and other gambling games from sites that do not have a license in the United States. The first sites to be banned were Stake, Rollbit, Duelbits and Roobet, which were some of the main sponsors of roulette streamers on Twitch. Secondly, the gambling streamers were heavily restricted in advertising opportunities — they were forbidden to post referral links to online casinos and, in general, to advertise such sites in any way. This was supposed to reduce the demand for such broadcasts.
Additionally to these measures, Twitch began the practice of selectively shutting down gambling categories for different countries if required by local law. For example, Twitch disabled the Virtual Casino category for Russian users — local viewers were prohibited from launching streams in this category and watching broadcasts there.
Gradually, Twitch added more and more new restrictions for gambling sections. The administration expanded the ban list for streaming sites to include those where it was possible to bet in cryptocurrency. Later, the platform once again tried to prohibit the broadcasting of gambling with skins, the popularity of which has again increased. All these measures had only a short-term effect and, as practice has shown, brought almost no real result.
Kick's introduction
Twitch's strict policy towards gambling streamers led to the launch of a new streaming service called Kick at the end of 2022. It differed from Twitch with a higher percentage of royalties for streamers (95% of revenue from subscriptions instead of 50-70%), as well as much more loyal rules regarding gambling broadcasts. The latter can be explained by the fact that Kick was launched by the co-owners of Stake.com, one of Australia's largest online casinos. It was the Stake casino that was among the first to be banned from streaming on Twitch.
Practically starting from its first few months of operation, Kick began competing with Twitch. Of course, the green platform was and continues to be strongly inferior to Twitch in terms of overall audience reach, but the gap is gradually narrowing. In 2023, Kick attracted many popular Twitch streamers, including Trainwreckstv, xQc, Amouranth, ROSHTEIN, Nickmercs, WestCOL and many others. Some of them were offered multimillion-dollar royalties for non-exclusive contracts, but some switched to Kick just because of the platform's more loyal and clear rules. Kick also became a new home for those streamers who had personal conflicts with Twitch.
Kick cannot yet compete with Twitch and YouTube regarding audience reach, but it only took a year to catch up with AfreecaTV and NimoTV. The service continues to grow and attract more viewers, and the gambling content categories on Kick are consistently in the Top 10 most popular categories of the month. You can read more about the results of Kick's first year of operation in our recap.
Gambling broadcasts on Twitch haven't disappeared
Kick's launch and the migration of streamers did not solve Twitch's problem with gambling broadcasts. In fact, the exact opposite has happened — there are even more gambling broadcasts now. If you look at the dynamics of gambling categories on Twitch for 2023 (Slots, Virtual Casino, etc.), you can see a steady increase in total Hours Watched. This growth is quite significant: in January, gambling categories on Twitch had 28.2 million Hours Watched, and in October — already 62.6 million. Similar dynamics can be seen on Kick, but the figures there are about two to three times fewer.
Gambling streamers continue to broadcast on Twitch and every day they come up with new ways to bypass the restrictions of the platform. Most often, they broadcast in other categories until it is noticed by the administrators. For example, a streamer runs a supposedly gaming broadcast on the game Virtual Casino, which was released on the Sega Saturn in 1996. However, the streamer is not streaming a retro console game at all, but streaming a regular online casino game. There were several such incidents over the months, so Twitch administrators even had to remove some sections like Casino Slot Machine! and The Casino: Roulette, Video Poker, Slot Machines, Craps, Baccarat. All of these were fake games that were simply being covered up by unscrupulous streamers.
As for the unique channels with gambling broadcasts on Twitch, their number remains at a consistently high level throughout the year — 7K-8K. Meanwhile, an increasing dynamic in this metric can be seen on Kick. In the first half of the year, there were 1K-3K unique channels, but in the second half of the year, there were already 4K-5K unique channels.
As practice shows, few people pay attention to the new rules. Twitch gambling streamers register new accounts, launch broadcasts from banned casinos, add advertising and referral links, and broadcast until they are not banned by the administration. After that, they start all over again.
In terms of "honest" gambling streamers, you can count them on your fingers. CasinoDaddy channel is the most popular among them, where a team of streamers conducts daily broadcasts on different gambling games. In 2023, this channel generated over 7.8 million Hours Watched on Twitch — the best result on the platform. In comparison, the top gambling channel on Kick — ROSHTEIN — racked up 26.2 million HW in the same period.
Gambling categories on Twitch are the leaders in the number of channels banned for rule violations and suspicious activity (viewbotting). Almost every fifth major gambling channel on Twitch received a ban in 2023. If we talk about small channels, the percentage of bans among them is two to three times higher. All this suggests that so far the administration of Twitch has not found effective ways to combat prohibited broadcasts en masse, not targeted. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the platform is not willing to give up such broadcasts completely.
However, it would be wrong to say that Twitch's methods don't work at all. After the introduction of new restrictions, the top gambling streamers on the platform began to accumulate far fewer Hours Watched. Some of them were banned altogether for violating the rules of the platform. For example, administrators removed the channels SlotsMarko, ryrapasnya, alinefarias2_, ilGabbrone and others. At the same time, top streamers see this number growing on Kick — Adin Ross, mellstroy111 and yassuo gained the most Hours Watched in gambling categories.
What's happening with gambling in esports?
The situation with gambling in esports is ambivalent. Much depends on the game developer, tournament operators, and the very structure of the professional scene. For example, Riot Games has restricted all participants in its League of Legends and Valorant leagues from advertising bookmakers, so you will never see them on tournament broadcasts.
It's a different matter with Valve, which publicly condemns gambling but doesn't actually react to the problem because it uses loot boxes as a monetization mechanism in Dota 2 and CS:GO itself. In August 2023, Twitch introduced a ban on broadcasting from loot box sites with skins in CS:GO. However, the share of such broadcasts is still quite high — more than 6% of CS:GO streams are dedicated to skin roulettes.
The situation with bookmakers is similar. Almost every year Valve "strongly recommends" teams stop partnering with bookmakers, but in practice, it does not lead to anything. Bookmakers were the most popular category among the sponsors of The International 2023 Dota 2 participants. Bookmakers buy the rights to the official broadcasts of majors, and they themselves often act as organizers of esports events (the recent BetBoom Dacha and similar tournaments are worth mentioning).
The situation with bookmakers and gambling in Dota 2 and CS:GO is very difficult to fix because different tournament operators have their own take on the problem in these disciplines. In addition, almost every top team has a bookmaker sponsor, and they depend heavily on such partnerships for their finances.
Obviously, gambling will be an important part of both the live streaming industry and esports for a long time to come. It will be extremely difficult to solve this problem without radical bans on the part of platforms or developers, so the gaming community needs to learn to treat this virtual leisure activity responsibly.
