The Amazon-owned streaming major Twitch has been arguably one of the most popular places to stream gambling content. That is prior to the platform’s first major gambling ban which took place on October 18, 2022 and explicitly outlawed unlicensed gambling sites.
Twitch focused on casinos that offered games of chance such as slots, live dealer, and table games without a license in the United States, going after a number of prominent companies at the time, with Roobet, Stake, Duelbits, and Rollbit included in the first ban wave, and later joined by Blaze and Gamdom.
This decision caused an exodus of popular streamers from the platform, including Félix "xQc" Lengyel, Tyler "Trainwreckstv" Nickman, and Cody "Xposed" Burnett, among others.
Since announcing the ban on unlicensed gambling content in September 2022 and enforcing it on October 18, 2022, Twitch has shown no signs of relenting.
The platform prohibits streaming of slots, roulette, and dice games from sites that are unlicensed in the United States or other jurisdictions with consumer protections, as stated in its official policy.
This enforcement followed an earlier change in the platform’s safety policy in 2021 when Twitch banned the use of links and referral codes to gambling sites. Over the following months, the company observed gambling content trends before expanding its restrictions in 2022 to feature specific websites, which continued in 2023.
To this day, Twitch has not changed its policy on gambling, although rumors swirled that the platform may be revising its position in the face of a newly-emerged competitor in the face of Kick.
Kick, a streaming rival to Twitch backed by Stake.com, one of the websites affected by Twitch gambling policy changes, has been determined to carry on. Bijan Tehrani, Kick’s owner, has stated that his company would either buy Twitch or beat it.
Kai Cenat addresses Trainwrecks revealing that KICK didn’t offer him $60M, saying they offered a 3 year deal but kept raising the price up everytime he declined but confirms it was NOT $60M for just Mafiathon 👀 https://t.co/zDVTLEpo4M
— ryan 🤿 (@scubaryan_) November 12, 2024
SimilarWeb, a digital analytics firm, suggests that Twitch is still far ahead of Kick in terms of total visits and average visit duration. Ahrefs, another search engine optimization company, posts similar numbers with Kick bringing in 1m monthly visits against Twitch.tv’s 40.3m.
Yes, there are currently several Twitch gambling categories listed on the website. The two most prominent ones are Slots and Virtual Casinos. A quick breakdown suggests that they are pretty large, but there are a few caveats to consider.
The issue with these numbers and their accuracy is that some of the people who subscribed to these categories must have done so before Twitch enacted its gambling ban on October 18, 2022.
For example, xQc left the platform early in 2023, and Trainwrecks followed in June 2023.
Both streamers have been passionate advocates of Kick, contrasting the platform’s more liberal approach to casino streaming, whereby players choose to filter such content by themselves, to the Twitch gambling ban which forced them to leave the Amazon-owned streaming service in the first place.
Despite the restrictive policies the company has introduced, many users continue to wonder if they can legally stream and share online casino content. The answer is that yes, you can, however , there are a few caveats to observe here as well.
The exact rules outlined by Twitch still very much apply, and there are several noteworthy points to pay attention to here.
If you happen to violate these rules, even without your intention or knowledge, you may receive a permanent ban from the platform or at least be suspended. Once again, the best way to proceed here is to make sure that you are only streaming licensed gambling content.
Because of how things turned out in the end with Twitch’s gambling ban, there are fairly few streamers in the category.
Most of them are running peak viewership in the low hundreds, which suggests that although various gambling categories have arguably more than 2m followers, they are not as frequented or enjoyable. to people any more.
With the exodus of big gambling streamers to Kick and Twitch’s own restrictions on what content may be shown, Twitch’s gambling momentum has been lost. Even big names, such as Brian Christopher, prefer to stick to YouTube, traveling the country and playing physical slots instead.
To sum it all up, Twitch takes a dim view of gambling. Online casinos are yet not as popular in the United States to seek active deals with streamers, and the big names who once dominated these categories have left.
However, any casino streaming hopeful will have no issue catching up on the current guidelines as stated by the company. Twitch has demonstrated that it is adamant about its gambling streaming policies, and is unlikely to revert course any time soon.
The thing is that there is no one with a tough stance activist representative of the masses of people and offical affirmed confirmed stern deepest rooted for the criminal gambling sites that have in plain words robbed people stolen their money their rights. So twich ? Who.......
