Get a Kick out of it: the battle for slots streaming supremacy

If you asked gamers who their favourite Twitch streamer is, they might say ‘Ninja’ or ‘Pokimane’, who have amassed over 18.5 million and 9.3 million followers, respectively. However, the corner of the Amazon-owned streaming platform that has been causing a stir of late is the slots and live casino streaming category. Last September, Twitch announced that “streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette or dice games that aren’t licensed in the US or other jurisdictions that provide consumer protection” would be banned from 18 October 2022. Some of the biggest casino sites included in this ban were Curaçao-licensed Stake, Roobet, Rollbit and Duelbits. Since then, two more sites have been banned from Twitch, which are Blaze and Gamdom, due to the fact neither site are licensed in the US. The original clampdown was prompted when streamer Abraham ‘Sliker’ Mohammed admitted he had scammed fans and other content creators out of at least $200,000 after developing an esports betting addiction.   

While Mohammed did not stream casino games, it provoked a massive backlash within the community, especially from the most-followed female streamer on Twitch, Pokimane (real name Imane Anys) who threatened to boycott the platform if more wasn’t done to tackle the prevalence of gambling. Anys regularly took to Twitter and her Twitch channel to demand restrictions on casino streams, which eventually led to the aforementioned ban and gave birth to a new rival for Twitch called Kick in December 2022. Kick and Stake are both borne out of Easygo, a tech company founded by Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, with the former holding the position of Kick CEO.

Kick takes a much more relaxed view of casino streaming and is widely known for its modest 5% take of subscription revenue, meaning streamers get to keep 95% of their earnings. In comparison, Twitch has a 50/50 revenue split, unless you qualify for its Partner Plus programme where the split is 70/30. Kick has also made a name for itself through deals with former high-profile streamers on Twitch, most notably American chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, YouTuber Adin Ross and ex-professional Overwatch player Félix Lengyel.

The deal with Lengyel, aka xQc, has raised many eyebrows, with it reportedly being worth $70m (£54.7m) over two years, potentially rising to $100m with incentives. For context, that is roughly the equivalent of the two-year contract LeBron James signed with the Los Angeles Lakers last year. While Kick is splashing the cash to sign well-known streamers, the site is only managing to garner around 117,000 live streams a day, according to platform data analyst site Streams Charts. A figure which is dwarfed by Twitch’s 7.1 million monthly streamers and 2.2 million daily viewers, as reported on Twitch Tracker.    

Numbers don’t lie   

Before Twitch brought in its ban on some of the leading casino sites, slot streaming became a top-10 category for the third time in a row last July, with 45 million hours watched and a peak viewership of 283,000. When looking at Kick, slots and casino was the second highest viewed category on the platform in June 2023, with over 15 million hours watched in the month and a peak audience of 121,000, as per Streams Charts data.

Michael Pedersen, chief commercial officer at social live streaming platform Livespins, breaks down what it is about these streams that is pulling in such an audience. “It’s the thrill and the entertainment that is not reliant on you. It’s not your account or your money; you can tap into or be part of that thrill the streamers are going through,” he says.

“When you compare it to esports streaming, there is a strategy, it’s a skill game,” Pedersen continues. “You need to spend an ungodly number of hours on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to become a professional player. That is part of the draw for people on that side. But when you look at slots streaming, there is no skill involved; it’s all random. No matter how good you are at pressing the spin button, it’s not going to change your chances of winning.”

The meteoric rise of Kick has not been without controversy. First off is its obvious links to Stake and alleged lack of content moderation. Stake and Kick recently found themselves in the crosshairs of the Greek gambling regulator, the Hellenic Gaming Commission, which has put both platforms on its blacklist given their provision of “unauthorised gambling services”.

Dave Sproson, head of safer gambling at EPIC Risk Management, believes that having a positive reputation in the live streaming space is key to denting Twitch’s position as market leader. He remarks: “I think it can be a concern, as reputation is everything in this industry, which is not unique to streaming. It’s the same with any operator in this space that has a chequered past. Now, that’s not to say that things won’t change as only time will tell what happens. But from what we can see now, Kick generally is a lot slacker [than Twitch] when it comes to moderation.”

Kick now allows audiences to blacklist gambling content from appearing in their recommended section, but there is still the issue of the lack of moderation of content. Speaking to Streams Charts, Stake co-founder Craven addressed Kick’s moderation process and how it differs from Twitch. He pointed out that at Kick there are only two hard rules for creators: no hate speech and no pornography. If broken, the result is a ban. Craven said that while he couldn’t speak for Twitch, Kick’s approach keeps an open dialogue with creators as “banning most creators for a week or more means they may miss rent or bills, so we feel we can get the same message across via dialogue”. 

India Atkin, an associate at law firm Wiggin, says this relaxed approach to moderation creates a number of legal issues and that platforms have a responsibility to ensure content being streamed on their sites is legal. She explains it falls under three categories: gambling offences, advertising rules and the protection of children.

On gambling offences, Atkin says: “Gambling operators in the UK need a licence from the Gambling Commission to operate, otherwise it is illegal. There is an offence of advertising illegal gambling which will apply, for example, if gambling services that are not correctly licensed are advertised or promoted. Whether live streaming is considered to be ‘advertising’ is a legal grey area – but platforms and streamers should be aware that it is an offence to do so.” 

Taking responsibility     

While it may be thrilling to watch a streamer spend tens of thousands of pounds in one session playing slots and potentially winning large sums of money, this reckless spending could have a detrimental effect on those watching. When looking at the core audience who use sites such as Twitch and Kick, market research firm GWI (formerly Global Web Index) found that 41% of those consuming content on Twitch are aged between 16 and 24. According to the Gambling Commission, the problem gambling rate for this age group in the UK increased from 0.8% (year to March 2022) to 1% in the same period in 2023.

This poses the question of how Twitch is self-regulating itself to prevent those in this demographic from being overexposed to gambling content. EPIC’s Sproson explains that while Twitch may have been slow to react to this material, it’s hard to say whether it is doing enough to protect young people.

He comments: “It is difficult to answer because they’re not a regulator themselves. They’re not a gambling operator and so to understand how they can be regulated or regulate themselves, you first need to try to fit them into a category. And while there have been ongoing discussions in the past few years about what regulations they would be bound by, not much has changed. When asking could they do more, I think it’s safe to say they could always do more; everybody could always do more.

“If we could wave a magic wand today and invent gambling from tomorrow on Twitch, we would put in place some form of KYC verification to check you actually are the age you say you are and that you can’t view any gambling streams until you have logged in.”

There is also a fundamental responsibility on those streaming to ensure they act responsibly. Spending thousands of dollars on each slots spin could bring about unintended levels of harm for some viewers. For example, a clip of Lengyel gambling over $100,000 in a minute ($1,400 per spin) went viral on several social media platforms in June 2023, a pace at which would have seen him bet over $6m in an hour.

However, Livespins’ Pedersen believes it is promoting the wrong image for those that play slots. “It all comes back to having a healthy bet amount per spin,” he points out. “We do not think it is healthy for a streamer to be betting €500 or €1,000 per spin or even higher on a stream that can last 12 hours. The streamer is not projecting a healthy lifestyle when it comes to gambling.”

There’s also the burning question of where these funds have come from. Are streamers betting with their own money or is the cash coming via partnerships with operators? If it’s the latter, you would expect the streamer to disclose the source. Atkin of Wiggin lays out the legal viewpoint on this: “In the UK, streaming content is an advertisement if it involves publicising something in exchange for payment or other valuable consideration, or if there is a direct financial connection to the brand being promoted. Even if the streamers are not receiving monetary compensation but are receiving non-monetary benefits such as casino credits or free games, it still qualifies as an advertisement. If a live stream is an advert, this must be disclosed to comply with advertising rules in the UK.”

As the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK provides guidelines for influencers on how to disclose advertisements, it advises to avoid using terms like ‘sponsored’, ‘supported by’, ‘funded by’, ‘gifted’ or ‘in association with’. Instead, hashtags such as #ad or #advertising are preferred. Atkin adds: “Disclosures should be placed at the beginning of the advertising content and reiterated throughout the stream to ensure viewers are fully aware of the nature of the content being presented.”

Twitch’s lead at the top of the streaming table might still be unassailable for now but the evidence shows Kick is growing at pace and could soon be knocking on the door for Twitch’s title. In an interview with streamer Filian, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said if sites like Stake were to be regulated, they’d have a route back onto the platform. But is there an incentive for Stake to do so seeing its CEO already has Kick in his portfolio?

As the two platforms continue to allow regulated gambling, including casino and slots streaming, Kick and Twitch have their work cut out to prevent the most vulnerable members of these audiences from viewing content that may be inappropriate for them. Could these platforms perhaps be ticking time bombs for an increase in gambling-related harm? Time will tell, unless further regulation is enforced to promote tighter responsible gambling measures.