Twitch Casino Ban Spawns New Opportunities For Other Providers

Recently the video live-streaming platform Twitch announced that it would soon ban all unregulated casino streams from its platform. The platform said the policy change, which will be enacted on the 18th of October this year, was a response to reports of potential harm that some users may experience when accessing these specific streams. Whatever the implications for the platform itself, this policy change presents new opportunities for other streaming platforms and organisations.

New Opportunities

One of the most obvious is that these rival platforms may start putting a greater focus on gambling streams, bringing those would-be users of Twitch over to their platform. A platform that intends to maximise this opportunity is LiveSpins, a platform that offers built-in streaming services to its online gambling platform. However, unlike Twitch, which is not designed with gamblers in mind, LiveSpins offers far more interactive modalities.

In an interview, Chris Scicluna, chief executive of Livespins, said they saw a gap in the market in the popularity of gambling streaming on Twitch. The gap was the ability not only to watch your favourite gamblers but to chat and bet alongside them in-stream. This creates a community that is not only watching the stream for entertainment purposes but is also materially invested in the outcome, which boosts levels of engagement to a new high. In Scicluna’s words, “when the streamer wins, everyone is winning.”

Since the news of Twitch changing its policy on gambling streams, LiveSpins is already receiving more traffic. Offering this kind of interactive streaming is good for both the consumer and the streamer and for the providers of the game, who will want to see their game being interacted with by the largest group of people possible.

Live streaming and gamblers

Indeed, live streaming as a concept has been a great boon for online gambling, with more people getting engaged in these games at the low-risk end of the funnel. This means that players may start vicariously enjoying a game by watching a stream, getting some enjoyment out of being along for the ride but with no risk. Only later, once the watcher has a good understanding of whatever game they are watching, do they potentially get involved in playing for themselves. This seems a much safer way for gamblers to start out, rather than just playing a few games, getting burnt and removing themselves from the system.

Interactive multi-screen streaming also allows for live slot-spinning competitions, which pit players against each other, with the biggest win taking home the prize. Indeed, some of these opportunities that may have been enjoyed on the Twitch platform are now being offered on gambling sites such as LiveSpins.

What will happen

Many commentators, however, have said that this crack-down on gambling streams on Twitch was inevitable. Robin Reed, chief executive of gaming VC fund Happy hour, said, “My first reaction was compassion for the businesses affected by this,”. “But we were not particularly surprised. Going on to say: “Twitch had revised its policies on casino links and so on previously. Now, I think gambling in mainstream media – digital or not – will always be volatile. You’ll always be subject to policy. So we weren’t particularly surprised.”

Even Twitch has recognised that catering to these streams is a hugely positive thing for business as they could have banned casino streams outright but chose to allow locally licensed casinos to continue. Although more legislation may continue to limit what Twitch – the Amazon-owned platform- can do to provide gambling-associated products, the platform would be foolish to completely ban all ties with the industry.

In the meantime, however, as Twitch puts its house in order, other platforms will continue to take Twitch’s example and construct services which provide what users find on Twitch but in a more interactive and exciting model geared towards pure gambling. In summation, Reed says that “I hope these latest events show that it’s much better than the industry comes together and develops great community offerings rather than relying on outside industries to cater to them.”