Twitch says gambling stream viewership has dropped 75%

Twitch says views of gambling streams dropped 75% after it began cracking down on promo from sites like Stake.com in September 2022.

“This meant the change had an immediate impact, and that our community has been better protected from scams and related harms,” it tweeted Aug. 2.

However, it added, since that ban it’s “observed some new trends and are updating our list of prohibited sites to better protect our community.”

Twitch’s original crackdown involved locking out “streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games”–but only if those sites “aren’t licensed either in the U.S. or other jurisdictions that provide sufficient customer protections.” Stake (which was co-founded by Kick co-founder Ed Craven) was possibly the biggest site hit; Rollbit, Duelbits, and Roobet were also banned.

Now, new additions to the list include online casinos Blaze and Gamdom. Twitch didn’t give exact reasons for why those specific sites are being banned, and also didn’t give details about what trends it’s noticed.

“Our goal now, as it was last fall, is to protect our community, address predatory behavior, and make Twitch safer,” it said. “It’s important that the policy continues to meaningfully prevent harm.”

Gambling stream viewership dropping by 75% is a significant departure from the “gamba meta” that ruled Twitch for months. Some of that drop must be due to former gambling streamers who stuck around on Twitch and simply moved on to another niche–but a sizable chunk of it, we’re assuming, is from people who kept their gambling streams going, but took them to gambling-friendly platforms like Kick and Rumble instead.

Both those platforms have pitched themselves as Twitch antitheses that welcome Twitch-disapproved content like gambling and hot tub streams. But as big as they talk, they’re not entirely out there letting creators do whatever they want: Kick recently said it was limiting “unnecessary exposure” to gambling streams by tweaking its recommendation systems.