The streaming platform Twitch will ban, from October 18, the broadcast of certain gambling. The service, owned by Amazon, announced that the ban would affect “the distribution of content from sites that include slot machines, roulettes, dice games and that are not licensed in the United States or in another country with legislation that sufficiently protects consumers. »
In practice, this new rule mainly concerns sites, such as DuelBits or Stake, which offer casino games in which users place bets in cryptocurrencies. The most important of these sites, Stake, is established in Curaçao, an island in the West Indies, whose legislation on gambling is very flexible. In France, access to this site has been blocked since 2021, following a decision by the Online Gaming Regulatory Authority (Arjel).
In theory, Twitch already prohibits the distribution of links or coupons for gambling sites, but explains that it has found that some of its broadcasters circumvent these rules. In recent months, Stake and other similar sites have entered into partnership agreements with Twitch streamers, sponsoring the airing of their shows.
Mobilization of platform stars
For the past ten days, some of the biggest English-speaking stars of Twitch have mobilized against the presence of these sponsors on the platform, believing that they encourage unfair and illegal competition from “casino streamers”. Gambling has risen to the top 10 most popular stream categories on Twitch, in a ranking historically dominated by video games, such as GTA, Minecraft or League of Legends. Several big names on Twitch had threatened earlier this week to go on strike over the holiday season if Twitch did not act.
A significant part of the Twitch audience is made up of minors, for whom gambling is prohibited in France as in the United States and in most countries of the world.
