Casinolytics Looks at Impact of Twitch Gambling Ban

In mid-October, the interactive live-streaming service, Twitch, unveiled changes to its policies effectively implementing a ban on streaming certain gambling content. Now, a new report released by the independent AI-driven data science company that provides insights for the iGaming industry, Casinolytics, reveals what the impact of the new gambling policy update from Twitch was.

In October, Twitch Banned the Streaming of Multiple Gambling Websites

Casinolytics leverages its own data and expertise to shed light on what has changed since Twitch’s update in policy in October. The AI-driven company outlined that based on its data from Q3, 2022, Twitch was the undisputed leader in live casino streaming. In Q3, Twitch represented 95.9% of the total reach, while the remaining 4.1% of the viewership was filled in by YouTube.

“YouTube has been the home of replays, reviews, big-win videos and other gambling related content (VODs), but the undisputed number one in casino live streaming has been Twitch,“

explains Casinolytics

However, on October 18, at approximately 10 AM Pacific Time, Twitch released an update in its community guidelines updating a section called “Prohibited Gambling Content.” This resulted in an effective ban for four different domains that include:

• stake.com
• rollbit.com
• duelbits.com
• roobet.com

Twitch reiterated that it doesn’t allow “users to share links or affiliate codes to sites that contain slots, roulette, or dice games.” The leading streaming platform also explained it takes into account whether the streamers encourage or use VPNs to avoid geo-blocking and whether the gambling website holds a license in the US. While the new rules came into effect on October 18, due to differences in time zones, some users continued to stream as usual for several hours.

Twitch Remains a Leader with Highest Reach

A few weeks have passed after the update in the policies released by Twitch. Now, according to Casinolytics’ latest report, Twitch is still the most popular platform for gambling streaming representing 74% of the reach. This result comes despite the gambling policy update implemented in October. Still, it’s important to mention that when compared to the Q3 result, Twitch’s reach decreased by more than 20%.

Following the policy update by Twitch, the popularity of YouTube increased. The platform has seen an average of 40% increase in reach since October 18. The change in policy also pushed some users to stream simultaneously via Twitch, YouTube, as well as Dlive. What’s more interesting is that following the ban on Twitch, the banned websites transitioned to Dlive along with some of the streamers.