SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Twitch has updated its content creator policies in a bid to restrict gambling adverts and advertorials being broadcast on its live video streaming platform.
During the summer, the Amazon-owned platform faced backlash for its failure to police the promotion of gambling content to audiences on live streams.
Notable controversies saw video game streamer Tyler ‘Trainwrecks’ Niknam called out for promoting Curacao licensed online casino Stake.com on his Twitch channel of 1.5 million subscribers.
Niknam and others defended their streams, citing that gambling-related broadcasts were allowed by the platform under its ‘gamba meta’ tag that is designed to promote gambling-related themes to adult audiences.
Further controversies saw Twitch banned in Slovakia, as the country’s national media agency deemed that the platform had breached its advertising code by allowing content creators to stream themselves playing live online poker on their video channels.
Yesterday, Twitch updated its content creator policies, informing channels that its platform would no longer allow the sharing of referral codes or promotional links to gambling websites.
Introducing a ‘Restriction on Gambling Related Links’ amendment to its content creator policies – Twitch stated that its new order had been undertaken – “to prevent harm and scams created by questionable gambling services that sponsor content on Twitch”.
“We will prohibit sharing links and/or referral codes to sites that offer slots, roulette, or dice games”. – the statement read, as Twitch further detailed that it would “continue to monitor gambling-related content and update our approach as needed.”
Twitch stated that the policy would come into full effect from 17 August, with all ‘gamba meta’ channels forced to remove existing links and referral codes promoting gambling services.
