Twitch Strengthens Prohibitions on Gambling Streams
Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, announced on Wednesday that it will be broadening its prohibition on live broadcasts featuring gambling material.
The company said it will now ban streaming online casinos Blaze and Gamdom, adding to the four sites it banned last October when its new gambling policy came into force.
Twitch announced the restrictions after a controversy erupted on the platform last year in which the streamer was accused of swindling users and other content creators out of thousands of dollars to fuel gambling addiction. This led some big-name streamers to object to the platform’s lax policy on gambling streams.
As the pressure intensified, Twitch said it would ban sites featuring slots, roulette or dice games that are not “licensed in the United States or other jurisdictions that provide adequate consumer protections.” Blaze and Gamdom are not available in the US, but users can still access virtual private networks that mask their location.
“Our goal now, as last fall, is to protect our community, address predatory behavior, and make Twitch safer,” the company said Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Twitch said it saw viewership for gambling drop by about 75 percent since it implemented the new policy last year, but also noted that it is “noting some new trends” and is updating its policy to better protect users.
The company also prohibits the sharing of links or referral codes to sites that contain slots, roulette or craps games, in order to address scams and “other harm caused by questionable gambling sites.” It enables websites that focus on sports betting, fantasy sports and poker.
