The Rise of the Slot Streamer
The recent widespread legalization of sports betting in various US states is notable for many reasons, not the least of which is that gambling has historically been stigmatized and commonly forbidden by law. In the 1648 Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, for example, there is a peculiar statute that seems to reflect the common stereotype of New England Puritans as fun-killing prudes: a prohibition on the game of Shuffle-Board. This law was apparently occasioned “upon complaint of great disorder by use of the game… in houses of common entertainment, whereby much precious time is spent unfruitfully and much waste of wine and beer occasioned.” On this basis, the Colony decided that games of chance with money at stake were inimical to the “common welfare” that their laws sought to preserve.
But what if these games, so apt to draw people of good intent into the vice of habitual gambling, were not confined to “houses of common entertainment,” but were instead broadcast as a popular form of entertainment? At the intersection of concerns about new media technology and the health of political communities sits a more recent phenomenon than shuffleboard: Live-streamed gambling.
Until recently, gambling streams were a tremendous draw on Amazon’s Twitch platform. Despite negative coverage, like a 2021 critical summary of the rapid rise in sponsored gambling streams by WIRED Magazine, Twitch allowed streamers to gamble for ridiculously high stakes in unregulated or pseudo-regulated offshore cryptocurrency casinos. With established audiences, streamers like xQc, TrainwrecksTV, and even celebrities like Drake broadcasted their gambling habits to a ready audience. These entertainers live-streamed themselves spinning slots or playing table games for stakes in the thousands to hundreds of thousands, occasionally raking in winnings in the millions on their high-stakes bets in front of large audiences. These audiences that consist largely of young people were then taken on the emotional highs and lows of outlandish financial swings along with their hosts.
But a relatively recent decision to ban some gambling content on Twitch drove these major streamers to a new platform to broadcast their vices: Kick. Kick has been spearheaded by Twitch gambling phenom TrainwrecksTV (real name Tyler Faraz Niknam), but is partially owned by Ed Craven, owner of the Stake crypto casino. In other words, Kick as a platform is owned and operated by people with a vested interest in recruiting more gamblers.
Kick has boasted that it pays streamers a higher percentage of revenue from their viewers than other platforms, but just how it is able to afford these spectacularly high payouts is up for debate. Perhaps its owners and investors don’t need Kick to turn a profit as long as the site does what it appears to have been designed for, which is drive new users to Stake to gamble their money away. In any case, gambling streaming on Kick has maintained its viewership and popularity since Kick’s launch as a competitor to Twitch, and Stake maintains high-profile sponsorships of fighting events, racing teams, and more.
The combination of the well-known harms of compulsive gambling, the particularly pernicious way the slots these streamers spin have been designed, and the wild popularity of these streams ought to be troubling for more than just obvious reasons. Perhaps we internet-dwelling folks today, enthralled as we are by stories of common folk like us making untold riches off minuscule bets on volatile assets, are particularly primed to be taken in by this combination of old impulses and new technologies. As Alexis de Tocqueville argued in his famous study Democracy in America, “Chance is an element always present to the mind of those who live in the unstable conditions of a democracy, and in the end they come to love enterprises in which chance plays a part.”
The appeal of gambling to a democratic citizen is easy to understand, which in part motivates restrictions on its practice and accompanying stigmatization. Mark T. Mitchell has recently argued in his book Plutocratic Socialism, in conjunction with Tocqueville, that, in encouraging excessive risk-taking, we exchange habits and practices like “saving for the future, thrift, and responsibility” for a type of citizen who believes that “a jackpot is just around the corner if I can only muster one more quarter for the lucky machine.” Turning a damaging habit into simply another part of the mainstream entertainment content creation machine could, then, have far greater implications than we might like to imagine.
Allow me to make a high-school level compare and contrast: Adam Sandler’s Uncut Gems was a movie that is best described as anxiety-inducing. The combination of the chaotic dialogue style and the clearly self-destructive gambling habits of Sandler’s character both mesmerize and disturb the viewer. It is difficult for me to imagine many people finishing that movie feeling a compulsion or a desire to gamble their life savings (and their lives) on the thrill of a big parlay hit.
By contrast, the viewer’s experience watching a slot streamer is one of constant thrills. How much money the streamer is being paid to gamble for your entertainment is never fully clear, the “realness” of the money is obscured. If a viewer consumes mostly highlights from the streams, giant jackpots rule the show, consequences are elided, and gambling takes on a rosy glow.
While research does not currently support the idea that online gambling is necessarily more addictive than traditional, in-person, brick and mortar casinos, it is clear that the rapid legalization of online gambling, including sports betting, has increased the number of people who are gambling. It seems obvious to me that this increase in gamblers will result in an increase in the number of problematic gamblers, whose habits directly harm themselves and their families. When these vices are advertised on platforms with predominately young viewership, the prospects for the future are grim. Personally, I would take shuffleboard bans over slot streaming in a heartbeat.
I can understand watching Jon play poker because it involves some level of skill. I cannot fathom what people find entertaining about watching people play slots.