iGaming Daily

Anaya McDonald (00:04.203)
You've just got Comedio touching his laptop. Good start. I don't like this joke really. Some sort of fucking pesticide is on there.

never clean it.

Tell me when. We're recording,

That threw you a bit, yeah.

Anaya McDonald (00:36.078)
Okay, good afternoon and welcome to the iGaming Daily and today we are... Podcast, and don't forget OptiMove. Yeah, good afternoon and welcome to the iGaming Daily podcast brought to you by OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. Today we're gonna talk streaming, a vertical that's really evolved in recent times that has... You say that kind of thing. Do wanna stop swinging? Must be swinging. Fuck me man, tough crowd, innit?

Is he speaking properly into the mic there? Not really. You just went to do this. Okay, sorry, a bit of a call here. Do you need me closer to the mic? Yeah. Just so you... What do you with it being on... It's because I can't sit in, innit? Yes.

Anaya McDonald (01:29.451)
There we go. You can turn this part, know, like you could have it like this and then turn this that way if you wanted to. Like that. If it works well for now. Yeah. How's that sound? Is that a bit clearer?

Anaya McDonald (01:48.053)
Good afternoon and welcome to the iGame in... my god, man, let me out here. No, no, no, just not... Don't eat them.

Good afternoon and welcome to the iGaming Daily Podcast brought to you by OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. Today we're going to talk streaming, a vertical that has really evolved in recent years and has adapted to new kind of, let me get that intro right. I'm going to put off by the start, hang on, sorry. I know, yeah, sorry.

Anaya McDonald (02:33.073)
Good afternoon and welcome to the iGaming Daily Podcast brought to you by OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. And today we're going to talk streaming and how regulatory changes from streaming platforms are evolving the space and just bringing us into a new era and how the industry has reacted, how the streaming industry has reacted to these, the latest changes by Kik.

I'm joined by Danny Lee of Slot Beats and James Ross of The iGaming Daily, I guess, to talk about the podcast. Firstly, Chaps, how are you both doing, James? How is everything? Yeah, it's fine. It's a bit unusual being on this side of the microphone instead of your side. No, it's nice. Yeah, even to break down the fourth wall, he even takes a different seat at the table to be a guest rather than a host. It's very strange, but we're adapting on the fly. We're getting used to it. And Danny, you used to be in a guest on this podcast. You're a store at this point.

Just about, yeah, I think my brain's already started to enter Christmas mode a bit this morning with setting up for this, but yeah, ready to go, ready to dive into it. Slot streaming is definitely something we cover a lot on the website and it's certainly an interesting topic. Well, you're three days deep into your advent calendar, so you're forgiven for feeling a little bit festive. I forgot about mine actually. Four days, are we four days deep? Three days deep into the advent Four days. No, we're three, it's the third of December.

Well, you're four days deep into your advent calendar, so you can be forgiven for feeling a little bit festive. I can even see you've got your Christmas jumper on today. we're... I forgot those videos in there too. I was going to put on a bit of a facade there, no falling. But yeah, we're to talk about new regulations from Kik, one of the leading streaming platforms and how streamers are adapting to these new regulations, just how significant they are.

James, I guess to kick us off, were a few new regulations that came out from Kick. One very focused on gambling. Can you take us through those, please? Yeah, I won't touch on... I'll briefly touch on the other two because they're not really that relevant, but there's a lot more. They do all form part of this create in a safer environment. Yeah, they do. So the creators can now kind of limit their chat to viewers who have been registered with them for a select period of time. And this is to combat...

Anaya McDonald (04:58.877)
the overbearingness of bots. bots, people who are in the industry know what bots are, but they don't. It's just non-entity people spamming their chats. They will also be removing the kind of certain clips that viewers can make if they're banned as well. If the viewers get banned from their channel, clips that they make of the creator will get banned. That's a new one that I didn't actually know about on kick, which is quite interesting. But- Does that impact gambling on a, could do, right? A little bit. Potentially, because-

It's more like ownership of the of what's been said. So not massively impacting it, but the main one is that from the first of February next year, gambling related content is going to have a massive KYC enhancement and it's going to have ID verification for all users who want to view any content, which is 18 plus, which relates to obviously gambling and mainly on my casino on slots, which is.

prominent and it's probably, I think it's one of, if not the most viewed category on Kick. Yeah. I mean, when I was on Kick the other day, it was the number one, the most viewed kind of sub genre, if you like. I guess my follow-up question is when you say a massive enhancement, we're literally speaking about the introduction of KYC, right? There's not been any before, has No, it is the start of actually protecting.

underage players on that platform, which ever since it launched post Twitch's offshore affiliation ban, which was, I believe, two years ago. years ago. two years ago. not Twitch, sorry, Kik has just been an absolute wild west of content creating with no rules, no laws, no regulations. has been, to my point, it has been massively irresponsible.

But now, we're starting to see some form of regulation, some form of safety now, which is nice. So how much did that off the back of the changes by Twitch, I guess, just for context, if you could just intro the changes to Twitch that were two years ago. Yeah, what did they look like? Yeah. So before the change, I think it was October 2022, before the rules came into play, people could stream if they were doing online casino.

Anaya McDonald (07:22.399)
they could stream from any unlicensed or licensed operator site when they're playing the slot games. And they could also use affiliate links to any licensed or unlicensed operator. Now post October, that affiliate link and where they play their slots was changed. So you could only play and promote slots from licensed operators. So all these offshore crypto online casinos, which we'll touch on later, were a thing of the past.

The Rubets, which is littered all over Kick, couldn't touch Twitch because of these. And there was a mass outrage for it. Wrongly, in my opinion. But yeah, this is how Kick formed. And Stake.com as well were one of those affiliate links or operator sites which were a band. And that's another reason why Kick was created, obviously, because... It was created by the two co-founders of Stake, right? So since the actions by Twitch...

Pressure has just slowly been intensifying for kick to kind of take more more of a Secure stance more of a safeguard in stance when it comes to this type of stuff. Is that correct? Yeah massively. That's pretty spot on. All right, and Danny so I guess that the real question here is these changes by Twitch no these changes Danny the real question here these changes by kick Do you anticipate they will succeed in terms of reducing the numbers?

of miners exposed to problem gambling? Well, you'd think so, right? mean, just bringing in KYC in itself, you're bound to reduce the amount of people gaining access to that content that shouldn't be gaining access to it. And I think that is so important. Streamers need to understand that if you're doing gambling streams, then you're part of an industry that can cause quite serious harm potentially to the people that are exposed to it, especially people that are too young to be being exposed to it. And that's what they're trying to protect.

people from here and I think obviously there's going to be ways to like circumnavigate these changes and maybe like try and still find a way to be exposed to this content or there could even be similar reaction to what happened when Twitch brought in changes where people start looking elsewhere for this type of content but I think there's a strong chance that it will push them in the right direction but you wonder how much they've been forced to make a regulation like this through like pressure from

Anaya McDonald (09:49.9)
either the industry or just like regulators in general or whether they're just maybe like showing that they want to protect them slightly. Yeah. And then maybe doing the bare minimum in a way. Like we need to see how this process is going to work and how much they're actually going to enforce it. Yeah. I mean, for them to say they've been forced to do this, I mean, this is a number one requirement, certainly when you're streaming. And if you look at the kind of you mentioned here,

how this is impacting, kind of reducing exposure to minors, it can't get any worse. It couldn't get any worse to how it was before. Like he said, this is the first kind of KYC measure they've introduced. But look at the streamers that they brought over from Kick. Like I've got numbers here. You've got TrainwrecksTV. He's got just under 350,000 followers. He started streaming Fortnite. That's how he built his population up. Then he starts streaming gambling. Moves over to Kick with absolutely no regulations whatsoever. His audience is built off.

those people who play Fortnite and he still plays Fortnite on kick. So these still have that kind of cross pollination between video games and iGaming. You have it in, Neon's the same, Aidan Ross, xQz. He's got over just over 800,000 followers. He's the same. He plays video games and slot games, but he was also in these Sidemen football charity game, which included the likes of KSI. It included MrBeast. That's a young audience. All those people know him for streaming.

and follow him and his exposure in that game was even amplified by the actual commentators because he was woeful in that. But he streams content, he streams casino content and he's got a massive young following and before this introduction comes in next year, there's no regulations, there's nothing preventing those kids from going on to kick and watching him stream this casino content which is amplified by the winnings because of the money that...

say, allegedly the money that he gets isn't his, it's funneled through an offshore online casino who helps support him and boost him up. to just bring it back a sec, like when we're talking about the pressure, it did form part of a wider plan from Kik. There's quite a sea of measures that they're bringing in and it did also form part of their partnership with the Internet Watch Forum. that's kind of where it's come from. But James, you touched on a really interesting point.

Anaya McDonald (12:13.978)
Watch Foundation, the IWF. Forum Foundation? Forum. The Internet Watch Foundation, the IWF. Is it? Yeah.

Anaya McDonald (12:26.8)
Yeah, part of the Internet Watch Foundation, their partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation to kind of just create a safer environment. But James, you raise an interesting point. I think the reason why this has kind of had such a backlash from streamers is because, like you mentioned, a lot of the streamers that really thrive in this environment aren't gambling streamers or slot streamers like we see in other verticals.

They, like you say, they play video games, they do a whole host of things, they react to different things, and they also play crash games or play slots. How much is it going to impact streamers forcing this kind of level of friction on them to not... I guess it depends how it looks, right? Are they still going to be able to view other bits of that streamer's content without doing a KYC check? No, because everything's tagged.

on their streams. So if they're playing a game like Fortnite, they don't have to tag that. It's a mature audience. It's a gambling audience. So they won't be prevented. It's just when they're streaming gambling. That's important, right? That's massively important. And if actually Twitch introduced a measure recently, I believe it was last month, that it was a requirement for them to label mature content and they were being a lot stricter on it because they found 65 % of their actual streamers were tagging incorrectly.

So they introduced this measure and Ofcom, the UK's office of communication, they actually reported that there was not really any change. Post change, there was a decrease in misleading streams as mature audiences. Labeling was more accurate. And like I the main thing is there was no change in stream viewership. So this whole notion that they're introducing this audience and they're gonna lose viewers. Well, you might lose viewers on your slot streams, but...

Let's be realistic. viewers weren't good viewers anyway. You shouldn't have had those viewers in the first place. It's quite idiotic to think that you should have those viewers. And actually these viewers to these streamers, but on the face of it, and this is just my opinion, they're just numbers to them. They're not people. They're just numbers who funnel through money for them so they can make a living. Okay. I wanted to read you, there was some inevitable response from the streamer industry as vast as it is. We have one from exposed big followers.

Anaya McDonald (14:54.986)
big amount of followers. I just kind of wanted to read you this just to see what you thought kind of falls into the category of having come to Twitch, having come to Kick and yeah, looking to thrive with gambling content. The sole purpose, this is from him on X, the sole purpose to create Kick was for a place for gamblers to have the freedom to stream wherever they want and have a home to stream at.

Now these guys at stake are losing streamers by the day and were forced to provide an extra level of KYC check to the website. All this shows is control over their website entirely and to make everybody come back to stake and promote only their product. Yeah, so I just wondered, there's a little bit more, but I guess that's the essence of it. I just wanted to get your reaction to that. Yeah, when you showed me that tweet.

I'm exposed. I thought it was the most idiotic comment I've ever seen in my life. Like there was a part where he says like a place for them to stream and a home for them. Like you have a right to stream wherever you want. You don't have a right to stream to whoever you want. That's the key thing. And that's what Kicker introduced in that with this band. Like it's adding that other layer of player protection. And if anyone's got any disagreements with not targeting 18 plus content, gambling content, which is...

already kind of, I'm not gonna say that, this gambling content, then you're just idiotic, to be honest, you're an idiot. I think there's a key thing that actually comes from kind of a comment like that is a lack of education and a lack of knowledge when it comes to actually player protection, certainly within the sector. Like, I think it's on the platform kick, I think it's on the streamer himself and the operators who are funding these streamers.

you need to educate who you're investing your money into. A hundred percent. That doesn't happen. They should pick who's representing their brand. They shouldn't just be a chuck it at the wall and let them go. It should be a case of, you bring these influencers in and then you educate them on your product and kind of responsible gambling. yeah, just just just unexposed as well. Like he's got hundred and twenty seven thousand followers on kick. And that's a big amount of following.

Anaya McDonald (17:16.257)
And he's going on saying that we should be able to stream wherever we want to whoever we want, you know, to have our home. Again, you stream content from slots and casinos, but you also stream Halo Infinite, which is it's not it's I think it's like a 16 plus game or maybe even lower than that. Video game streaming is largely predominantly for a demographic. You've still got the cross pollination of content from young people who want to watch your streams to online casinos. yeah, you know, introductions of measures like this.

They may hinder you a little bit, but in the overall picture, in the grand scheme of things, it's for the better of your viewers and the safety. And this industry has done a hell of a lot in the past 10 to 15 years to really enhance and protect players using player protection methods and KYC tools. You're talking about the gambling industry. Yeah, the gambling industry itself has done a hell of a lot. And if streaming's coming in now and playing a bigger part, you need to get in line. You really do need to get in line and kind of understand what you're doing.

It does sort make you wonder how long they thought that this would last. They'd be able to just stream whatever they wanted to, whoever they wanted for years. Obviously, they had more of an ability to do that on Twitch until they brought in these regulations. Surely part of them must have known that this would eventually happen with Kick as well. It can't just be like the Wild West all the time, just streaming, gambling. You wouldn't have a kid just able to walk into a casino, would you? It's not allowed. They're not allowed to be exposed to that thing. It's exactly the same. They're watching something.

that is going to maybe alter what they want to do and you know it's It's worth noting as well, there is still a lot of creative freedom around what streamers can do as much as there's going to be this level of friction when it comes to barrier of entry for a younger demographic going to have to show verification. In terms of the actual artistic content of the stream, streamers can basically do whatever they want right, they can be as creative as they want with the content.

Yeah, certainly. There's so much control that they do have and it's like James is saying, if you feel that the fact that you can't stream gambling to whoever wants to see it is a lack of control, it's just, it does come across as like sort of irresponsible in itself just making that comment. There's no reason why these streamers shouldn't be against

Anaya McDonald (19:38.222)
young people, miners, being exposed to content that will be harmful to them and could convince them to make decisions and try and access these websites themselves. know that some of these websites that these streamers are maybe gambling on might not even have KYC processes for themselves. You might just be able to log in just with an email, no age verification at all. There's a chance that miners can get access to these websites and that's what...

they need protecting from. And if it means that you lose like a small portion of your viewership, then it should be the smallest sacrifice you have to make to protect people. Yeah, that's offshore operators you're talking about there, right? You know, the productions might not necessarily have been in place that have previously had a relationship with the streaming industry. And in terms of that type of creative content and in terms of what streamers can do.

As the kind of bar has raised on slots games and I guess just iGaming in general, you know, we see more innovative games, we see the rise of kind of gamification, it just keeps growing and growing, just various different types. With that, the ceiling has also raised on just how engaging streamers can be. And I guess that further underlines the point of why you need a barrier to entry for miners that could be engaged in this content.

But we have seen that. Yeah, I guess my follow up questions that would be Crash games specifically as we look at crash games. We miss like two questions.

yeah, sorry, sorry, But we ran out of time a little bit. I won't mind touching on the... Four minutes left. I think the point you made then ended well to cover that crash games and gamification thing, just to leave that as the point that you said, but then you can go back to the... Yeah, I think touch on the edge and out of kick and then finish on the evolution of streaming. Yeah. Okay. So do you want to do a crash games bit or no? No, I think the point you made then just and then... Okay.

Anaya McDonald (21:48.616)
Yeah, and I think as we've seen the more Crash games come into play, the bar has really raised on just how creative streamers can be with their content. I guess the question is here, for streamers that are aggrieved,

What do you think, yeah, what we saw with Kick, we saw with Twitch that, you know, there was an exodus of streamers, right? Do you anticipate something similar happening here with Kick? Where do you think streamers could find a home after this disgruntled streamers, or are they just gonna have to adapt? They're gonna have to adapt. I mean, there was conversations, I believe, Kick was just launching, I think, again, Trainwreck TV, Trainwrecks TV, sorry.

They discussed about launching their own streaming platform. And then from this announcement, there was a few others who've said they'll launch another one if that's the case. It reminds me of, and for the audience out there, you might not get this reference, the Michael Scott in the US office scenario, he only sets up his own paper company. It's like, if the Michael Scott paper company goes under, the next day he'll just create another paper company and another paper company and another paper company. Like, no shortage of names. And that's kind of the situation that streamers will face.

because you'll launch another streaming platform, but sooner or later you're going to hit that wall where you need to have play protection in your mind. You need to introduce KYC elements or you're just going to fail. You're not going to expand. You're not going to grow. And to be honest, you'll probably have to close because what you're doing, while it's not legal, it's immoral to a point of view. So there will always be that kind of stumbling block or hurdle that streaming platforms who I knew have to come to. So

that's kind of, I don't see them starting their own. I think they need to adapt. They need to actually get in line with. Good work with directly with operators maybe. I think that's not a bad shout and actually work with the gambling industry. If you're streaming in the UK, work with the UK gambling commission. Like these are the things you need to get into place. Sorry. These are the things you need to get into place without actually throwing your toys out of a pram and thinking, no, we just want all your.

Anaya McDonald (24:01.439)
We want all your ad revenue. We want all your subscriber. We want all the money we can get from you. And we want all this money from offshore online casinos like a Rube to funnel our money so we can then get 25 % of the earnings that we make. And then we kick 5 % and the rest go to Rube. Like get in line, play the game and stop being so idiotic and short-sighted. Danny, any thoughts? You know, are we going to see streamers kind of try and play the game a little bit more? Pardon the pun, play the game in terms of...

Yeah, the policy game, I guess. I don't think it's going to be case of maybe launching new platforms or new service or anything like that. I think there just needs to be a bit of an attitude shift into play protection. And you mentioned education earlier, James. Maybe that's something that needs to be more broadly distributed from the industry itself to people that might be exposed to these streams and people that will be broadcasting them as well.

But when you look at huge brands in the social media game like YouTube, there's always been troubles with people creating content on that. If you look back 15, 20 years, different regulations have come in in terms of what you can record, what you can say, what words you can use. But they've evolved and they've worked with creators to make it still a platform that is respected, still used, and obviously is still successful. So I think if they can just...

accept these changes, realise that it is a good thing. Obviously it might be negative for some of the streamers individually in the short term in terms of that viewership, but that should be considered a positive change. They shouldn't want to have those viewers in the first place. It is irresponsible and it does need to stop. Yeah, I agree. And there's very little infringement on, if any infringement on the actual content they're putting out. I kind of echo that sentiment because I think it's important that

the content they're putting out is not being changed. It's just a barrier of entry for those that are most vulnerable to being exposed to it. And yeah, I tend to agree. It will be interesting to see how streamers play ball. There's a big pool of streamers now as well. We've seen kind of it be expanded to sports ambassadors and just various ambassadors. know, like we've seen Drake being one of the biggest streamers in the world really playing like.

Anaya McDonald (26:23.374)
playing with steak and playing kind of roulette and stuff like that. So it's going to be very interesting. The next five years, we see constant evolution in streaming, in how streamers interact with the industry. This news hasn't gone over well for a lot of streamers. But yeah, what do the next five years look like? I think especially as Brazil opens up,

when think streaming will play an important role. And also as the slots industry continues to just grow and grow in terms of engaging games that it puts out, it does provide a deeper toolbox for streamers to play with. So yeah, what do the next five years look like for streamers? Any predictions? Apologies for the general question, by the way. No, it's fine. I'll break it down into two because I know we're running out of time. So I'll condense it. So streaming in general.

is I think in the next five years, maybe 10 is going to be the main form of how like the younger generation consume their content. And if it's anything, if you look at when we were growing up, Joe, kind of show our age a bit, sitting in front of the TV, you know, watching football at the weekend, watching cartoons in the morning. Like that was how we grew up coming up home from school, sitting down, watching some cartoon network or Nickelodeon of you from the UK. Like that's how we engage content.

Growing up now, I've got a six year old nephew who watches YouTubers all the time. That's all he watches. And I think in the next 10 years, streaming is going to be kind of that mass consumption. So I think it's going to be more kind of on a broadcast scale, which is why they need to get in line. So you're talking here for not six to 10 year olds, you're talking as they get older, the generation that is relevant of adults are still going to be engaged with streaming. I even think some of the 18 plus year olds now grew up on streamers.

So in the next five to 10 years, who are you going to get? The 10 year olds and like the 15 year olds of this world now, that's going to be their form of entertainment. That's going be what the media that they consume. Now, if you bring that to kind of gambling, we're going to see an even bigger influx of streamers actually contributing more and having their own studios and releasing their own games. We've already seen it this year when Fruity Slots and Hideous Slots teamed together to make DreamSpin.

Anaya McDonald (28:50.698)
and they're releasing their own games now and it's going to operator sites and they've got a lot of success with that. We're to see a lot more of that and they're going to have so much more of an impact when it comes to the, certainly the slot development creation world. And Danny, you're going to be covering a hell of a lot when you come to a slot beats, but that's how I think the industry is going to evolve because these players know their games. They know what the want. They know what keeps people entertained.

they know what keeps people engaged and that's the key one engaged. They have all the analytics for this. So why not let them create games? Because they will create the successful games. And a good example with fruity slots as well. Yeah, it's really interesting. And just to kind of echo your point about this new generation of adults still engaging with streaming or that type of content, there's some of the sports broadcasts I've watched recently. There's been alternative streams.

where you don't have kind of colour, your standard colour commentary, you have kind of three or four podcasters alongside influencers and you're still watching the show but they're coming in and kind of talking in a more informal podcasty type way in an alternative stream. So that kind of lends itself to what you're saying about a generation of adults has been brought up on streaming and that's what they want from their broadcast. And Danny, to close us off, your...

Five year plan for the streaming industry, what does it look like? I think if we just bring it completely into iGame and James is right, we're just going to see so many more of these new games or different partnerships between streamers and either operators or suppliers. We've already seen the growth of live spins a lot in the past year and a half and how that's getting integrated into more and more operator lobbies.

how streaming is definitely being appreciated so much more each sort of few months. We're seeing different developments and it's just, you can just see it continuing. mean, streaming is so huge at the minute you can't like scroll through like Twitter or Instagram or anything like that without seeing clips from different streamers and they're getting such a huge consistent viewership that it's bound to kept being capitalised on. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I do think though,

Anaya McDonald (31:10.206)
that there needs to be some type of willingness to play ball in terms of player protection, especially when it comes to miners and protecting miners from being exposed to gambling content if streamers are to continue to rise and continue to grow. yeah, thank you both for your time today. I really appreciate it. It's been a fascinating discussion and one that we certainly look forward to updating you as it develops.