Dan Clancy, the CEO of Twitch, made a special appearance on popular VTuber Filian’s livestream on June 1st, 2023.
The latter brought up the platform’s decision to prohibit information related to gambling during their talk. Clancy responded by saying that certain offshore gambling sites’ lack of regulation constituted the problem. Clancy noted that content producers were contributing “substantial” amounts of money to these networks. The money that was flowing, where our creators were developing the community and the connection they created on Twitch to bring people to these sites, was a sizeable sum of money to a select group of creators. We came to the conclusion that wasn’t good for the neighborhood. So we made the decision to outlaw the uncontrolled.
Filian’s livestream was interrupted at 01:31 because she wanted to know more about the platform’s decision to outlaw gambling. She questioned: “It looked like gambling websites were sort of banned off of Twitch, and I think there’s a lot of misconceptions around, like, what actually got banned. In terms of gambling. I did a poker sponsor stream, and people were like, ‘Isn’t this banned?’ What actually is banned, in terms of gambling on Twitch?”
Dan Clancy retorted that the platform had handled the incident “quite surgically.” He clarified: “Yeah, we were very surgical in that. Our view was, ‘Listen, people can decide what they want to watch.’ But the thing that growing was these unregulated off-shore gambling sites. And just for people that don’t understand, right?”
Clancy thinks that the absence of regulation may encourage a setting that is open to deceit and unethical conduct: “These sites, there’s nobody overlooking to see, for example, what are the odds on the tables. Do they tweak with them? Do they change them? Because they’re not regulated. It seems they decide what they want to do. There’s a reason you have to VPN in, and you can’t… you know, do it from most major, you know, major countries.”
Later, Clancy stated that streaming gambling was not a problem. The broadcasting of material linked to unlicensed third-party gaming services, he continued, is a problem for Twitch: “But, in general, there’s no problem with streaming gambling. But, we do have a problem with you streaming on these unregulated, third-party sites.”
Filian then inquired as to whether Twitch will relax restrictions on unrestricted websites, to which Dan Clancy replied: “All I can say is my own view. Right? I have a hard time… if these sites become regulated, if they are willing to adhere, to like regulations of, you know, most major countries, in terms of what they need to do to be a gambling site, right? Then, I’m like, ‘Of course!’ But, if their position is, ‘No, we’re not going to do the things that most major countries think is important, in terms of consumer protection.’ Then our view is, we don’t want that on Twitch, driving our community to VPNing to these unregulated sites. I wouldn’t feel great about that. That aspect of it.”