Swedish investigators are targeting Amazon’s live streaming platform Twitch for carrying advertising of black market online casinos available to its residents. The widespread illicit advertising was uncovered by Kulturnyheterna, the private investigative team of Sveriges Television AB (SVT), SBC News reported April 2.
The expose followed six weeks of investigations that disclosed that “eight out of ten Swedish influencers on Twitch had promoted unlicensed casinos to their audiences.”
According to the report: “For six weeks, Kulturnyheterna has reviewed the broadcasts of the most popular streamers and can demonstrate how online casino advertising is spread through hour-long live broadcasts where streamers promote unlicensed games to their followers.”
The live streaming platform says that it prohibits those under 13 from accessing it, but the investigation found about 500,000 subscribers, formed of a “primary audience of young males born in the 1990s and 2000s.”
In addition, 60 percent of the influencers promoted bonus incentives of unlicensed casinos.
Two years ago Twitch changed its community guidelines to prohibit live streamers from promoting gaming content, but has so far not followed up on its pledge to “prohibit streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games that aren’t licensed either in the US or other jurisdictions that provide sufficient consumer protection.”
The investigators have submitted their findings to Spelinspektionen, Sweden’s gambling authority, asserting that “Twitch has become the most common platform to promote unlicensed casinos,” which is illegal under the Swedish Gambling Act.
Amendments to that act by the Riksdag last year gave the authority direct enforcement powers to fight illegal gambling that include the ability to order financial transactions blocked and the block internet access.
