Where slot traffic went after the Twitch ban on unlicensed casinos
In October 2022 Twitch banned streams of unlicensed casinos. The market did not vanish — it moved to Kick, and the rules changed.
Before October 2022 slot streams were one of the largest categories on Twitch. Streamers like Trainwreck and Roshtein drew hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers. Then Twitch announced it was prohibiting streams of sites without a licence in the US or another jurisdiction with adequate consumer protection. Stake, Rollbit, Duelbits and dozens of other platforms disappeared from the air overnight.
What happened to the audience
The audience did not stop watching slots. It moved to Kick, a platform that launched almost simultaneously with the ban and explicitly positioned itself as the place where you could do what Twitch no longer allowed. Kick subsidized the transition with exclusive contracts offering top streamers sums Twitch was not matching.
Within the first year after the ban the gambling category on Kick grew to a steady 30,000 to 50,000 concurrent viewers at peak hours. That is less than Twitch had, but the audience is far more targeted: the viewer came specifically to watch slots rather than stumbling on them through a gaming platform's recommendations.
What stayed on Twitch
Sports betting and poker, provided the operator is licensed in an approved jurisdiction. In practice the list is short: DraftKings, FanDuel, a handful of UK bookmakers. Esports betting streams fit the rules, but audience volume is not comparable to what slots delivered.
For an advertiser this means Twitch remains a channel for betting but not for casino. Attempting to circumvent the ban through "review" streams with no real wagers works until the first report and ends with a channel ban along with every integration on it.
Kick economics and platform risk
Integration costs on Kick are lower than they were on Twitch in 2021–2022: the platform is younger, there are fewer advertisers, and competition for slots in streamer schedules is nearly absent. Average CPM on Kick across our placements in 2025–2026 sits around $8–15, whereas on Twitch at peak it reached $25–40.
View-to-registration conversion is higher: the Kick viewer already knows what they are watching, and a link in the description is a familiar format. Registration-to-deposit on Kick holds in the 12–20% corridor, which is closer to the top of the market range.
Kick is young and unpredictable in terms of moderation. Rules can change the way they changed on Twitch, and a single acquisition channel can break overnight. That is why we do not build a media plan on Kick alone: it runs alongside YouTube integrations and Telegram so that losing one platform does not zero out the funnel.
The second risk is audience quality. Slot-stream viewers on Kick skew younger and more often play at minimum stakes. The average first deposit is lower than traffic from paid search. This must be factored into payback calculations; otherwise CPA per deposit looks excellent while ROAS does not add up.
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