Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Gambling: Now For Kids!”.
Can we take, like mildly bad sure yeah, which one is that casinos targeting children there yeah sure why not CS go streamer? I don’t know how to say this: okay, that uh did an expose where he requested sponsorships from CS, go skin betting sites and received offers worth up to 120 000 Euros per month. Are you kidding me? Okay hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on anyone, I’m probably butchering it h-o-u-n-g, we’re being very mean, I’m sure you’re doing great. Let’S see! Look, you can’t look on YouTube. Oh they’re, doing great come on yeah, okay, okay, 700.
000. Subscribers. Okay – maybe I just need to put this in in context for us at 14 million subscribers or whatever we’re up to now, a sponsorship deal of a hundred and twenty thousand Euros a month would be huge massive that would make that sponsor over the span of a Year, one of our largest sponsors, if not our largest sponsor by dollars like that, is enormous, especially if we factor out uh by the way you know shout out: Jesus Rog for sponsoring LTX this year. Okay, but that’s separate, [ Applause, ]. Sorry uh is not running a a live convention or an expo like this is purely for online content.
So if we were to take someone sponsoring just our content at that kind of a rate, they would be one of, if not our biggest sponsor at our size. That is wild. Okay and like can, I just say shout out, because this is an amazing amazing expose. Okay, so a really good way to do it. So what happens so after he gets those offers? He then requests that they send him information about their licenses and operating practices. He concluded that most, if not all, of these sites were not properly licensed as online casinos, and he also demonstrated how he could create a new steam account and use it to gamble skins on an external site without ever having to verify his age. And while I would probably assume this was a joke as well to be clear, he named the account I’m 14 by the way he also requested a survey asking. Oh sorry, he also released a survey asking players about their CS.
Go gambling habits collecting over 9 000 responses over 70 percent reported that they had started gambling with skins prior to the age of 18.. At least one was only 12.. Many met the definition for problem gambling, where their addiction is damaging to them, their family and their day-to-day life. The majority around three-fourths of top CS go streamers on Twitch are taking sponsorships from at least one of these various gambling websites.
Csgo is not the only game where miners get addicted to gambling journalist Cody Luongo, who covers Esports and betting, has reported that there are a handful of Black Market Casino sites targeting miners age 16 and younger through Roblox, which we’ve actually covered on the show. Before? Can we just talk about how okay I this is kind of a funny one for me because growing up as a kid, it was always kind of baffling to me that it was illegal to like play poker in some places here here in North America, like you, Actually, technically, we’re not allowed to get together with your friends and have a poker night and bet real money and, like you know, if one of your buddies was a cop, it was like. Oh you better, not invite them like that. That was always bizarre to me.
Um, I I don’t I’m so tight fisted that the idea of betting anything other than what I could give away without caring at all whatsoever. It is sort of foreign to me so so the idea of developing a gambling problem, where I, where I I was losing significant amounts of my money or going into debt, was something that I didn’t. I didn’t really understand at the time I was.
I was very young right um, but can I just? Can I just ask how the pendulum? Because I still don’t think that’s a big deal like if everyone’s got, if you got like a ten dollar buy-in or whatever you want to get together, eat some chips and dip and play card games. What what business is it if anyone else’s from from my personal perspective, I’m sure this is going to blow up on Reddit or whatever, but it depends out of control quickly, yeah, I I just. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal as long as everybody has a bit of self-restraint right.
How did we go from that to half of the commercials during a sports ball game being for just betting on every single aspect of it? How many times is the quarterback gon na pick his ass like it? Wouldn’T I wouldn’t. I really hope that it’s not about that stuff yeah. I don’t know how you’d measure it it’s so high, but they’re constantly in there I mean they got those tight pants.
I don’t blame them yeah, I don’t have have you ever bet on anything like that? Have I ever yeah, have you have you played in a casino stuff like that yeah yeah yeah, so after after over 10 years of traveling to Vegas every year for conventions, um Yvonne and I finally went together once for a CES and we bought like, I think, A hundred bucks in chips or something like that and we lost it in about 10 minutes at a blackjack table and we were like well Bucket List complete. I no longer feel the need to ever do that again. Um one time welcome. I was traveling back from Arizona and I was by myself in the Las Vegas airport and they have those slot machines all throughout the thing, and I had a little bit of money, not that much so I took like 25 cents, I put into a slot machine Immediately lost it and was like yeah, that’s stupid and went and bought like a Gaming magazine or something it was like. This was a much better investment to be clear. One of the things one of the aspects of gambling that I do understand why people get into is betting on games. Betting on betting, on professionals invested when you’re watching like more tense a little bit more interesting. I uh you know I still would never do it. I used to love watching hockey um, but before wan na I forget, if it was the last one or the one before there was some kind of tussle between the Millionaires and the billionaires – and I was just like yes, this is this – is very commercial hockey. A lot yeah yeah, it seems to happen a lot, and you know I I’m I’m to be clear: I’m not blaming the players, you know if the if the ticket sales and the merch sales are coming in, they should get their piece. Absolutely.
I’M just saying that it, it really made me instead of just sitting and watching hockey. It made me reflect on the business of what I was watching and how much of it is just a product and it it gave me time to sort of think about the way that the athletes, even though we we put them on these pedestals, and we look Up to them, and – and you know, as kids they’re Our Heroes, we have posters of them on our walls, um the way that they’re actually just kind of treated like livestock yeah. You know like no, but really you know what what they they’re prone to like leg issues. So I I what just take him out behind the barn and see you later buddy right. Like I don’t know, I just I. I started to find a lot of it.
Really kind of un uncomfortable uh for me, but what I will say is that one of the when I was following the sport very very actively. It wasn’t so much that I cared about the Vancouver team winning because realistically there was nobody on the roster that was from Vancouver or probably even wanted to be here and they weren’t gon na win anyways. Well, no! No! No! This was when they were good. Okay.
Yes, yeah, so so it’s not like I’m rooting for my Vancouver team, but you know you get to know the the characters you develop these like parasocial relationships. I’M sure you guys can’t relate um. You feel, like you know them you, you want to root for them. Right, you want them to succeed, you want them to lift up the copper or whatever it is right and um, and and so what I, what I kind of realized you know looking back at how invested I was like I, I had stopped biting my nails for Years until I started watching hockey, religiously again – and I realized all of my nails – were bitten down to nubbins because they’d be behind by one in the third period or whatever yeah and um.
And so I can see how people could get kind of hooked on the thrill of having you know not just their Hometown team, where they know all the personalities or you know they. You love the logo. Yeah people will follow sports teams for any number of different reasons or because they are in the city where they can go and watch them live or whatever the case may be. Their primary colors really go with my skin, but people being able to amp that up – and you know – have the the thrill of of winning real money and you know it having a natural stake in the game. Exactly I, I can see how that could be. We’Re really making an advertisement for for sports gambling well, but but what I’m saying is I do find it upsetting that we have gotten to the point where it’s gotten very.
I feel like Mobile gaming started this man. It’S it’s gotten very predatory. Like they’re, going after the whales, hard, Hey, look, hi whale team um we try to provide value for the whales, they got a computer, they got a hotel and all that all that good stuff. There’S value there’s value in that ticket, we’re not just we’re not just taking your money and giving you back like some pixels right, um or or a chance to to have something uh. I guess our. I don’t know our oh wow seriously. We didn’t even get to the worst part Luke these, these roadblocks or Roblox casinos. Can you could oh they can you can cash them out for real currency, meaning that millions of dollars are being gambled in these online casinos and blocks flip? One of the largest of these sites is paying teenage Roblox influencers for promotions. I guarantee you it’s for money laundering. They’Re often like promise. You creators as young as 14 have claimed to have received emails from blocks flip, offering sponsorships, including Kickbacks for the Wagers that are placed by referred players.
Oh good now it’s a pyramid scheme too yay Roblox has stated that it will be taking actions on these sites, but didn’t exactly specify. As of Roblox said that kind of thing before I’m pretty sure, I mean as long as we just count on these platforms to self-police. I just don’t think we’re ever going to see any kind of meaningful change because they benefit from it, even if they aren’t taking a little bit off the top of every transaction.
They benefit from the popularity of the game and well, it’s Roblox transactions, but even if they weren’t, though they they still benefit from people just being invested in this platform. Okay, can we please find something? That’S good news about sponsors? Oh, oh, here’s something good! We have a motherboard House of Cards, announcement congrats to Caleb M from Idaho. His house of cards had an outstanding length of 185 centimeters. You have won an Rog strix motherboard.
I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how you claim your prize. Give me the motherboard where’s Sean. Is it here, okay, cool, we’ll deal with that in a second? Why don’t we talk? You know what why don’t? We talk about Twitter rebranding as X people in floor plane.
Chat are saying that we should have float plane gambling, where you can gamble on what’s going to happen in Wan show. This is actually a really good idea. Okay float bucks. We basically we rig it. Yeah yeah yeah, of course Okay, so we’ve been. I wish you guys weren’t all hearing this we’ve actually been doing this for years. Okay, every time the land show is late, we’re conditioning you guys to think the Rancho is always late. Then we introduced the ability to bet on whether the land show is on time or late. We bet on the Rancho being on time and then we lose all of our money anyway, because we couldn’t start the winch on time to save our life still happened. Late yeah yeah yeah, yeah, [ Applause, ] .