Drake, the rap icon, has now launched—sort of—his own Twitch channel. He has joined the gambling meta on the Amazon-owned platform as part of his partnership with the betting website Stake.
Twitch’s gambling metagame is equally polarizing and well-liked. It has grown to be one of the largest sections on the entire website despite being relegated to the “slots” category, for which Twitch doesn’t even have a category image. Last month, it surpassed games like Warzone to enter the top 10 categories.
This section’s streams contain a large number of sponsored streams from different bookmakers. One of the more well-known sponsored, paying streamers to play on their site is Stake, the leading cryptocurrency casino and sports betting platform.
Drake signed a sponsorship deal with Stake and has been carrying out the terms of the agreement through Twitch streams. On July 12, he made a second appearance on the StakeDrake channel to wrap up his first livestream. French Montana joined him this time, and the number of viewers increased significantly. He reached 112,000 concurrent viewers at his peak.
Drake has previously appeared on Twitch, such as during the infamous Fortnite stream in 2018 with Travis Scott and Ninja.
He has Xposed, a former Call of Duty streamer, join him on his gambling streams to assist with platform acclimation. It’s unclear how frequently he’ll be streaming on Twitch on the StakeDrake channel, though it’s unlikely there will be much other than sporadic gambling streams.
People have urged Twitch to take action against gambling streams, particularly given the possibility that children may be watching. Despite the fact that Drake’s title stated “18+,” there is no way to stop younger users from watching the stream.
Twitch previously stated that it was “monitoring” gambling-related content on the platform, though the majority of their claim concerned concerns that some streamers might be using fake or house money or not disclosing their sponsorship.