"Well, that was a dud," said Steve, annoyed. He and his wife, Danielle, had just lost $921 playing 3 Card poker at the Stratosphere Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The session was recently broadcast on the couple's YouTube channel, Vegas Action, which chronicles their ups and downs playing 3 Card and Texas Hold ‘Em.
Vegas Action is just one of dozens of gambling YouTube channels, a genre that took off around the onset of COVID and is enabled by a small but growing number of casinos that allow video recording by content creators. Steve and Danielle, who prefer not to use their last name for privacy concerns, set themselves apart with their amusing banter, random film clips, Michigan anecdotes (they travel to Vegas for tapings six times a year), and videos that feature a healthy dose of wins and losses.
"We wanted to be real and honest with people," Danielle says of their audience. "We’re going to lose, right? You can’t show all the wins and gloss over the losses. It’s reality. I don’t want anybody going to the casino thinking, Oh, they win all the time. I can play this game. It’s wrong."
Since launching in 2020, Vegas Action has attracted over 30,000 subscribers; decent numbers but much less than glossier channels like Bluff and Mr. Hand Pay which feature enormous bets (often in the hundreds compared to Vegas Action's $25-50 average) and many winning sessions.
"We’re more conservative type gamblers, and they're 'risk at all, we’re all in' gamblers," Steve says. "We’re more budgeted. It might play against us with [the YouTube] crowd, but our viewers are pretty loyal and they like us."
Steve and Danielle believe that the image some channels portray — highlighting astounding wins, breezing over staggering losses, and videos showing expensive cars and grandiose meals — can be dangerously enticing to young people. The related advertising that some channels use to supplement their income is also a cause for concern, at least for YouTube. The Google-owned company recently banned content that depicts or promotes online gambling sites not approved by YouTube. Additionally, content featuring approved online gambling sites will now be completely age-restricted, meaning anyone under 18 or not signed in cannot view them (there are exclusions for content featuring online sports betting and in-person gambling).
While Vegas Action occasionally features ads from YouTube-approved mobile slot games, most of the channel's supplementary income comes via food comps or a few hundred dollars in promotional chips (free money to gamble with) they receive each trip from the casinos they play in. During a typical three-day trip to Vegas, the couple tapes about 40 gambling sessions, risking — and often losing — thousands of dollars of their own money. Add in the flights and ancillary expenses involved in running a YouTube channel, and, unsurprisingly, Vegas Action operates at a loss. Steve and Danielle often remind their audience that they both hold down jobs back in Michigan that have nothing to do with gaming.
"We’d like to eventually make this our job," says Danielle, who hopes she and Steve can move to Vegas someday. But currently, "we can't survive on channel money."
The couple says that some other channels covertly gamble "from their basement or deal to each other or do it on a cruise with play money."
"Doing a gambling channel on YouTube is extremely difficult because of the losing," Steve says.
The skewed reality presented by some channels feels especially risky since gambling is easier than ever. With the increased permissiveness and ubiquity of online casinos and sports betting, people don't even need a casino nearby, just the phone in their hands. Missouri recently became the 39th state to legalize sports betting and the U.S. gaming industry reported record-breaking revenue for a third consecutive year in 2023, according to the American Gaming Association.
Even though winning videos typically generate more views than losing videos, Steve and Danielle feel a responsibility to show their audience the unfiltered reality. The couple says younger viewers may not understand the risks inherent in gambling, including the house's edge, and older viewers likely have more to lose from it.
"What kind of 21-year-old has that kind of money to go to the casino and lose?" Danielle, 47, posits. "Even someone our age; who wants to get rid of their retirement? You can lose $10,000 in a weekend in the blink of an eye in Vegas," says Danielle.
"A couple hours," Steve adds.
March is Problem Gambling Awareness Month. If you're concerned about your gambling, call 1-800-Gambler or visit the National Council on Problem Gambling's website.
