Twitch Streamer xQc Hits Out at Bloomberg for Massively Stupid $119million Stake.com Claims

09:15
19 Aug

Twitch TV streamer Felix “xQc” Lengyel has described a Bloomberg article on his $multi-million gambling as “massively stupid” after the news site claimed he had directed $119million of business to gambling platform Stake.

The popular Canadian streamer “xQc” is well-known to the poker world following his appearance at the Hustler Casino Live cash game that featured Phil Hellmuth, Tom Dwan and Alex Keating, as well as content creators such as Ninja, Mr Beast, and Alexandra Botez.

It is Lengyel’s streamed gambling that hit the headlines this week, however, after Bloomberg’s Cecilia D’Anastasio wrote:

“In May, Lengyel said the promotion code he shared on Twitch brought $119 million to Stake.”

That has infuriated the streamer, who hit back at the negative article, for which he refused to comment, by explaining that the $119million is how much he actually gambled in May.

“What she refers to, in this article, is…the wagered amount,” Lengyel explains in the clip above, a number that is now sitting at a monstrous $685,075,994.

The information taken from Lengyel’s stats shows that he wagered that vast sum across 656,376 bets, with roughly 63,000 wins and more than 583,000 losses.

The tone of the Bloomberg article, though, is what likely set Lengyel off.

D’Anastasio shared the woeful tale of 26-year-old Enneric Chabot, who “didn’t start gambling until he saw his favorite gamers doing it online,” according to the journalist.

“Three years ago, Chabot began regularly watching Felix “xQc” Lengyel, a former professional Overwatch player, as he competed in various video games … in 2021, during some of his streams, Lengyel started playing something else—online blackjack,” wrote D’Anastasio.

Explaining that Chabot “thought it was pretty entertaining,” D’Anastasio then mentions how the gambling newbie “saw Lengyel post a promotional code for a site called Stake.com.”

“I just started losing and losing,” says Chabot, who burned through his $40,000 life savings and then two $20,000 bank loans, eventually declaring himself bankrupt.

The sad tale of gambling addiction was sparked by watching the the likes of Lengyel “festively gambling on the site”, says D’Anastasio, with Chabot telling her such streams “gave me a reason to go on Stake, like I was a part of what they were doing.”

Lengyel, however, described the article as “massively stupid” and claimed “I never promoted the code either.”

Earlier this year, however, he admitted to having a problem:

“I’m just easily addicted so I just shouldn’t gamble. I still do it. Is that good? No, that’s terrible. That’s an illness, that’s ill, I’m ill. But you know what, I can afford to be ill. I’m lucky.”

There seems to be a growing momentum against the amount of gambling shared on TwitchTV, with some streamers, such as Imane “Pokimane” Anys, who has 9.2million followers, stating she wouldn’t promote it regardless of how much they are paid.

Twitch gambling streamer, Tyler “Trainwrecks” Niknam, admitted to having lost $13million gambling and rapper Drake lost much more in just one livestreamed session.

The Canadian music business mogul recently partnered with Stake.com and turned $8.5million into almost $30million before losing the lot in a Twitch-streamed Roulette session, some $17million disappearing in just 10 minutes of madness.

Whether TwitchTV will tighten their rules on gambling content or not is unclear, although D’Anastasio reported a spokesperson as stating the company is “currently in the midst of a deep-dive look into gambling behavior on Twitch.”

The spokesperson added:

“We take any potential harm to our community extremely seriously. While gambling content represents a very small fraction of the content streamed on Twitch, we monitor it closely to ensure our approach mitigates potential harm to our global community.”

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