YouTube Gaming Launches With No Poker Streams

In what is expected to become a battle royale between the giants Google and Amazon, You Tube Gaming launched today as a serious rival to the TwitchTV streaming portal. But for poker players the news was less than overwhelming.

With no dedicated poker streaming channel appearing in the announcement, Google’s ‘YouTube’ poker fans will still have to rely on videos posted on the main site to get their green-felt-fix. Twitch, however, is already a mainstay of live poker streaming and viewers, with some of the biggest names in poker regularly appearing.

Having been bought over by Amazon late last year, Twitch is the world’s leading games-streaming site and can count the likes of Daniel Negreanu and Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier among its big-name draws, while Randy ‘nanonoko’ Lew and in particular Jason Somerville, have attracted huge followings.

Commenting on the much awaited launch, of YouTube Gaming head Ryan Wyatt said: “Gaming is so big now. We’re doing billions of hours of watch-time a month, with hundreds of millions of users. It’s astonishing.”

Despite no specific nod to poker from Wyatt, it’s hard to believe that they will ignore the market for long. The difficulty may lie in tempting users away from the already hugely successful Twitch arena, but expect a serious fight over this in the not too-distant future.