One of the highlights of the just-completed Canadian Gaming Summit in Toronto was a Q+A between Brian Christopher, one of the top social-media influencers for slots and casinos in the world, and Canadian Gaming Association President and CEO Paul Burns.
The session was on the same day BetMGM announced an exclusive partnership with Brian Christopher Slots, in which the Canadian, a native of Burlington, Ont., becomes the operator’s latest Official Ambassador.
Brian Christopher Slots’s content boasts a loyal following through such brands as BCSlots.com, BCSlots YouTube channel, FlipTheSwitch.com, BCSlots Cruises, and Rudies Fan Club.
Their social-media channels reach eight million monthly unique viewers and 1.8 million subscribers and recently set a new casino-gaming record of one billion video views. In 2023, Brian Christopher Slots was named Streamer of the Year and Slot Collaboration of the Year at the CasinoBeats Game Developer Awards presented by SBC.
Christopher also has his own slot machine, created with Gaming Arts; it’s debuting at Casino Rama and is in over 50 casinos across the U.S. and on cruise ships.
“[BetMGM] is a perfect partnership for us,” he told the crowd. “You’ll see me playing on BetMGM, on all the lives that we do on BCSlots [to include livestreams, exclusive experiences for players, and responsible-gaming messaging], our real money and gaming channel. We’ll be doing a lot of trips to casinos, so we can also do meet and greets, or play on the floor with them online, and showcase all of that to the world.”
Burns said, “You have a billion impressions all about playing slots, which is a great way of introducing products and breeding new generations of players.”
Christopher said that 75 percent of the audience that watches him play (with his own money, which Christopher says is for reasons of authenticity, to show the reality of losses due to gambling, as well as the wins, and to make it more of a collective experience with his audience) is American, seven percent Canadian, followed by Australia, UK, and New Zealand.
Christopher did a live event at Casino Rama in Orillia Friday night. He has his own slot room at Plaza Casino in Las Vegas.
On that note, what are some of the things Christopher looks for in a casino partner, for the live events?
No smoking: “I moved to California 10 years ago, having lived in Canada my whole life. And when I first walked into a casino, my jaw hit the floor. I’m like, you guys still have smoking here? It didn’t make sense. We’d gotten rid of it in Canada. The very first G2E I went to in 2016, I ran into the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. And I was immediately, how do we work together? We’ve been partnering for years. I’ve spoken at the legislature in New Jersey. It blows my mind how in this day and age, and we’re talking about decades now that we have the research about how cigarettes are harmful. But now especially, only 11% of the U.S. population smokes. Yet the majority of the casinos are 100% smoking or they have smoke-free floors interspersed in the middle of the gaming floor, so you’re still breathing it all in. I only go to smoke-free casinos and that’s all I promote for.”
Size doesn’t matter: “We’ve worked with casinos with as few as 500 slot machines and as many as 8,000.”
Good wifi: “That’s a plus, so we can do our thing as well.”
As Burns added, good wifi isn’t something casinos are known for, although they’re catching up.
“Right now, the dream is more Canadian properties,” Christopher said. “I partner with tons of casinos in the U.S. I would love to partner with more across Canada.”
Any constraints around regulatory issues?
“I’ve been doing this for eight years,” he said. “So I’ve heard all the questions, all the concerns. We usually just try and put them at ease. I’m not going to walk around filming the cashier cage. I’m not filming random people on the floor or your staff and if we capture anyone by accident, we blur them out. We put up signage saying that we’re filming on the property. So it’s never really been a huge issue for us. But some jurisdictions are still behind the times. Pennsylvania is one. You can’t bring a camera on the floor over there.
“We’re always open to new ideas. How can we do something different with [a casino]? Just last week, I did a partnership with a slot manufacturer to promote Whitney Houston’s brand-new slot machine. We went out to the property and did a huge thing about it — a lot of stories on social media, a lot of posts, and we put it in our newsletter that goes out to about 85,000 people. Then we went live and played the game for 45 minutes straight, playing every bet up to $50, to showcase all the features and benefits of the game. That’s something small we can easily do.”
Christopher said the number-one piece of advice he has for people starting out in the business he’s in is to start posting, to get over the fears of wanting to be perfect.
“You’ll figure it out as you go,” he added. “Every time I put out a video, I’m like, what can I do to make it better? Just keep improving it from there. Be authentic. I’m not putting on a show. You’re seeing me being me in all my streams.”
