Question of the Day - 26 September 2022

Two words: Brian Christopher.

The most influential of the influencers has gotten so big that not only is there a Brian Christopher-branded slot salon at the Plaza downtown, but Gaming Arts has debuted the first Brian Christopher-themed game.

The slot whisperer par excellence freely admits he wasn’t the first slot influencer and that he himself was influenced by the pioneering efforts of others. But California-based Christopher has taken slot influencing to its highest level.

The Canada-born Christopher is estimated to make up to $400,000 per year in advertising revenue (and merchandise) just from his YouTube channel, which has 553,000 followers. He also streams his play on Twitch, whose members make donations to see him challenge its games.

That's pretty impressive for a slot player, but a mere drop in the bucket compared to Swedish video gamer Pewdiepie, who claims the top YouTube channel with 57 million subscribers. Then there’s 10-year-old Ryan Kahi with his 28.9 million YouTube followers, the world’s number-one “toy influencer.” Yes, it’s a thing.

Casinos have had to accommodate the trend. The Golden Nugget in Las Vegas not only had to relax its no-video policy, but one consultant reports, “Influencers are coming in with tripods or monopods. The bigger influencers may have an assistant, perhaps a crew, depending on their needs.” The public benefited. The Nugget announced that it "became much more open. Anyone could come in and film their experiences. You didn’t have to be an influencer.”

According to Christopher, the Cosmopolitan “is the only location on the Strip that has an open-filming policy. A few others have allowed some filming on occasion, including the Linq, Wynn, Aria, and MGM Grand, but it’s not necessarily the rule. I've yet to start visiting locals casinos, but we've started reaching out to them recently. We've worked with multiple casinos in Michigan, Indiana, Atlantic City, Maryland, Oklahoma, Reno, Vegas, California, and New York — around two dozen casinos and growing,” he told Global Gaming Business.

The incentive for casinos is that players increasingly want to play the games they’ve seen on YouTube — and preferably at casinos where the influencers film from.

There are any number of other slot influencers. SlotLady is one. According to WhatsTrending.com, “Her 200,000 followers can usually find her streaming live on YouTube in land-based casinos in downtown Las Vegas where she’s treated like a celebrity.” Although she prefers card games like Let It Ride and blackjack, she’s also drawn to the slots, hence her alias. For an online slot influencer, SlotLady actually keeps a very low profile, so little is known about who she actually is. Much of Christopher’s popularity, by contrast, is due to his open-book approach to his life, with his slot demos doubling as reality-show segments (his husband Marco has become a kind of co-celebrity).

Vegas Low Roller is, as its name would indicate, targeted to the casino newbie. For more "advanced" players, SlotsBoom visits casinos in California and Las Vegas, demonstrating the variety and workings of bonus rounds. Raja of the Big Jackpot channel has 300,000 followers, demonstrating that the next most interesting thing to actually playing a slot machine is watching someone else do so.

Really? Apparently. Believe us, we’re not sure why.

Meghan Sleik, who markets slots for a living, has one theory. She told CDC Gaming Reports, “I sometimes feel that the slot influencers know more about how our games work than many of us who work here.”

But Christopher keeps taking it up a notch. If you want to play like he does, you can try the Gaming Arts machine — and evidently people are doing precisely that. His eponymous game has debuted in 17 casinos and, in its first month of play, earned two to four times the house average for win per slot per day (and the industry goal for an average slot is $200 per day).

“This whole process has been an eye-opening affirmation that our collaboration with Brian and his team for a groundbreaking game like this was a great idea,” Gaming Arts CEO Mike Dreitzer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. (You can find the game at M Resort, the Palms, and the Plaza, three maverick properties.)

To celebrate the successful launch, Christopher is going on a cruise — and taking his fans with him. Actually, he’ll be going on a series of them over the next 10 years, taking the Carnival Breeze, Carnival Magic, and Carnival Dream ocean liners and highlighting the relationship between Gaming Arts and Carnival Cruise Lines. If you’re a landlubber, you’ll still be able to follow your hero via YouTube, as he streams highlights of his voyages … and showcases Carnival’s amenities.

Tomorrow: Inside the Brian Christopher empire.