It’s an uncertain time for content creators, both new and established, within the poker community. The poker content creation space has undergone a substantial boom in popularity in recent years, but the rise has not come without drawbacks.
With gambling-related content flooding the YouTube servers, the site has been justifiably liberal with applying age restrictions to videos in an effort to prevent its younger audiences from seeing them. While the reasoning behind the age restrictions makes sense, adult viewers of age have to be logged into a YouTube account to see the content – and most aren’t.
'Almost overnight'
For GGTeam Member Hristivoje ‘All In Pav’ Pavlovic, the age restrictions come with a significant decrease to viewership and the threat of potential bans.
“It happened about three to five months ago, almost overnight like 80% of my videos were age restricted – which means you have to be logged into YouTube to actually view the content, so you end up losing somewhere between 50-70% of viewers,” Pavlovic explained.
“I’ve received two strikes in the last 90 days,” he continued. “The first strike is a 7-day ban and the second is a 14-day ban. I submitted a review of the second strike and after initially being told it still stands they ended up taking the strike away.”
Pavlovic can still upload videos to his 50,000 subscribers and livestream his poker gameplay, but the risk involved with the former makes it hard to justify the hours of editing required.
“There’s no issue going live on YouTube, which I do nearly every day, and I’m free to upload videos. It’s just very, very likely to be age restricted and receive limited monetization,” Pavlovic told PokerOrg.
'Who do we talk to?'
While the lack of YouTube monetization is far from ideal, it’s not the money that Pavlovic necessarily cares about.
“I make very, very little money from YouTube,” he said. “It’s more about building the brand so you’re getting more eyes and more people coming to watch the stream. By the way, I stand for age restrictions – I don’t think kids should be watching gambling content.”
YouTube isn’t the only video-hosting platform on the market, but it's by far the most utilized and the alternative options fail to offer a similar level of visibility – even with the age restrictions in place.
"I did try Rumble a while back, but the monopoly with YouTube is just huge. I've uploaded a few videos and they've gotten close to zero views," Pavlovic said. "I don't know how much longer I'm going to be doing this, but I feel like it's going to be a long time before Rumble overtakes or even gets close to matching YouTube – especially in the poker directory."
"I've been doing this for ten years now. I don't know if I have another ten, or even five, in me," he continued. "I edit my own videos. I put dozens of hours of work into them and when they instantly get removed or restricted it's just a complete waste of time."
There's another key point at the core of poker's YouTube problem: communication with the site. Currently, it's nearly impossible to address account issues with an actual human representative from YouTube.
"Right now, the problem is who do we talk to? There's no person to talk to, no one to fight for us," Pavlovic explained.
Negreanu and Owen sound the alarm as well
Pavlovic isn’t the only content creator to face these frustrations.
After streaming a number of events during the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Online, Daniel Negreanu claimed that YouTube wants to "destroy poker content." The GGPoker Ambassador has streamed the series in past years, but noticed a steep drop in viewership in 2025 – which he attributes to the age restrictions.
Brad Owen, one of the most-watched figures in the space, has been increasingly vocal about the existential threat to poker content creators. On September 26, Owen announced that one of his side channels – an account he uses to post short-form clips taken from his longer videos – had been entirely removed from YouTube. Furthermore, Owen learned that the removal of one of his channels meant he would be unable to use, own, or create any other YouTube channels.
Owen appealed the decision and YouTube eventually reinstated the channel, but the existential threat clearly looms large for all poker content creators – regardless of channel size or follower count.
"YouTube is not a particularly safe place for us," Owen wrote. "I recommend trying to grow on as many platforms as possible so that we’re not nearly as susceptible to nebulous policies and flat out errors by algorithms that terminate entire channels and years worth of work."
