Social media influencers exist across every platform, industry type and personality nowadays and gambling is no different.
Palm Springs-based YouTuber Brian Christopher has been a leader in slot-playing videos since his channel Brian Christopher Slots — followed by more than 500,000 subscribers on that site and more than 600,000 on Facebook — started six years ago.
His popularity is now culminating in tangible spots across casinos. Last month, he announced a partnership with the Plaza that will result in a nonsmoking area with his name on it. And this week, slot manufacturer Gaming Arts will unveil Brian Christopher’s Pop’N Pays More, an expansion of Pop’N Pays featuring his likeness.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal spoke with Christopher by phone while he visited a Maryland casino for his channel in late June. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Review-Journal: How did you first start posting and when did you realize you could make a career out of it?
Christopher: I started my YouTube channel back in 2016. I just uploaded a few videos from one trip for fun. I think I put about five videos on my first and then I was done. I had no plans to upload any more videos after that. However, the videos themselves, they did very well. To my surprise, I got tons of subscribers from that.
I decided to upload some more videos after that, just to do a bunch of them again all at once on one day. They were all, like, three minutes long or so. And once again, these videos took off. I was invited from YouTube to join the partner program right then so I started making money on these videos.
Gambling is always extremely expensive and it’s a losing sport. YouTube was great but that doesn’t sound like very good business to make some money back and still lose money, so I was very cautious about it. Even then I saw it as a part-time gig to help support my acting career, maybe, but never in a million years did I think that this could become my job.
Year over year we’ve just been doubling in size almost. Now, we have nine members of staff. Every single week we’re at a different location, or in a different city or state, promoting another casino. While we’re on property, we’re filing all those videos with them. We’re also hosting livestreams and meet-and-greets, all other kinds of events like slot tournaments or group pulls together.
What is a common misconception or challenge about this career path?
I’m very careful about the way I gamble and play. I play with my “entertainment stash” — business budget, really. Because, I mean, I have to be able to make a video. So when people ask me, ‘What’s your budget for the weekend?’ I don’t have a straight answer for them. It’s more like, you need to play within your budgets. You’re doing it for fun. I’m doing it for work.
How has your channel evolved over the years?
When I started, there were only a handful of channels doing what I do. It was always my goal to try and up the game a bit, make it look a bit more professional, work on editing my thumbnails, and get into a groove of something. Then after about six months, I’m like, ‘OK, what can I do better now, to make it look nicer or innovate?’ Because over the years, now there’s thousands of these gambling channels that are essentially looking at the big guys and seeing what we’re doing, then trying to mimic or copy styles or themes we’re doing. So I have to keep reinventing myself to stand out and be different and unique.
So over the years, I have tried doing 360 videos. About a year and a half ago or so, we added a second camera because everyone always wanted to see my reactions. We’ve done our livestreams simulcast through Facebook and YouTube frequently, and upping our resolution on our videos to make them look better. We’ve done different kinds of challenge ideas to make it exciting, and just being able to travel to different locations every week definitely sets…
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