SLOT STAR
Brian Christopher celebrates a decade of YouTube slot fun
By Sean Chaffin
Slot YouTubers and influencers didn’t exist 10 years ago. It was hard to imagine that many Americans would enjoy spending some of their free time clicking on YouTube and watching other people playing slots in casinos. There are now quite a few and Brian Christopher started the trend. Viewers can watch Christopher guide them through new games, special features and celebrate some of the winnings along the way. Christopher is the king of slot influencers and was even featured in the Wall Street Journal in 2023. Originally from Toronto, Canada, and currently living in Palm Springs, CA, Christopher has millions of subscribers and views on YouTube and other social media platforms.
Christopher is an example of just how big some of these gambling-related multimedia operations can get. Beyond revenue from YouTube, he has numerous other company partnerships, including with BetMGM and two cruise lines. He also had a dedicated slot section at the Plaza casino in Downtown Las Vegas through last June and Gaming Arts has even created the Brian Christopher Pop’N Pays MORE slot that can be found on casino floors. Fans enjoy his “group pulls” at various casinos throughout the year and he hosts cruises for slot players as well.
The 45-year-old employs a small team to keep everything going and the enterprise has definitely become a full-time job. Christopher recently spoke with Strictly Slots about how he got his start, what keeps viewers coming back, and more.
SS: What did you do before the YouTube channel and what made you want to start sharing videos of your play?
BC: Well, I’m about to hit my 10-year anniversary of doing this. I’ve been doing this for almost a decade. Before that, I was an actor. At the beginning, I was a kid actor—a theater kid growing up. I went to college for it and then after that, I went into film and TV, which eventually took me to Los Angeles. About a year or two into being in L.A. was when my YouTube channel started.
I was going to Vegas for the first time. I thought it would be kind of fun to film some of my bonuses. So I posted a bunch of videos over a couple-day period. I literally posted them on my acting YouTube channel. I didn’t really think anyone would watch, and was never going to upload anything else after that. It was just for fun. But then a week later, I took a look and I had 1,000 subscribers and people asked me when the next video was coming out. It just literally took another month before I went back to another casino, took more videos, and uploaded some more. It was at that point that I saw those videos just soaring and taking off. I realized I was on to something, and decided to keep at it for a little bit. If you go back to the game in my channel, you’ll see my acting videos still there.
Do you do any more acting or does this kind of occupy all your time now?
This takes all my time, but it really culminates my two favorite things, which are entertaining and gambling. So it’s actually a perfect mix for me.
Can you describe how the operation has grown through the years, from one man shooting a few videos to what it is now?
It used to just be me and my cell phone handheld going through the casinos and filming.
It was at the one-year mark that I added an editor to help me out. A few years in I decided to get someone to help me with some social media because it’s a lot. It’s very taxing. As we’re hitting our 10-year anniversary next month, we have a dozen employees all across California with other contractors to help us with other means as well. That’s what really helped me grow further was with their help to be able to navigate different promotional things we can do, different partners we can work with, because literally I’m a theater kid. I don’t know how to run a business, but I figured it out, and I had to bring some great leaders with me along the way that helped guide me in the right direction.
We do between eight and 10 cruises a year where we bring fans on board the cruise ships with us. We partner with tons of casinos as well, where we host events so the fans get a chance to meet me and play with me as well.
Can you describe how you enjoy connecting with your audience?
For us, community is everything. We’d be nothing without them. So I do my best to travel to different parts of the country and even different parts of the world so that they can get an opportunity to meet me because a lot of them just want to shake my hand. So that’s why I chose not to just stick at one location, but rather travel a lot more, which is a lot more taxing on the body and on the finances, but it’s definitely more fun to be able to see all the fans.
Why do people tell you that they enjoy watching?
I guess one of the number one comments I get is that I make them feel like I’m sitting right there beside them. They feel like they know me 100%. They’ll walk up to me and be like, ‘Brian, I feel like I know everything about you, but you probably have no idea who I am.’ That was my goal, to really reach out and hold hands with this community. Typically playing slots is like a solo sport by yourself. It’s a lonely thing you can do, but we’ve really tapped into figuring out how to bring people in.
So I don’t hold back anything in my videos or in my live streams. I tell them everything about my life, what’s going on. It’s funny, they’ll literally quote me on some things that I’ve done in the past and I’m like, ‘How did you know that?’ I forgot that I actually mentioned it at some point. They can watch anyone playing a slot machine, anyone can press a button, but at the end of the day, they’re really there for the person themselves, their personality, and how they connect with you and relate to you. While I do gigantic bets, I also keep smaller bets as part of the repertoire as well, so that people can still relate.
Do you get recognized in the casino you film in often?
Every casino, I’d say. It’s a perfect level of celebrity-ism because in the casino, I’m well- known, but anywhere else outside of that, I rarely get recognized. It’s just nice. I wouldn’t want to be a real celebrity I don’t think. That would be very daunting—you wouldn’t be able to do anything. But this way I get to go where I love to be, and then turn it off when I’m not there.
Any interesting stories from traveling in those casinos?
It’s pretty tame, but two weeks ago I was walking into a high-limit room and I heard a guy going, ‘Oh my god!’ I looked over and he just won a $2 million jackpot on a slot machine. That was wild. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that is so cool. Congrats!’ I asked him, ‘Do you mind if I film this?’ He was like, ‘Oh my god, you’re Brian Christopher. Yes, please.’ It was really wild. I’ve never seen a jackpot like that hit off in the casino before.
What goes into putting these videos together behind the scenes and some of the challenges you and your team face?
People literally think I just drop in the casino for 30 minutes, film it, and then pop it on YouTube and go home for the day and then go live on a beach or something. But gambling probably represents like 5-10% of what I do. We film a lot in advance, too. When you see our videos, I probably filmed them between one and three months ago. There’s a lot of steps that go into it. We do a lot of traveling, and you’re not going to have good wifi to upload the videos. I send them over to my editor, who lives in Kentucky, and then he’ll edit it, he’ll upload it back, and we have to make thumbnails.
We have a full team that helps put it all together. So that’s a big challenge—organizing everything, getting it all set up for every trip I go on. I know for the next six months or so, I’ve already scheduled out when I’m going to film what and where, trying to sort it all out in advance. I don’t have to worry about [being] sick one day—I’ll be fine. I have coverage and everything else.
And then we’re having issues with Facebook and YouTube. I think most of us in the space right now are just struggling with Facebook, where they confuse our content with illegal gambling content sometimes. So we’ll get blocked from monetization or we’ll get blocked from people finding us, which is a huge hassle. What we do is probably the most expensive YouTube channel you can think of, unless you’re Mr. Beast. We’re gambling tons of money.
I’m doing a million-dollar series right now. Every day, I upload a short video where I gamble $10,000 and do that for 100 days. So I gamble a million dollars and hopefully by the end, I break even, [maybe] make a million. For that series, $10,000 a day for a three- minute video. On most of those videos, I’m making $5 on YouTube. I might get lucky and make 30 or 50 bucks on it. We don’t make money back on those. So when you’re struggling with Facebook or YouTube to monetize or get your videos seen, it’s very depressing and it’s a huge hardship on your finances when that happens.
That’s why we always have to make sure we have other partnerships and things to help offset those issues that we deal with. The YouTube and Facebook issue, it’s a constant. It’s been going on almost since the beginning. So it’s just something you’ve got to get used to. One of the best lessons I learned from the very beginning was to diversify. You have to be diversified in how you make money in this space, whether it’s on different platforms or having partnerships or selling merchandise or having a fan club or whatever it is. Every little bit definitely helps, so that if one thing goes down, the ship doesn’t sink.
Did you ever think it could get this big? Does it just seem kind of surreal?
It definitely feels surreal. When I started, everyone said, ‘There’s no way you’ll ever get 100,000 subscribers. There’s no way that this tiny niche could grow.’ Then we were the first [slot machine] channel to hit 100,000 and then we just kept growing and expanding. Now we’re at over 2.2 million subscribers across our channels. There seems to be no signs of stopping. It’s no longer a tiny little niche anymore. A lot of other channels have caught on to it and started theirs, jumping in with massive bets out there as well. There’s plenty of room for all of us, which is great. There are lots of opportunities. People seem to be enjoying it, so I think the sky’s the limit.
