Charged Youtubers are pleading not guilty to the illegal gambling allegations against them

It was formerly announced that the United Kingdom Gambling Commission is charging two Youtubers with operating illegal gambling activities, and now they have finally given their plea. They have decided to plea not guilty to the charges, which comes as no surprise. They will be contesting the charges against them in court to determine their guilt, which may be a landfall decision for others that have been involved in these activities.

The trial will be held on February 6th next year, and the hearing on these charges is expected to last about a week while prosecutors and defenders argue their case.

Craig Douglas is the first man facing charges. He has a YouTube channel in which he promotes gaming content to over 1.3 million subscribers. One of the concerns with his YouTube channel, which he has been using in order to market his gambling services, is that a vast majority of his viewers are minors that are underage to even be gambling in the first place. He is being charged with advertising gambling to children, which pertains to the skin betting services he showed off on his channel. Many clips show Douglas winning large amounts and overreacting to these winnings, making it appear as if it’s really easy to make a lot of money on these sites.

Dylan Rigby is facing the same charges, He was also involved with the FIFA-based sports betting website that they were marketing, along with skin gambling that was meant to target children. Furthermore, it’s also being alleged that they didn’t even indicate that they were being sponsored, nevertheless owned or had a stake in these services.

This will be the first case of its kind in which a hearing will be held to determine the legality and relation to gambling that skin gambling involves. This is likely to set a precedent for future decisions made by courts in other cases, as these two are only the first in a line of streamers and Youtubers that are likely to face similar prosecution should a jury convict Douglas and Rigby.

Skin betting is a debatable form of gambling in which players pay real money for virtual items and then gamble them to try and win more. While gambling these in itself would be a gray area that might not be seen as a real threat, the important factor to remember is that these skins are worth real money which is basically based off of the rarity of the item. Since they cost real money to buy so that players can gamble, they are sold in third party markets for real money value.

The value of the items will range depending on the rarity and demand of the items. Valve, the company responsible for CSGO, has been facing similar charges but they are likely to get dropped due to Valve’s effort to stop third party services from using their intellectual property for gambling operations.