Twitch streamer Felix "xQc" Lengyel has continued to gamble on the controversial crypto gambling website Stake, where his latest half-a-million dollar loss went viral online after Argentina defeated the defending champions in the FIFA World Cup finals.
The streamer posted a screenshot of the gambling stub hours before the match, where it could be seen that he had put a whopping $500,000 on France winning the World Cup. Lionel Messi and his teammates lifted the third trophy for their nation after a nail-biting finisher, which led to the penalty shootouts for the ultimate honor in world football.
While Mbappe's hat-trick would later equalize the score, Felix had cashed out around $5k after France was trailing 2-0. The decision led many in the streaming and esporting community to call on Twitch to expand their gambling restrictions to include sports betting.
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"-$650K I guess": xQc reveals his full losings after gambling on the World Cup Finals
Gambling and Twitch have a very contentious relationship, which has culminated in the recent upsurge in traffic to the up-and-coming streaming platform Kick. Owned by the owners of Stake, it aims to provide a safe haven for creators looking to stream slots and other types of gambling activities.
While Drake and Trainwreckstv (both sponsored by Kick) have attracted massive audiences to Kick, xQc is still on Twitch. Despite being a variety streamer, Felix is quite well-known for his gambling streams on Twitch in the past, where he used to play slots and other things before that type of content was banned from the platform.
His latest bet had him set a massive amount of money on the FIFA World Cup Finals.
After publicly cashing out the $5K, he explained to his audience that it would not have made a difference even if France went on to win the match because the bet was technically about winning within the designated 90 minutes of play with extra time, without counting the penalty shootouts.
After the news that he had cashed out went viral, the streamer defended his decision, saying:
"Yes, I shouldn't have cashed out. But at the same time, you guys need to understand that it didn't matter in the end because now at this point I already lost. Me and Train's bet was for a win at 90 minutes plus extra time. We are past that, now we are going to overtime. So, that doesn't matter anymore. I would have lost regardless."
As per a more recent Tweet from xQc, it appears that the total loss from his side due to betting on the World Cup was about $650,000.
Twitter reactions
The news of such a huge loss on xQc's part naturally drew a lot of eyeballs on the internet. Here are a few reactions from Twitter:
xQc is one of the most successful streaming personalities out. The clips of his reactions has had some calling on Twitch to ban gambling in its entirety.
Twitch's current policy doesn't do anything to curb categories such as sports betting, something which Trainwreckstv had quite a lot to say about when the decision to ban slots came through in September.
Read all about Twitch's current gambling restrictions here.
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