Malta-made reality TV show will award winner with one Bitcoin worth €97,000

An upcoming reality TV show produced and filmed exclusively in Malta will see the winner walk away with the prize of one Bitcoin, currently worth almost €97,000.

House of Streams, which has been licensed for the UK and Ireland by Netflix, merges traditional unscripted television with the world of online content creation.

The show’s contestants are eight prominent streamers on Twitch, a live-streaming platform where people watch and broadcast video content in real time. The streamers come from the worlds of video gaming, gambling and ‘in real life’ streaming, where people share unscripted moments from their everyday lives.

The contestants, who come from several countries, lived together in a villa in Mellieħa for two weeks, completing various challenges over nine episodes.

The show is hosted by renowned e-sports commentator Nicole Holliday.

A core feature of Twitch is the ability for viewers to interact in real time with streamers through chat, and this is also the show’s unique selling point.

Everything about House of Streams is different

“Chat is the cornerstone of House of Streams. It allows audiences to interact with contestants immediately,” creator Mark Holland told Times of Malta.

“The show differs from previous reality TV shows because contestants don’t usually have prior experience of being in the spotlight. They have no idea what it’s like to be under intense scrutiny. Whereas for professional streamers, being watched is their day job,” he said.

According to Holland, whose company Stream House Media Productions produced the show, House of Streams is the first show on Netflix that was filmed live around the clock, with an interactive audience who directly influenced the outcome of the show.

He added that it is also the first show filmed exclusively in Malta to make it onto the platform.

House of Streams creator Mark Holland was born in Malta.

Holland was born in Malta to British parents. His family’s connection to the film industry goes back decades.

“My late uncle, Rodney Holland, was the editor on Popeye. He was familiar with the island as my family built the Ramla Bay Hotel in the 1960s. He persuaded director Robert Altman to shoot the film here.”

This production is also a family affair. Holland’s brother, Dominic was the show’s director of photography, while his 14-year-old son, Finnian served as video-gaming adviser.

A subplot of the show, Holland says, is the fluctuating price of Bitcoin.

“When we started filming, the prize was worth €16,000 and now it’s hitting all-time highs, eclipsing the prize money on most reality TV shows.”

I think it will lead the way for shows that have real-time audience participation and will reshape the ‘real’ in reality TV

Asked why Bitcoin was chosen as the grand prize, Holland said it was another way to make the show stand out.

“Everything about House of Streams is different, so the final reward couldn’t have been a simple cash prize or a trip to the Maldives.”

While the show was not an easy sell, as platforms struggled to grasp how streaming would cross over into mainstream TV, Holland believes it will now be groundbreaking in its genre.

“I think it will lead the way for shows that have real-time audience participation and will reshape the ‘real’ in reality TV.” 

The production is supported by the Malta Film Commission. Camelot Films facilitated the Netflix deal and is handling promotion.

The show is set to premiere in the UK and Ireland on June 18.