Quietly, the gambling company Stake has become huge.
Advertised as “America’s Social Casino,” the cryptocurrency-based Australian online casino has partnerships with everyone from Drake to Alfa Romeo to the UFC to Everton FC. It is tightly connected to the live-streaming platform Kick, with which it shares cofounders Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven. Young viewers of popular streamers like Adin Ross and xQc likely know Stake more than FanDuel or DraftKings.
Lately, Stake has gotten even more creative with its marketing.
The company sponsors several aggregation pages on X, where its logo is prominently featured alongside viral clips and memes. Some of those are clips from streams on Kick, which tracks. Others are standalone pages like “pics that go hard,” which snatches funny photos from around the internet, slaps a Stake logo on them, and farms engagement.
This week, a Minecraft content creator named Dave Kratzky noted that the account stole his photo of Minecraft blocks transposed into a real-life living room. That’s frustrating and could be called unethical, but the real issue could come from the Stake sponsorship of the account and that post.
X users inserted a community note onto the post stating that it is against X’s terms of service for being “an undisclosed ad for a gambling site.”
My image stolen and reuploaded with a Stake watermark this website is cooked https://t.co/2psOx65YlQ
— Dave Kratzy (@Krtzyy) October 27, 2024
While the community notes’ accusation that the ad is “undisclosed” may not be accurate, considering the post from “pics that go hard” includes a banner at the bottom with the #AD hashtag and a warning to gamble responsibly, it does appear that X prohibits paid partnerships with companies like Stake.
X’s official Paid Partnerships Policy defines a paid partnership as “the involvement of a third-party brand providing compensation or incentives to a user, such as an influencer or content creator, to promote their product or service.” In its list of “Prohibited Industries,” X lists “Gambling products and services (including lotteries, social casinos, sports betting, and other gambling-related content).”
Stake’s homepage uses that exact “social casino” terminology and features gambling video games, traditional casino table games like poker and roulette, and digital slot machines.
Even random smaller accounts, like Stake-sponsored user “@snaxngl,” are popping up trying to post viral memes like this Stephen A. Smith pendant. The Stake resistance on X is finding them and community noting them, too.
patrick’s house isn’t a rock btw
pic.twitter.com/OlGGUchcmg— ᡣ𐭩 (@snaxngl) October 26, 2024
Stake even sponsors accounts that have nothing to do with sports, gaming, or pop culture.
A user named “@KillaMinga” posts historical photos with the Stake watermark and accumulates views. In recent weeks, their posts have also been given the community notes treatment.
Yves Saint Laurent at his mentor, Christian Dior’s funeral, 1957 pic.twitter.com/EQFyJH2xXe
— Minga (@KillaMinga) October 25, 2024
These accounts note their affiliation to Stake by tagging the gaming company in their X bios and including its logo in their posts. But it’s unclear whether Stake is operating these accounts or merely paying users in return for a cut of their payouts from X, which began paying premium subscribers after Elon Musk bought the site.
The comment section below a Despicable Me-inspired meme from the account “@lmfaooooos” shows how purposeful this Stake resistance on X has become.
Users fighting against this strange flood of Stake-sponsored aggregation accounts have developed memes to counter the viral tricksters.
— StrixWar (@StrixWar2) October 30, 2024
Stake gamers in the U.S. primarily wager with cryptocurrencies. Last year, the company lost $41 million after its digital hot wallets were hacked. The FBI later confirmed that the Lazarus Group conducted the hack, which the bureau said is “comprised of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) cyber actors.”
Stake released a statement indicating users’ funds were not affected.
Stake has used the live streaming platform Kick as a loss leader, striking massive deals with streamers from rivals YouTube and Twitch to funnel new users to the online casino. Unlike Amazon-owned Twitch or Google-owned YouTube, Stake is known to be looser with its terms of service.
Streamers like NickMercs, who was recently banned from Twitch but recently appeared on Barstool’s Bussin’ With the Boys and maintains a significant following, flock to Kick for freedom to say mostly whatever they want, with little fear of suspension or ban.
As a private company, Stake does not release user and financial data the way DraftKings or FanDuel would. The company claimed it made $2.6 billion in revenue in 2022.
A recent survey from the National Council on Problem Gaming showed that young men were more than three times as likely to show behavior that indicates a gaming problem, according to the AP. The Responsible Gaming Council explains this phenomenon by showing that the ease of online gaming tends to be a gateway into problem gambling.
Stake clearly targets young male creators on streaming deals. And these streamers often gamble and play casino games on stream for their audience.
Now, Stake is advertising not only to inbound viewers on Kick but also to X users laughing at a funny clip or viral meme. If those posting community notes interpret X’s policies correctly, Stake is doing so against the platform’s terms of service.
X did not respond to Awful Announcing’s request for comment.