Stake.com Marketing: How a Crypto Casino Startup Became a Market Leader

Stake launched in 2017 as a small crypto casino. By 2022 it generated about $2.6 billion in gross gaming revenue, according to Regulus Partners figures cited by the Financial Times. Its marketing grew with it. The first campaigns paid a few Twitch streamers; by 2023 Stake had Drake, the UFC, Everton and a Formula 1 team.

Below, we go through that marketing year by year, up to the regulatory pushback of 2025, and end with five lessons operators can apply on a smaller budget.

Stake at a Glance

• Founded: 2017, by Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani. Operated by Medium Rare N.V. under a Curaçao licence, as part of the Easygo group.
• Revenue: about $2.6B in gross gaming revenue in 2022 (FT / Regulus Partners) and $4.7B in gross revenue in 2024 (Forbes).
• Main channels: live streamers, celebrity ambassadors, sports sponsorships (UFC, Premier League, F1) and Kick, the streaming platform its founders launched in 2022.
• Setbacks: the 2022 Twitch gambling ban, the 2025 UK exit and US state actions against Stake.us.

Streamers First: Stake’s Influencer Strategy (2017-2019)

From its first months, Stake paid streamers to play on the site live, with a referral code in the description, instead of buying banners or one-off influencer posts. Viewers saw real bets, wins and losses, and could sign up through the streamer’s link. One of the earliest examples is Twitch streamer Oleg Barca, who started promoting Stake in August 2017.

The roster grew steadily through 2019. Most partners were micro-influencers, gaming streamers and crypto personalities with small audiences.

2020: Riding the Pandemic Surge in Online Casino and Streaming

Stake.com experienced steady growth until the end of 2019. The pandemic marked a turning point for the company, not due to the pandemic itself, but thanks to Stake’s marketing team’s timely response to the pandemic’s consequences.

When lockdowns hit in 2020, two things happened at once: search interest in online casinos jumped (see the chart above), and people stuck at home spent more time watching live streams on Twitch. Stake already had a streamer network, so it scaled the roster just as the audience arrived.

Stake’s gross gaming revenue went from about $105 million in 2020 to $1.2 billion in 2021, according to the same Regulus Partners estimates. A 2022 profile of founder Ed Craven, “The Twitchification of Marketing”, names influencers and live streaming as Stake’s most effective marketing channel.

2021-2022: Sports Sponsorships Go Mainstream

Stake’s first major sports deal came in March 2021, when it became the UFC’s first-ever Official Betting Partner in Latin America and Asia, excluding Brazil. UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya became its first brand ambassador. In July 2021 it signed a multi-year principal partnership with Watford FC, and its logo went on the front of a Premier League shirt for the first time. Search interest in “stake.com” peaked in May 2021, between the two announcements.

More deals followed quickly. In February 2022 the UFC partnership was expanded to Brazil, and former Manchester City striker Sergio Agüero joined as an ambassador. In June 2022 Everton announced Stake as its front-of-shirt sponsor from the 2022/23 season, a deal reported at £10 million a year. Each partnership came with its own promotions (regional welcome bonuses, fight-night and match-day giveaways, raffles), so a sponsorship also worked as an acquisition campaign.

Drake and Stake: Turning Celebrity Wins into Content

In March 2022, Drake announced a partnership with Stake on Instagram. According to Ed Craven, Drake had already been playing on Stake for several months before the deal.

Drake did not appear in ads. He streamed his own high-stakes sessions and posted screenshots of multimillion-dollar bets on sports and fights. Big wins and losses turned into headlines and clips, and Stake’s name went with them at no extra media cost.

In March 2023 the Financial Times, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported that the deal was worth about $100 million a year. Neither Drake nor Stake has confirmed the figure.

The Twitch Ban and the Launch of Kick

Streaming was Stake’s core channel, which made it a single point of failure. On 20 September 2022, Twitch announced a ban on streams of slots, roulette and dice games from sites not licensed in the US or other jurisdictions with sufficient consumer protection. Stake was named explicitly, alongside Rollbit, Duelbits and Roobet. The ban took effect on 18 October 2022. Sports betting, fantasy sports and poker stayed allowed.

Stake’s founders, Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, answered by building their own platform. Kick launched in late 2022 and is owned by their Easygo group. Legally it is separate from the casino operator, but it gave Stake’s streamers a place where gambling content was allowed.

Kick then paid for audience the way Stake had: with large creator contracts. In June 2023 it signed Félix “xQc” Lengyel to a two-year, non-exclusive deal worth $70 million guaranteed and up to about $100 million with incentives, according to his agent. Amouranth signed the same month, and Adin Ross had joined earlier in 2023. Today Kick is one of the main venues for casino streamers.

2023-2026: Football, Formula 1 and Regulatory Pushback

In January 2023 Stake became co-title partner of the Sauber Formula 1 team, which raced as Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake that season and as Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber in 2024 and 2025. Where gambling advertising is banned, it raced as “Kick Sauber”, with the sister brand in Stake’s place. For 2026 the team became Audi’s works team.

Not every deal went through. In July 2023, Chelsea dropped talks over a front-of-shirt deal with Stake after opposition from fans.

Regulation also caught up. In the UK, Stake operated through a white-label partnership with licensee TGP Europe. After a Gambling Commission investigation into a promotional video featuring an adult performer, TGP Europe stopped new registrations in February 2025, and Stake left the British market by 11 March 2025.

In the US, where Stake runs the sweepstakes-model Stake.us (launched in 2022), several state regulators sent cease-and-desist letters, including Michigan in 2023. In August 2025 the Los Angeles City Attorney filed a lawsuit against Stake.us, Easygo, Kick and the founders.

The Everton deal survived the UK exit. From the 2026/27 season, with the Premier League’s voluntary ban on gambling brands on the front of shirts in force, Stake moved to Everton’s sleeve and CMC Markets took the front.

Stake Marketing Timeline, 2017-2026

What Operators Can Learn from Stake’s Marketing

Few operators can spend a reported $100 million a year on one ambassador. But Stake’s approach breaks down into parts that work at a smaller scale.

1. Pay streamers to play on your site live. Each of Stake’s streams worked as a product demo. In our experience, a handful of mid-sized streamers with an active chat often convert better than one big name. See how we run influencer marketing for gambling brands.
2. Tie every sponsorship to a promotion. Stake paired its deals with regional bonuses and giveaways, so each one brought in registrations as well as logo exposure.
3. Spread creators across several platforms. The Twitch ban cut Stake’s core channel overnight. Stake could afford to build Kick; smaller brands should use Kick, YouTube, X and Telegram from the start.
4. Use sports sponsorships for credibility. UFC, Premier League and F1 deals put a Curaçao-licensed crypto casino next to mainstream sports brands. Few other channels can do that.
5. Budget for regulatory and reputational cost. Stake’s growth came with a UK exit, US cease-and-desist letters and lawsuits. Covert promotion adds its own risk: our research on Stake’s stealth marketing on Reddit found Stake mentions woven into personal stories in non-gambling subreddits, and patterns like that shape the brand’s online reputation.