In an apparent attempt to get around X’s rules prohibiting gambling ads, online gambling site Stake appears to be using influencers, massively popular engagement farming accounts, and stolen content to promote its site. 

On some posts, it’s just the Stake logo over a video or images, and others include versions of “This Is An #Ad” or “Gamble Responsibly #Ad.” Influencers are required to disclose advertising, per federal law.

The guidelines for advertising gambling content on X state that the platform “prohibits the promotion of gambling content, except for campaigns targeting specified countries where it is allowed with restrictions as explained below.” It then provides a long list of guidelines that vary from country to country; targeting users in the United States, for example, requires the gambling advertiser to be “domiciled in the US.” Stake was founded in Australia and is owned and operated by Medium Rare N.V. in Curaçao, according to Stake.com. The site for Stake.us, the U.S. version of the site, says it is owned by Sweepsteaks Limited and provides an address in Cyprus.

The Stake watermarked posts are not officially X “ads,” in the sense that they’re not posts that have been purchased through X’s advertising system and marked as such. Instead, they’re memes and posts that go viral because they’re boosted by big accounts, and can end up in many peoples’ feeds.

An entry in Know Your Meme by Owen Carry (who also wrote about Stake stealing content for its ad watermarking for Slate) traces the start of alleged Stake’s covert advertising back to 2023, when Kick streamers were gambling on their live streams. In 2022, Twitch banned streamers from broadcasting Stake.com, but Kick—a live streaming platform that’s notorious for its loose moderation policies—still allows it. 

Stake is owned by Eddie Craven, who also owns streaming platform Kick. Streamer Nick “Nickmercs” Kolcheff, who was banned from Twitch earlier this year for using a slur after going on a hateful rant against trans people, signed a $10 million deal to stream primarily on Kick. He announced during his first stream on the platform that he would be doing gambling streams “for sure,” and claimed it was “part of the contract.” Kick’s head of strategic partnerships told the Verge that a gambling clause is not in Kolcheff’s Kick contract, and esports reporter Jake Lucky posted that Nickmercs “has a Stake contract alongside his Kick contract.”

Stake is also a preferred platform for hackers looking to launder stolen cryptocurrency. 

@FearedBuck might be one of the first accounts on X to make the Stake watermark go viral, with clips from Kick streamed overlaid with Stake logos.

Massive viral content accounts like @picsthatg0hard_ and @lmfaooooos are accused of stealing other users’ photos and slapping a Stake ad on them: 

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK told Insider Sport last month that it’s keeping an eye on the Stake watermark situation on X. “There appear to be some jurisdictional points that we’d have to consider and/or if there are elements that we might, where appropriate, refer to the Gambling Commission,” a spokesperson told Insider Sport. “We think it is a legitimate regulatory objective to seek to minimise children’s exposure to age-restricted ads generally and therefore we want to see gambling advertisers use available tools to more effectively target their ads away from children, even where the vast majority of an audience is over 18. We will add these examples to our intelligence gathering and we will keep a watching brief here.”

At this point, Stake watermarking has evolved into its own meme, with accounts like @fuckstake_ posting the same images and memes without Stake logos on them, and most Stake-watermarked posts on X at this point have community notes attached pointing out that gambling ads are prohibited on the platform. But it makes sense that logos for a site owned by the guy who runs Kick—where many popular streamers have moved their streams to when their own racist, anti-semetic, homophobic or transphobic comments get them kicked off of Twitch—has taken over X. People are bailing en masse from X partially because of owner Elon Musk’s own transphobic remarks and right-wing support, and the platform’s failure to moderate against hate speech and harassment. The Stake watermarked posts fit right in on X, where low-quality ads, spam and bots run amok after bigger ad buyers left the platform following Musk’s takeover. 

Stake and X did not respond to requests for comment.