Starting next month, the Australian-Curaçaoan online casino Stake will no longer hold a UK license.
Stake has received formal notice from the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) that its license, which only online casinos that fulfill strict regulatory criteria can obtain, has been revoked. TGP Europe Limited (TGP), which runs the Stake website under a white-label contract, has announced that it would close the Australian-Curaçaoan online casino that was established in 2017. Consumers are being advised to stop using Stakes services before it shuts down in the UK market on March 11, as all registrations will be unavailable from that date.
The action comes after the UKGC opened an investigation into a widely seen clip that featured an adult actress outside Nottingham Trent University and used the Stake-branded emblem. The video was shared on social media. The OnlyFans (a membership service for Internet content that’s popular among sex workers who create pornography) creator Tia Billinger, also known as Bonnie Blue, is featured in a viral video discussing her intimate interactions during her first year at the university in question.
Following a meeting with the Commission, TGP, which has previously been the target of enforcement action, announced that it will immediately cease taking new registrations to the stake.uk.com platform and take down redirection links from the main Stake website.
Stake also faces consequences for their sporting sponsorship contracts in the UK. The operator is now the English Premier League football team Everton F.C.s front-of-shirt sponsor. Everton and two other English football teams with Stake as an unlicensed sponsor, Watford F.C. and Gillingham F.C., will receive a letter from the UKGC alerting them of the dangers of endorsing illegal gambling services. The Commission will ask the clubs to guarantee that they have thoroughly investigated their white-label partners and that British consumers are unable to do business with unauthorized websites.
