Entain Turns Its Black-Market Campaign on Stake's Curacao Base

Entain has turned its long-running campaign against unlicensed operators into a personal exchange with Stake, using the 2026 World Cup to question where the crypto-casino is actually licensed. Entain's general counsel Simon Zinger took aim at Easygo co-founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani in comments to Australia's Herald Sun, arguing that Curacao's run to the tournament should put a spotlight on the operators licensed there. "As the World Cup shines a spotlight on Curacao, it should also raise questions about the gambling operators licensed there and the risks they pose to consumers and sporting integrity worldwide," Zinger said. "The real question for Stake in this World Cup is whether it is backing Australia or Curacao." The framing is deliberate, and it extends the same regulated-versus-grey-market argument Entain has pushed through its black-market gambling research in the UK.

The mechanics behind the jab matter. Easygo is an Australian-founded, Melbourne-headquartered technology company whose two main brands are the Stake online casino and the Kick streaming platform. Stake itself, though, is operated by Medium Rare N.V. in Curacao, a constituent country of the Netherlands with roughly 150,000 residents that was little known to most sports fans before this World Cup. Curacao is very familiar to the gambling industry for one reason: tax. The jurisdiction charges 0% on gross gaming revenue and levies a 2% corporate income tax on net profits, which has made it the registered home for hundreds of .com brands that operate internationally without local licences. That structure has drawn repeated accusations of unlicensed activity, particularly across Europe, and Stake is far from the only name involved. Roobet, Duelbits, Santeda International and BC.GAME all run from Curacao and all have faced similar complaints.

Easygo did not let the comment pass. Stake's response leaned on its Australian footprint and a tax point of its own. "Stake does not operate in or generate revenue in Australia. Easygo, the technology company behind Stake, is domiciled in Australia, employing more than 800 people and paying all relevant state and federal taxes here," the company said. It then turned the World Cup line back on Entain: "Of course we support Curacao, what an achievement for a comparatively tiny country to make it to the World Cup. This doesn't mean we don't support our Socceroos, but we want to acknowledge the Curacao team for this tremendous feat." The kicker was personal: "It's quintessentially Australian to support the underdog, something that Mr Zinger may not be aware of as a Canadian living in Gibraltar."

The numbers behind the two sides

The size gap between the combatants is part of the story, because both are large and both are profitable. Entain is the LSE-listed FTSE 100 owner of Ladbrokes, Coral and bwin, and it reported group net gaming revenue of roughly £5.3bn (about $6.7bn) for FY2025 with underlying group EBITDA of £1,160m (about $1.5bn). Easygo is privately held and far less transparent, but the public estimates are not small. Stake generated about $4.7bn in gross gaming revenue in 2024 on its own, and Easygo reported revenue above $500m with net profit near $260m for that financial year, per Australian Financial Review reporting. Forbes pegs Craven's net worth at about $2.2bn and Tehrani's near $2.8bn. The point Entain keeps returning to is not that Stake is small. It is that a company this size is running on a 0% GGR base while Entain pays full freight in licensed markets.

Entain's underlying point is harder to dismiss than the World Cup banter. Stake surrendered its UK licence in early 2025, ceasing UK operations on 11 March 2025 after a Gambling Commission investigation that also caught white-label partner TGP Europe, and it holds no licence in any Australian jurisdiction. Entain's own research this year identified more than 30 unregulated gambling sites promoting to UK audiences, named Stake among three sites advertising illegally to that audience, and described Kick as a "central hub of the illegal gambling influencer ecosystem." That work fed lobbying with the Independent Football Regulator, the Intellectual Property Office and the Gambling Commission. Ukraine's regulator has reached a similar conclusion from the other direction, pulling Kick into a partnership aimed at curbing black-market gambling ads.

Why the affiliate and B2B angle is real

For affiliates and B2B suppliers, the Curacao taunt is noise but the underlying campaign is signal. Kick is the connective tissue. The platform exists because Twitch banned non-US gambling sites including Stake, Roobet and Rollbit in October 2022, after streamer pressure; Stake had been paying streamer Trainwreck roughly $360m over 16 months to broadcast slots play before that ban. Kick launched weeks later in December 2022 with a 95% creator revenue split and a dedicated gambling category, and the same founders sit behind both Stake and Kick. The precedent worth watching is what Twitch's ban actually did: Trainwreck's average viewership fell about 42% in the four weeks after, but the streams simply moved to a platform built by the operator they promoted. Suppression on one channel routed traffic to an owned one. That is the loop Entain is trying to break with regulators rather than platforms, and it is the same loop affiliates monetizing crypto-casino referral codes are exposed to if licensed markets tighten enforcement.

Entain has a self-interested motive here, and it is worth stating plainly: every grey-market dollar that moves to a Curacao brand is a dollar that does not flow through a UK-taxed operator. Even so, the data backs the harder version of its case more than the softer one. The argument over whether Stake supports the Socceroos or Curacao is a debating point, given that LeoVegas and Kindred run from Malta and UK-licensed BetVictor and DAZN Bet are headquartered in Gibraltar. The argument over a $4.7bn-GGR brand operating from a 0% tax base without UK or Australian licences is the part regulators are likely to keep acting on.