Stake targets regulated markets as LatAm takes centre stage

Stake is increasingly turning its attention towards regulated markets as it enters a new phase of international expansion, with LatAm emerging as a key region for growth.

Founded in 2017, Stake has grown into an increasingly recognisable betting brand with its crypto roots and flashy but occasionally controversial advertising.

As it enters its new era of growth, Stake has followed a new strategy of primarily focusing on regulated markets, receiving licences to operate in Mexico and the Argentinian Province of Buenos Aires this year.

A director of Stake since November 2025, Jarrod Febbraio says the company has now reached a scale where regulated market expansion will form a key part of the next phase of its growth.

“Stake was built as a global business from day one, allowing us to respond, capitalise on opportunities and grow quickly across different markets,” he tells iGB. “We’re now taking that experience, technology, brand and operational experience into more locally regulated jurisdictions.

“The opportunity now is to combine the scale we’ve built globally with strong local operations. We’re confident that opens up a completely new phase of growth for Stake.”

Regulated expansion comes at a cost

However, the transition towards regulated markets also brings commercial challenges, with higher operating costs and additional regulatory restrictions potentially putting pressure on the business model that helped Stake establish itself.

Febbraio says the company is focused on ensuring the financial trade-offs that come with regulated markets do not endanger Stake’s core principles that have set it apart from other operators.

“For us, the priority is making sure those requirements don’t compromise the experience that made Stake successful in the first place,” he continues. That means responding to players quickly, processing withdrawals efficiently, completing customer verifications safely and promptly, and offering a broad selection of games and betting markets.

“These are the fundamentals that players expect from Stake, regardless of where they’re based. The challenge is maintaining those standards while adapting to different regulatory requirements.”

More than a betting brand

Besides the economic impacts of opting for regulated markets, Febbraio also notes advertising restrictions as a key potential headwind for Stake.

Advertising has been a key differentiator for Stake, with the operator employing a marketing strategy that has occasionally run them into trouble.

In February 2025, Stake announced it would cease its operations in the UK amid an investigation by the Gambling Commission into a video widely distributed on social media that featured an adult entertainment actress outside a UK university, while also displaying Stake’s logo.

The scale of Stake’s marketing presence in the streaming world was highlighted in a March 2026 report by livestreaming analytics company Hatchet. The report found Stake appeared in 6,600 stream titles across Twitch and Kick during January 2026.

This was over three times as many as second-placed 1xBet with 1,800 mentions, with Stake accounting for 60% of all iGaming brand mentions.

According to Stake CMO Akhil Sarin, the company’s marketing strategy is primarily focused on putting entertainment front and centre.

“We’ve always wanted Stake to be bigger than simply just a betting brand,” he says. “Sport is obviously at the heart of what we do, but our audience also cares about entertainment, culture and engaging content – so that’s where we want the brand to live too.”

This is where he feels more traditional betting operators have been lacking, with Sarin adding: “There’s still a lot of marketing in the industry that looks and feels the same. You can get too focused on the immediate betting message and forget that you’re competing with every other brand and piece of content for someone’s attention. We’ve certainly been willing to try things that aren’t typical for a betting brand. And our audience seems to be liking that approach!”

Balancing global ambitions with local restrictions

With Stake increasingly focusing on regulated markets, the question becomes how Sarin and his team can balance their entertainment-first strategy with local restrictions.

Sarin says Stake’s challenge is to maintain a consistent global brand identity while adapting its marketing approach to the regulatory requirements and cultural nuances of each market it enters.

“The brand can be global, but the execution has to work locally,” Sarin explains. “Every regulated market has its own requirements around what you can say, where you can advertise and how you can activate partnerships, and those rules have to be built into the campaign from the beginning.

“The important thing for us is keeping the core Stake identity consistent. We still want the work to feel entertaining, culturally relevant and recognisably Stake, but how that comes to life will naturally differ from one market to another.”

Creators and sponsorships underpin marketing strategy

Beyond its unconventional advertising campaigns, Stake has also invested heavily in high-profile personalities and sporting partnerships as it looks to build a presence across different audiences and communities.

Stake’s sponsorship portfolio spans several areas of sport and entertainment, from its partnership with Canadian rapper Drake to its involvement in football, combat sports and skateboarding.

The strategy reflects Sarin’s belief that brands need to establish a presence across the different communities and platforms where their audiences spend time.

That strategy will continue, says Sarin, with sports, streaming celebrities and content integral to the future growth of Stake as it expands into new markets.

“They’ll continue to be a major part of how we grow the brand,” Sarin declares. “Audiences are becoming more fragmented across sports, creators, platforms and different forms of entertainment, so there isn’t one channel or partnership that does everything for you anymore.”

The approach, he explains, is to find the communities where there’s a real opportunity, to invest properly in them and create things people genuinely want to engage with.

“Whether that’s football, combat sports, skateboarding, creators or something completely new, that principle won’t really change,” Sarin says.

But despite Stake’s entertainment-first marketing strategy, the company remains focused on ensuring its campaigns deliver tangible commercial value.

“It still has to deliver against a clear objective. We don’t create something purely because we think it will generate a big view count.”

Different campaigns require different approaches, Sarin explains.

“So we look at the KPIs that actually matter for that platform and objective. We’re reviewing a bunch of metrics, such as efficiency and CPM, to really understand what we were getting back from the investment. Entertainment gets attention, but ultimately that attention still needs to create value for the brand.”

LatAm expansion

Stake’s launches in Mexico and the Province of Buenos Aires in Argentina this year take the operator up to five regulated LatAm markets, although its presence in Brazil is currently uncertain, with the regulated industry still in limbo after a ban was introduced on the licensed sector in late September.

LatAm has become an increasingly important region for Stake, with the operator building momentum in its other regional markets of Colombia and Peru before adding Mexico and Argentina to its portfolio.

According to Febbraio, a lot of the fundamentals in LatAm “line up with what Stake does well”, noting its sporting cultures and digital-first audiences.

But while LatAm as a region is becoming a central pillar of Stake’s expansion strategy, Febbraio warns that success there is dependent on treating each country as a distinct market.

“You can’t treat LatAm as one market,” he suggests. “The regulation is different, the sports are different, consumer behaviour is different and even the way people engage with the Stake brand varies significantly from country to country.

Stake’s approach is to keep the fundamentals consistent: the product, technology and overall identity. Then to build locally around that, says Febbraio. “That means local teams, local partnerships and understanding what actually matters to players in each market rather than trying to impose one regional playbook everywhere.”

A selective approach to expansion

Despite the region’s potential, Febbraio stresses Stake is taking a selective approach to further LatAm expansion.

As part of this, Stake assesses each market’s potential and its regulatory environment, as well as its infrastructure, before committing to a launch.

He cites Mexico, which Stake strategically entered in the lead-up to the World Cup, partly held in Mexico, as an example of a market that had the right ingredients for entry.

“We’re constantly looking at opportunities across the region, but we’re disciplined about when and where we enter,” Febbraio says. “Scale obviously matters, but it isn’t the only factor.”

Attention is paid to the regulatory framework, digital adoption, payments infrastructure, sporting culture and whether there is belief that Stake can build a meaningful long-term position.

“There are other markets across LatAm that we’re actively monitoring as their regulatory frameworks develop, and we’ll move when we think the conditions are right.”

Stake ‘very clearly’ moving towards regulated markets

Stake has faced scrutiny for operating in grey markets – in 2026 the company was declared an illegal operator by the 24 members of the Federation of State Gaming Regulators of Nigeria.

Asked how the operator plans to apply its experience in black and grey markets to regulated expansion, Febbraio highlights the size of the business and the infrastructure it has built.

“Our biggest advantage is the scale of the business we’ve already built. We’re now in a position where we can pursue multiple market entries simultaneously, each with its own regulatory requirements, while maintaining the standards our players expect. That’s a significant undertaking and we believe our ability to execute at that scale is a huge competitive advantage that sets Stake apart from others in the market.”

Looking ahead, Febbraio makes clear that Stake’s long-term strategy is firmly centred on expanding into regulated jurisdictions, although the pace of entry will depend on the regulatory and commercial conditions in each market.

He says the company will remain selective in its approach, prioritising markets where it sees a viable framework and the potential to establish a strong long-term presence.

“Our direction is very clearly towards regulated markets,” Febbraio adds. “That doesn’t mean every market moves at the same speed. Regulation is evolving differently around the world, so we have to look at each jurisdiction individually.” That means entering when there is a viable regulatory and commercial framework.

“Where those conditions exist and we see a strong long-term opportunity, we want Stake to be there.”