Key Takeaways
- Rainbet announced it is the first official sponsor of Kick’s Slots category, via a statement on X.
- Official Rainbet-branded streams are already live in Kick’s slots vertical, running creator giveaways.
- Kick is co-owned by Stake founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani; Kick has not publicly commented.
A rival casino buys real estate on Stake’s home turf
Rainbet announced the sponsorship in a statement posted on X, framing the deal as an opening rather than an endpoint. “We believe healthy competition benefits everyone, creators, platforms, and most importantly, the players,” the company wrote. The arrangement makes Rainbet the first brand to hold official sponsor status over an entire content category on Kick – and the category it chose is the platform’s most concentrated gambling niche.
The branding is already live. Kick’s slots vertical currently carries official Rainbet-branded streams, headlined “OFFICIAL RAINBET” and running creator giveaways under the Rainbet banner. The sponsorship’s full financial scope has not been disclosed, and Kick itself has not publicly commented on the deal – the “first official sponsor” framing rests on Rainbet’s side of the announcement, echoed by trade coverage.
Kick was founded by Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, the co-founders of Stake, and the platform’s gambling-heavy culture has been inseparable from Stake since launch – its biggest casino streamers are Stake-sponsored, and Trainwreckstv’s record $50 million max win this week happened on a Stake-exclusive slot. A rival casino paying for official status over the slots category breaks the assumption that Kick’s gambling economy runs in-house by default. It also inverts the money flow: rather than casinos paying streamers for exposure on Kick, a casino is now paying Kick itself.
The timing sharpens the contrast. Kick co-founder Craven said just last week that the platform’s partner program does not reward gambling streams, positioning Kick’s official monetization at arm’s length from its casino content. A category-level gambling sponsorship – sold to a competitor, no less – shows the platform monetizing that same vertical directly, even as its creator-payment program declines to. Kick has also recently begun testing advertising on the platform, making sponsor revenue a visibly growing part of its model.
Rainbet arrives with a playbook built on creators rather than conventional advertising. The casino sponsors some of streaming’s biggest gambling names, including Adin Ross, Cuffem, and Konvy – Ross revealed his Rainbet deal live on Kick, was banned mid-stream, and continued on Twitch in front of more than 225,000 concurrent viewers.
The brand has drawn scrutiny too: an exposé by football outlet AttackingFootball questioned whether Rainbet CEO John Evans is a real person or a “fictional frontman,” and compliance outlet FinTelegram has issued a public appeal to identify him – with investigative coverage finding no verifiable professional history for Evans outside the company’s own materials. That opacity follows the casino into a deal granting it category-level placement in front of Kick’s audience.
For creators, the immediate effect is a second sponsor pipeline inside Kick’s slots ecosystem – and for the industry, a signal that Kick is open to selling its gambling audience to the highest bidder rather than reserving it. Whether Stake answers with an official sponsorship of its own would say much about how seriously the platform’s owners take the encroachment.
