The recent trend of X users attaching the logo of Stake, an international gambling company, on images has left many users of the microblogging platform confused at some point. This trend has generated more popularity for Stake with the curiosity it inhibits in users, leading them to find out about the company, and in the process, create more awareness for them while bypassing X’s community guidelines.
The Stake logo rave on X started around September 2024. Many big influencing accounts on X for Nigerian users would attach the logo on their contents, both videos and images. The consequences of this for the Nigerian audience, especially those trying to break from betting addiction, is a significant discourse that should burden the regulators of the Nigerian betting industry.
Stake is an online betting platform that offers casino games and sports betting. The platform was launched in 2017 as a share trading app.
STAKE’S DEVIOUS ADVERT VIOLATES X RULES
The guidelines concerning the promotion of a product or service are subsumed in the X paid partnership guidelines. According to the X help centre, a paid partnership is defined as “the involvement of a third-party brand providing compensation or incentives to a user, such as an influencer or content creator, to promote their product or service”.
In its list of prohibited paid partnerships, X listed gambling content as one of them.
However, Stake has found a way around this guideline.
Many big football-focused accounts on X are now partnering with Stake and bypassing this regulation.
Stake usually partners with football content accounts with a large following to promote the app. They do this by contracting these accounts to attach the Stake logo on their contents. These adverts look totally unintended or ‘soft’ because of how they are employed.
Although accounts currently partnering with Stake did not respond when FIJ reached out, other findings reveal a few things about the nature of the partnership.
First, a popular football account by the name Neal Gardner posted in December how he rejected an offer the betting platform presented to him to help promote their product.
The inevitable happened… pic.twitter.com/gsKroF3s0r— Neal 🇦🇺 (@NealGardner_) December 11, 2024
Another X account, ErlingRoIe with a relatively large following gave more details about Stake’s dealings with these accounts on X. Like Gardener, the account corroborated that the partnership is a paid one.
Stake are paying people who stick a stake ad in their media £5 every 100K views they get. So this guy made £110 using Pep mourning someone who’s suffering from cancerThe day that company gets hit with a massive lawsuit will be a beautiful day https://t.co/NATCAFKknz— 𝐄𝐑 (@ErlingRoIe) December 16, 2024
The cunning of these inexplicit ads is that they make it hard for X bots to find and flag them down. Community Notes, which are majorly triggered by ‘Readers-added context’, has been the only feature on X combating some of these Stake-tagged posts. But this in itself is to Stake’s advantage.
Community Notes is a feature on X that allows users to collectively add context to a post that is misleading. An example of a reader-added Community Notes alert can be found here.
As the post has been flagged by Community Notes, those who have interacted with the post get a double notification and then users get curious, leading them to find out about Stake, generating more awareness for the gambling company at no cost.
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STAKE HAVE A PRECEDENCE OF NOT WORKING BY GUIDELINES
Stake have shown in the past that they are not a platform to play by the rules.
In 2022, Twitch, an internet live streaming platform, decided to prohibit gambling content from unregulated sites on streams, a ban which also affected Stake.
In response, Eddie Craven, Stake’s co-founder jointly created Kick, a streaming site that functions almost exactly as Twitch. On Kick, gambling is very much allowed and encouraged.
THE ELUSIVE ADVERT HAS EFFECTS ON NIGERIANS, GAMBLING ADDICTS AND EVEN MINORS
The X community guideline pegs the age limit of users at 13.
Although there are measures to protect younger users, Stake’s cunning ads may put them in harm’s way, same for addicts who want to break free from gambling and Nigerians uninterested in gambling.
According to the mere exposure effect in marketing, “individuals show an increased preference (or liking) for a stimulus as a consequence of repeated exposure to that stimulus”. The principle, which is a behavioural principle, states that when people see something repeatedly, they tend to develop a preference for that thing.
The effect of this is that since harmless posts like football or entertainment content also attach these Stake ads, and X fails to tag them as harmful, they would be deemed suitable for consumption by minors using X.
According to Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development, humans between the ages of 12 and 18 form their identities within these teenage years.
The situation is worse for addicts who are struggling to break free from gambling. Since constantly seeing these ads prepares the ground for curiosity, the addiction trigger that is a cause for relapse.
The Stake watermark is not limited to football or sports content on X. They appear in some unrelated media. There is nowhere to hide.
Influential Nigerian X accounts also post Stake’s ads
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THERE IS A HUGE GAP IN REGULATING BETTING IN NIGERIA
In November 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that betting regulations were now in the hands of state governments. This meant that the National Lottery Regulation Commission’s guidelines were void.
Two months before this development, FIJ reported how families, regulators and betting companies allowed underage betting in Ondo communities.
READ MORE: SPECIAL REPORT: How Betting Companies, Regulators, Families Allow Underage Boys Gamble Daily in Ondo Communities
In some Northern states governed by the Sharia law, there was a clampdown on betting. In Kano, for instance, Hisbah, the state’s moral police, announced they would increase efforts to reduce betting shops in the state. They also closed down numerous betting shops, stating that they promoted gambling, which is against sharia law.
Efforts like Kano’s would not work with trying to regulate online betting where the process starts and ends online. Stake is out of Hisbah’s reach.
The post ‘Stake’ Watermark Rave on X Spells Doom for Addicted Gamblers appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.