Stake Turns to Regulated Markets as Latin America Takes Priority

Stake, the crypto-native casino and sportsbook that many Southeast Asian players first met through USDT and Bitcoin payments, says regulated licences will drive its next phase of growth, with Latin America at the front of the queue. Readers who follow how crypto brands are licensed and paid can find our wider coverage in the crypto casino hub. The details below come from an iGaming Business feature by Kyle Goldsmith, published on 12 November 2026.

Two new licences in 2026

According to the report, Stake received licences this year to operate in Mexico and in the Argentine Province of Buenos Aires. iGaming Business says those launches take the brand to five regulated Latin American markets, and it describes Stake as building momentum in Colombia and Peru. The article does not set out the full list of five or confirm the licence status in each of those two countries, so that point remains unclear from the public reporting.

Brazil, the largest regulated market in the region, is the open question. iGaming Business describes Brazil’s licensed sector as being in limbo after a ban introduced in late September, and says Stake’s position there is uncertain.

What Stake executives say

Jarrod Febbraio, a Stake director since November 2025, told the publication that regulated expansion will be central to the company’s next growth phase and that Latin America has to be treated country by country rather than as one block. He acknowledged higher operating costs and tighter advertising rules as headwinds that come with licensing, and said the company intends to stay selective about where it applies.

Febbraio also said Stake wants to keep the fast payouts and quick verification its customers associate with the brand, even inside regulated frameworks that usually require stricter identity checks. Akhil Sarin, Stake’s chief marketing officer, said the global brand has to be executed locally so that it fits each market’s advertising rules.

A brand built on streaming and crypto

The feature traces Stake back to 2017 and to a crypto-first model that grew alongside heavy sponsorship and streaming exposure. It cites a March 2026 report from Hatchet which found Stake appeared in 6,600 stream titles on Twitch and Kick in January 2026, more than three times the 1,800 recorded for second-placed 1xBet, and that Stake accounted for 60% of iGaming brand mentions in that dataset.

That marketing footprint is the reason regulators pay attention. The iGaming Business piece notes that Stake stopped serving the UK in February 2025 while the UK Gambling Commission was investigating a social media video, and that Nigeria’s Federation of State Gaming Regulators declared Stake an illegal operator in 2026. Neither episode is a finding of wrongdoing in Latin America, but both show why a licensed footprint matters to the company now.

Why this matters for players in Southeast Asia

None of the licences named in the report cover Southeast Asia. Online casino play remains prohibited for residents in Malaysia and Thailand, and in Singapore the only legal online betting runs through exempt operators such as Singapore Pools. Players in the region who see Stake on streams or sponsorship boards are still looking at an offshore brand from a local legal point of view.

The wider trend is still worth watching. When large crypto operators chase licences, they usually accept full know-your-customer checks, deposit limits, advertising codes and complaint routes that offshore sites do not offer. The trade-off Febbraio describes, keeping crypto-speed payments while meeting those rules, is the same tension we covered in our guide to USDT vs Bitcoin casino deposits. A licence in Mexico or Buenos Aires does not change the legal position of a player in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore or Bangkok.

What to watch next

Three things will show how far the strategy goes: whether Stake confirms licence status in Colombia and Peru, how it handles Brazil once the regulated sector settles, and whether the same licence-first approach spreads to other regions where it currently trades on an offshore basis. iGaming Business presents the Latin American push as the template; the company has not published a timeline for markets outside the region.

Would a licensed crypto casino in your own country change how you play, or do fast crypto payouts matter more to you than local regulation?

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