Ukraine’s regulator, PlayCity, has taken a new approach to addressing illegal gambling on the controversial streaming platform Kick.
PlayCity confirmed that it has begun to collaborate directly with the streaming platform to report channels illegally advertising gambling, leading to two channels being blocked in the last week.
The move also expands PlayCity’s relationship with social media platforms, having fostered similar relationships with TikTok, YouTube, Meta, Twitch and Google, which allows the regulator to directly report issues to these companies.
According to the regulator, access to 785 profiles on social media and streaming platforms has been blocked since it began its campaign after it was established as Ukraine’s new gambling regulator last year.
“This format of communication is an effective tool for quickly stopping violations and attracting users to gambling through illegal advertising campaigns,” said PlayCity.
What’s the issue with Kick?
Kick has been a particularly tricky thorn in the side of stakeholders seeking to curtail the promotion of the black market.
The platform is owned by Easygo Entertainment – the same company that founded Stake – and was formed as a competitor to Twitch when the latter updated its policy to prohibit the promotion of unlicensed operators.
However, since then, both of Easygo’s companies have received significant criticism.
Most recently, research shared by Entain name-checked Stake as being one of 30 different unregulated gambling websites with UK-facing promotional activity, alongside other names that will be familiar to social media users such as Rainbet and Duelbits.
Meanwhile, Entain described Kick as a ‘central hub of the illegal gambling influencer ecosystem’ through hosting a dedicated gambling category with minimal age verification and ‘acting as a launchpad’ for content to be shared across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
Kick and Stake’s branding have racked up billions of views on social media through the process of ‘clipping’ – where editors take small sections of longer streams and share them on social media.
As a result, both platforms have significantly grown their visibility to a primarily younger audience.
Bejay Patel, Managing Director of UK and Ireland at Entain, said: “This research is a wake-up call to government, regulators and law enforcement agencies that illegal gambling promotion is not operating at the fringes but is now operating at scale in the UK.
“It also raises serious questions about whether regulators and enforcement agencies have the powers and resources needed to tackle the highly coordinated illegal gambling promotion effectively, particularly across global social media platforms.”
Will this approach bear fruit?
Regulators in jurisdictions such as the UK and the Netherlands have focused on how they can bring tech giants like Meta to the table to collaborate more closely on removing unlicensed gambling advertisements.
However, by PlayCity choosing to go directly to Kick to form a relationship with the site, it may provide a useful new avenue for the regulator to make a meaningful contribution to changing how the platform deals with the promotion of illegal gambling content.
Reflecting on its first year as Ukraine’s new gaming regulator, PlayCity emphasised the need for ‘a systematic approach to work with legal businesses’, as well as constant pressure on the illegal sector.
PlayCity noted that it has blocked over 4,100 illegal gambling sites since June 2025 and has established a section of its website for consumers to report illegal gambling advertising.
