You’ve seen the logo on UFC fight shorts, plastered across the sides of Formula 1 cars, and maybe even heard Drake shouting it out on stream. Stake is everywhere. But when you go to deposit your money, a reasonable question pops into your head: who is actually running this show? Unlike DraftKings or FanDuel, which are publicly traded companies with quarterly earnings reports you can skim through, Stake operates a bit differently. If you’re looking for a ticker symbol to research, you won’t find one. The answer involves a mix of tech entrepreneurs, crypto pioneers, and a corporate structure that spans from Australia to the Caribbean.
Stake is the brainchild of Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani. These two aren’t your typical corporate suits often associated with gambling giants. They belong to a younger generation of tech founders who grew up on internet culture and cryptocurrency. Before Stake became a household name, the duo founded Primedice, a popular cryptocurrency dice game that launched back in 2016. That initial success gave them the capital and the user base to expand into a full-fledged casino operation.
Ed Craven often serves as the public face of the company’s direction, while Tehrani focuses heavily on the technical and community aspects. What sets them apart from traditional casino owners is their transparency regarding their history. They didn’t start with a background in brick-and-mortar resorts; they started with code, blockchain, and a deep understanding of what crypto degens wanted. This origin story is exactly why Stake feels so different from a site like BetMGM or Caesars—it was built by internet natives for internet natives, not adapted from a legacy business model.
If you scroll to the bottom of the Stake homepage, you won't see a US corporation listed. Instead, you’ll see 'Medium Rare NV.' This is the operating company that manages the day-to-day business of the casino. Medium Rare NV is registered in Curaçao, a small island nation in the Caribbean that has been a hub for online gambling licensing for decades. Holding a license here is standard practice for crypto-forward casinos, allowing them to operate legally in various international markets.
Why does this matter to you? Because the corporate entity holding the license dictates who is responsible for your funds and the fairness of the games. While Curacao licenses historically had a reputation for being 'lighter' on regulation than the UK Gambling Commission or the NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement, companies like Stake have pushed for higher standards to maintain their massive global reputation. They use the Curacao framework to facilitate the crypto transactions that are central to their business model—something that is still incredibly difficult to do under strict US state licensing.
Here is where things get confusing for American players. If you try to access the main Stake.com site from New York or California, you’re going to hit a wall. That’s because Stake.com does not accept players from the United States due to federal and state gambling laws. Instead, US players are redirected to Stake.us, which is an entirely different legal entity operating under sweepstakes laws.
Stake.us is owned and operated by Sweepcoins Limited, not Medium Rare NV. While the branding is identical and the games feel the same, the corporate structure is designed to comply with US sweepstakes regulations. This allows them to operate legally in most states without a traditional gambling license. So, if you are playing from the US, the answer to 'who owns Stake' is technically Sweepcoins Limited, though the intellectual property and brand direction remain tightly linked to the original founders, Craven and Tehrani. It’s a clever workaround that lets them tap into the US market without breaking the strict gambling laws that govern sites like FanDuel or DraftKings.
Ownership isn’t just about who signed the incorporation papers; it’s also about the capital and partnerships that keep the lights on. Stake has aggressively pursued high-profile sponsorships to cement its legitimacy. You’ve likely seen the Stake logo on the Everton Football Club jerseys or splashed across UFC octagons. In 2022, they inked a massive deal with Alfa Romeo F1 Team (now Kick Sauber), further solidifying their financial muscle.
These aren’t cheap marketing stunts; they signal a company with significant revenue flow and investor confidence. Drake’s partnership is perhaps the most famous—live streaming his slots sessions to millions. While these partnerships don't change the ownership structure, they serve as a public audit of the company's financial health. You don’t get a front-wing sponsorship in Formula 1 if you can’t pay the bills. It indicates that the owners have built a sustainable business model, primarily fueled by high-volume crypto wagering that traditional banks might shy away from.
When you play at a publicly traded company, you have a layer of protection via shareholders and regulatory bodies that demand transparency. With a privately owned entity like Stake, your trust is placed in the owners' reputation and the provably fair algorithms they employ. Because Craven and Tehrani built their reputation in the crypto space—where trust is currency—they lean heavily on 'Provably Fair' technology. This allows you to verify the outcome of every dice roll or spin to ensure the house didn't tamper with the result.
This is a distinct advantage of the ownership model. Traditional casino owners often rely on third-party auditors like eCOGRA, which can feel like a black box to the player. The Stake ownership model encourages a 'trustless' verification system, which appeals to the crypto-savvy demographic they target. However, because they are private, if a dispute arises that escalates beyond their customer support, you don’t have a shareholder meeting to complain at. You are relying on their willingness to preserve their brand image—a motivation that, so far, has kept them paying out big winners without issue.
To understand the Stake ownership model better, it helps to compare it to the entities US players might be more used to. The contrast is stark: one is built on crypto anonymity and private ownership, while the others are built on Wall Street capital and heavy regulation.
| Feature | Stake (International) | DraftKings Casino | BetMGM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership Type | Private (Craven & Tehrani) | Publicly Traded (NASDAQ: DKNG) | Joint Venture (MGM Resorts & Entain) |
| Licensing | Curaçao (Medium Rare NV) | State-specific (NJ, PA, MI, etc.) | State-specific & UKGC |
| Primary Currency | Crypto (BTC, ETH, LTC) | FIAT (USD via Visa, PayPal, Venmo) | FIAT (USD via Visa, PayPal, Bank) |
| Target Market | Global (excludes US on main site) | USA exclusively | USA & UK |
Stake is a legitimate business operating under a Curaçao gaming license. It has paid out billions in winnings to players worldwide. The company is privately owned by Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, and its legitimacy is further backed by major sponsorships with the UFC, Formula 1, and Everton FC.
You cannot play on Stake.com (the global crypto casino) from the US. However, you can play on Stake.us, which is a separate sweepstakes site owned by Sweepcoins Limited. It operates legally in most US states using virtual currencies (Gold Coins and Stake Cash) rather than direct crypto gambling.
Co-founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani are the owners. Ed Craven has been recognized as one of Australia's youngest billionaires due to the massive valuation of the Stake brand. They started with a crypto dice site called Primedice before launching the full casino platform.
No, Drake does not own Stake. He has a lucrative sponsorship partnership with the brand where he streams his gambling sessions on the platform. The ownership remains entirely with the founding duo of Craven and Tehrani.
While the operating entity Medium Rare NV is registered in Curaçao for licensing purposes, the company has significant operations in Melbourne, Australia, where co-founder Ed Craven is based. The nature of crypto casinos allows them to operate with a distributed team and a Caribbean license.