A gambling website promoting one of Sauber’s title sponsors faces closure in the United Kingdom following an investigation by the Gambling Commission.
Stake, whose name appeared on Sauber’s cars last year at races where gambling adverts are legal, will close its UK website next month.The commission announced Stake.uk.com, which is operated by TGP Europe Limited, will no longer be a licensed website from next month. It said the action had been taken in response to a video promoted on social media platform X featuring a pornographic actress, filmed in the UK, to which Stake’s logos had been added.
“The move follows the launch of a commission investigation into a widely viewed video displaying the Stake-branded logo, which was distributed on a social media platform and featured an adult actress outside Nottingham Trent University,” said the commission in a statement.
“TGP has previously been the subject of enforcement action and after a meeting with the commission have stated they will immediately stop accepting new registrations to the Stake.uk.com platform and remove redirection links from the main Stake website,” the commission stated. “Final shutdown of the Great Britain site will take place by 11 March 2025.”
The commission said it will contact the Premier League football team Everton, which is also sponsored by Stake, and other clubs with unlicensed sponsors, to warn them over “the risks of promoting unlawful gambling websites.”
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“Clubs will be asked to demonstrate that they have assurance that any steps to geo-block the sites are effective, recognising that some blocking can be easily bypassed by use of tools such as a virtual private network,” the commission added.
“The letter will warn that club officers may be liable to prosecution and, if convicted, face a fine, imprisonment or both if they promote unlicensed gambling businesses that transact with consumers in Great Britain.”
Sauber’s team is based in Switzerland but the decision may have implications for its activities in the UK, where it also intends to open a new engineering hub later this year.
The team entered this season under the official name ‘Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber’, as it did last year. During 2024 it appeared without Stake branding at five rounds – in Australia, Spain, Belgium, Qatar and Abu Dhabi – due to local advertising restrictions. It is due to present its new livery for the 2025 season in London next week and participate in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July.
Sauber will rebrand as Audi’s works Formula 1 entry next year. The team has been approached for comment.
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The Stake video, which appeared in December, prompted a complaint by the Coalition to End Gambling Ads to culture secretary Lisa Nandy last month. Gambling Commission data highlighted by CEGA claims as many as 1.3 million people in the UK could have a problem with gambling and a million more may “experience severe negative consequences from someone else’s gambling.”
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Neil (@neilosjames)
12th February 2025, 23:14
Audi will be pleased.
On a personal note, I hope this means the insufferable recent trend of content thieves republishing popular videos with Stake logos shoved on them might start to ease off a little. Given this sounds like the work of some unsupervised, commission-seeking ‘partner’, likely being paid a few fractions of a penny per impression, whacking the Stake logo onto anything and everything they can find in the hope of some lovely clicks, with zero oversight from the company that’s paying them to do it.
BasCB (@bascb)
13th February 2025, 7:06
So, the issue was with Stake (or someone paid by them) using an existing video, putting their own logos on it and using that as promotion?
What is it with dodgy companies promoting their BS through F1 (I saw a mention of cashgrab, sorry Cashapp facing huge fines for conning consumers in the USA).
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
13th February 2025, 8:00
It’s been an issue for most of the history of F1 non-trade sponsorship – the large amounts of money involved initially made it attractive to any large company wanting to launder money.
In extreme cases, the dodgy company was able to (barely) be a F1 team: Andrea Moda in 1992 was a case in point, as its demise was partly through its boss, Andrea Sassetti, being arrested for forging invoices for Andrea Moda the wider company (possibly also in the F1 team). Say what you want about the FIA and Liberty’s checks and balances, but one consequence is that this will almost certainly never happen again.
The rise of due diligence increased in the 1980s-2000ss, which is why the crime moved from “part of an organised criminal system” to “the sort of crimes a company can pull off by itself”.
Neil (@neilosjames)
13th February 2025, 12:13
Yes, pretty much. Not the company itself, but Stake has countless freelance ‘affiliates’ or whatever they call them, whose only purpose is to steal popular videos and republish them with Stake logos on them. Bad enough just for the content theft, but the affiliates also (unsurprisingly) appear to have zero understanding or respect for the strict gambling advertising laws most countries have.
Very dodgy, as you said. I’m sure Stake knew exactly what their ‘partners’ were up to.
MarkWebber (@markwebber)
12th February 2025, 23:54
First they came for the tobacco advertising, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a smoker.
El Pollo Loco
13th February 2025, 0:32
Online gambling sites are even more predatory and damaging. It often takes a few weeks rather than 3+ decades to ruin people’s lives and don’t even provide the benefit of jobs or tax revenue. But I’m assuming you were being facetious.
BasCB (@bascb)
13th February 2025, 7:09
Yeah, my wife just had a student return after 2 years (she teaches languages to mostly adults) who had his wife first run away from him and then got evicted (as well as his parents in law) because the wife turned out to have become a gambling addict and gambled away their bank savings and house.
I also know of people here being forced into stealing from their employers (automotive parts and electronics) to “pay off” gambling debts (under threats of their family being harmed as alternative).
Really nasty stuff.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
15th February 2025, 8:07
It’s the start of a famous poem that Mark Webber was referencing. Nothing facetious about it
Clay (@clayt)
13th February 2025, 1:12
heh…
I grew up with Winston Cup NASCAR and The Camel GT Challenge IMSA and never made the connection that they were promoting cigarettes.
And my mom smoked Winstons!
El Pollo Loco
13th February 2025, 11:44
It was worth it for the cool liveries alone.
SteveP
13th February 2025, 21:03
Couldn’t afford to buy her own ? :)
El Pollo Loco
13th February 2025, 22:42
Poor Winston. Always wondering where all his smokes went.
MichaelN
13th February 2025, 0:47
Between Kick and Stake these guys are really scraping the barrel.
Sad to see how Sauber has ended up like this. They used to be a pretty decent midfield team.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
16th February 2025, 6:10
easy money has a way of attracting mediocre talent.
Terrion (@terrion)
13th February 2025, 4:37
Ok, understandable. Now does anyone have a link for the ad?
someone or something
13th February 2025, 10:35
“Understandable” is not the first word that comes to my mind, if I’m honest. In fact, I do not understand it at all.
All I see are some spicy terms (“adult actress”, “gambling”), but no explicit logical connection to the seemingly drastic consequence (closing the website, effectively ceasing operations, etc.). Yet, no one in the comments seems surprised.
I feel like I am missing a boatload of cultural context to even begin understanding what happened.
According to my research, there wasn’t even any adult content in the video, just the woman in question alluding to her line of work and uhm talking about the connection of the filming location to said work. None of which sounds overly Safe For (most people’s) Work, but also not even remotely against the laws (?)
And also, someone slapped a Stake logo on the video. Which is an infraction against gambling advertisement regulations (?)
That’s the one aspect that makes any kind of sanction plausible to me. Over here that’d be a fine of a few hundred thousand euros, if there’s a plausible connection between the logo on the video and the company in question itself.
Still a bit odd, because gambling is a big no-no over here on the continent, so advertising had its wings clipped quite severely. You barely see any such ads on TV. On the contrary, one of the more salient aspects of UK television is how much of a thing gambling seems to be, and how you get flooded, by comparison, with such ads.
So is that what it’s about at its core? It’s a rampant problem, there are regulations, but they’re laughably ineffective, but in this case a company went too far and therefore is punished draconically? Still odd, but I guess that’d make sense somehow.
But I don’t really see the relevance of that lady’s chosen profession. Especially seeing as there seem to have been many more videos with the logo slapped onto them.
So I really, really need a cultural translator here.
SteveP
13th February 2025, 21:07
Possibly a consequence of the impending “Online Safety Act 2023”
Coventry Climax
13th February 2025, 8:47
With child labour prohibited, aren’t all actresses adult actresses? ;-)
Bob C.
13th February 2025, 8:52
I really shouldn’t be laughing at this, and yet, I did :-) Loudly, too.
Denis (@denis1304)
13th February 2025, 12:07
I don’t understand, is it illegal for a pornstar to be in a commercial?
Denis (@denis1304)
13th February 2025, 12:08
I don’t understand, is it illegal for a pron star to be in a commercial?
Maciek (@maciek)
13th February 2025, 19:09
So misguidedly hilarious: gambling advertising should be banned outright for selling an insidiously destructive addiction. But no, let’s instead clutch pearls at a sex worker.
El Pollo Loco
13th February 2025, 22:43
The Brits have always enjoyed clutching pearls.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
14th February 2025, 16:13
And those on the Gambling Commission knew she was a porn star how? Did they list all of her film credits off the tops of their heads or just list the porn categories were in?
I can see them sitting in front of their computers says this is awful and immoral but we do need to thoroughly research it all.