California’s Kick-Stake Case Is Still Alive as a Broader Casino Ban Takes Hold
California’s civil case against Stake.us, streaming platform Kick and a network of related companies has not produced a reported ruling on the merits. The action, filed on August 28, 2025, was still moving through preliminary challenges in mid-2026.
The practical landscape has nevertheless changed. Since the complaint was filed, California has enacted a separate law prohibiting defined dual-currency online sweepstakes games and targeting companies that knowingly support them. The lawsuit still matters because it seeks restitution and civil penalties for alleged past conduct, not merely an end to future operations.
What California’s lawsuit actually alleges
The plaintiff is the People of the State of California, acting through the Los Angeles City Attorney—not the California attorney general. According to the city attorney’s filing announcement, case 25STCV25304 names Sweepsteaks Ltd., which does business as Stake.us, alongside Easygo Group Holdings, Medium Rare, Kick Streaming, founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, verification provider Veriff and numerous game suppliers.
The complaint characterizes Stake.us as an unlicensed online casino presented to consumers as a social or sweepstakes gaming service. Its central theory is that users acquire one form of virtual currency while receiving another that can be played in casino-style games and redeemed for cryptocurrency or digital gift cards. These are allegations that the defendants may contest; the filing itself is not a judicial finding that gambling or false advertising occurred.
The city brought claims under California’s Unfair Competition Law and False Advertising Law. It asks the court for an injunction, restitution for money allegedly lost by Californians, civil penalties and other relief. That distinction is important: the case is a government enforcement action seeking remedies for the public, rather than a private class action in which individual customers have already been certified as a class.
Why a streaming platform is among the defendants
Kick is not accused of operating the Stake.us games directly. The complaint instead treats streaming and promotion as part of the alleged enterprise, asserting that Kick helped expose viewers to Stake gambling content and directed attention toward the casino operation. It also alleges that Easygo wholly owns and controls Kick, placing the streaming company within the broader corporate structure challenged by the city.
This makes the case more consequential for technology intermediaries than a complaint aimed only at a casino operator. The city’s theory potentially reaches businesses that provide distribution, identity checks or game content when their services allegedly make an unlawful operation possible. Whether the evidence and California law support that theory for each defendant remains a question for the court.
The original article’s suggestion that Stake is simply Kick’s parent company is too imprecise. The pleaded relationship runs through several entities and common founders, while Kick and the Stake businesses remain separately named defendants. Corporate affiliation does not by itself establish liability for another company’s conduct.
California later adopted a more explicit prohibition
The legal environment changed after the complaint. Governor Gavin Newsom approved AB 831 on October 11, 2025, and the measure became operative at the start of 2026 under California’s ordinary effective-date rule. The enacted text of AB 831 prohibits online sweepstakes games that use a dual-currency system, simulate gambling and award cash or cash equivalents.
The statute does more than prohibit operators from offering those games. Penal Code Section 337o also covers a financial institution, payment processor, geolocation provider, gaming-content supplier, platform provider or media affiliate that knowingly and willfully supports their operation or promotion. A violation is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $1,000 to $25,000, up to one year in county jail, or both.
The law contains meaningful boundaries. It does not outlaw games that award no cash or cash equivalent, licensed gambling conducted under California law, the state lottery, or limited promotional sweepstakes incidental to genuine sales of ordinary products and services. It is therefore more accurate to describe AB 831 as a prohibition on a defined online sweepstakes-casino model than as a ban on every digital contest or free-to-play casino-themed game.
The case and the new law do different work
AB 831 did not retroactively decide the city’s 2025 allegations. The lawsuit invokes unfair-competition and false-advertising rules that were already in force and asks for remedies tied to conduct alleged before the newer statute took effect. The defendants can still challenge the court’s jurisdiction, the legal sufficiency of the complaint, the claimed relationships among the companies and the underlying characterization of Stake.us.
A June 2026 litigation status review described the case as active, with several defendants pursuing demurrers and motions contesting personal jurisdiction. It reported preliminary hearings scheduled through summer and fall 2026 and no ruling on the merits or settlement at that point.
Those procedural motions are especially relevant because many defendants are foreign companies. A court may have to determine whether supplying games, verification services or promotional infrastructure to a platform accessible in California creates sufficient connections with the state. Resolving that threshold issue would not, by itself, determine whether Stake.us was an illegal casino or whether Kick knowingly assisted unlawful activity.
What the dispute now means for platforms and users
For California users, the newest and clearest rule comes from AB 831: an online service fitting the statute’s dual-currency, simulated-gambling and redeemable-prize definition cannot lawfully be offered in the state. Users should not interpret the existence of free coins, a mail-in entry route or the label “social casino” as a definitive statement about legality; the statute focuses on how the complete system functions.
For streaming services and technology vendors, the key statutory words are knowingly and willfully. California did not impose automatic criminal liability on every general-purpose service that happens to touch prohibited content. The law targets intentional support, while the civil complaint must independently establish the elements of its older unfair-competition and false-advertising claims.
The verified update is therefore a two-part one: California’s case against Kick, Stake.us and other defendants was still unresolved in the latest opened status reporting, but the state no longer relies only on that lawsuit to challenge the business model. Its legislature has since placed an explicit prohibition—and potential intermediary liability—into state law.
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