Billionaire-backed Stake.com to take horse racing bets after deal with Racing and Sports Technology

Young billionaire Edward Craven’s huge cryptocurrency betting business will start taking racing bets using technology from Canberra-based ASX-listed firm RAS.

Crypto billionaires Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani have struck a deal with ASX-listed RAS.

Stake.com, the world’s largest gambling company by volume and led by young Australian billionaire Edward Craven, has struck a deal with a small ASX-listed firm to use its technology to launch a horse racing betting service.

Racing and Sports (RAS) Technology Holdings announced a contract it said “has the potential to be RAS’s most significant to date” with Stake, which will launch its horse racing offering around the world by the end of March.

The news pushed RAS’s share price on the ASX up 14 per cent on Monday to a 12-month high of $1.07, giving the Canberra-based business a market capitalisation of about $49m.

Stake.com is an online cryptocurrency gambling company that is banned in regulated markets like Australia but is thriving around the world, claiming to have taken more than 200 billion bets on its platform since launching in 2017 – including more than 100 million on its sports book.

RAS will provide racing data and contact, a trading managing platform, risk management services and customer and generosity management tools that will be integrated into Stake’s existing online wagering platform.

Stake will pay RAS a percentage of the net gaming revenue generated by bets it will take on racing for two years, with the contract also including a further one-year renewal period.

The RAS deal is the second move Stake has made with a small or mid cap ASX-listed stock, having reportedly taken a strategic 4.2 per cent shareholding in corporate bookmaker Pointsbet late last year.

RAS chief executive Stephen Crispe said his company was “thrilled to embark on this exciting journey with Stake.com, the highest volume betting platform globally” and that the deal “further positions Racing and Sports as the go-to provider for industry leading and fully integrated racing and wagering solutions on a global scale”.

Stake is domiciled in Curacao but its current global business is run out of Melbourne, but locals cannot legally play any of Stake.com’s casino games or bet on sport given customers wager with cryptocurrency. Stake has strong ties with the Melbourne-based Easygo Solutions business run by 27-year-old Craven and his fellow co-founder Bijan Tehrani, an American citizen.

Craven and Tehrani have also applied for a local legal betting licence in Australia via wagering authorities in the Northern Territory.

Canadian hip-hop superstar Drake has a lucrative endorsement deal with Stake, and it also sponsors English soccer club Everton and the Sauber formula one racing team, alongside Craven and Tehrani’s successful new global streaming business Kick.

Originally published as Billionaire-backed Stake.com to take horse racing bets after deal with Racing and Sports Technology