Stake.com duo Edward Craven and Bijan Tehrani register Australian companies ahead of potential local betting move

The world’s biggest cryptocurrency casino is banned in Australia but its local owners could be planning to launch a legal betting firm to compete with the likes of Sportsbet and Tabcorp.

Stake.com founders Edward Craven and Bijan Tehrani could launch an Australian betting company. Picture: Julian Kingma

Australia’s youngest billionaire Edward Craven and his business partner have quietly registered the first local Australian companies and trademarks for their huge Stake global gambling brand, a move that could pave the way to an eventual launch of their own legal betting firm.

Craven, 27, and American-born Bijan Tehrani head the huge cryptocurrency gambling casino website Stake.com, which takes an average $US400m ($585m) each day via its online casino and global sports betting business.

The pair are based in Melbourne though Stake.com is domiciled in Curacao, with gambling in cryptocurrency and via online casinos banned in Australia.

But Craven and Tehrani have in recent weeks registered a company called Stake Gaming Pty Ltd with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the first time the duo have made a move to use their Stake brand locally.

Stake founders Ed Craven, left, and Bijan Tehrani. Picture: Julian Kingma

Stake Gaming is jointly owned by Tehrani and a company ultimately owned by Craven, who made headlines last year when he bought two Toorak mansions in Melbourne for almost $40m and then about $80m.

There has also been an application recently lodged with IP Australia to trademark “Stake Gaming” by a company domiciled in Cyprus that has been publicly connected to Craven.

Tehrani signalled the Stake duo’s intention to enter the legal Australian gambling market, likely as a regulated online corporate bookmaker competing with the likes of Sportsbet, Ladbrokes and Tabcorp, in an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian Magazine late last year.

“We’re applying for [an Aust­ralian licence] now … and hopefully will get it in a year,” Tehrani said.

“It will only be sports betting. I think long-term it makes sense; we live here. It’s super competitive but I think it’s 100 times more competitive on the internet [worldwide] … The challenge is operating on low margins. But Ed and I are pretty confident that whatever market we go into, we can make an impact.”

Stake sponsors English Premier League team Everton. Picture: Getty Images

A spokesman for Stake would not comment when approached by The Australian for comment about the recent company and trademark registration moves.

While it is not illegal for the company to be run out of Australia, locals cannot legally play any of Stake.com’s games. Stake has strong ties with the Melbourne-based Easygo Solutions business run by Craven and Tehrani.

Stake has grown remarkably quickly since the duo launched the business in 2017, after they had met as teenagers on the RuneScape gaming platform.

Craven and Tehrani claim Stake accounts for about seven per cent of total bitcoin transactions around the world daily.

“People have been trying to find the killer application for cryptocurrency,” Mr Tehrani said in the October interview. “Well, it’s gambling.”

Stake is a naming sponsor of the Alfa Romeo Formula One team. Picture: Getty Images

Stake sponsors Everton in the English Premier League soccer competition and is a naming sponsor of the Alfa Romeo formula one racing team, and Canadian hip-hop superstar Drake also has a lucrative endorsement deal with Stake and promotes its products via his social media accounts.

Drake has also previously been a prominent part of Stake’s live casino gambling broadcasts via worldwide streaming services such as Twitch.

Craven and Tehrani’s business appeared to suffer a blow when Twitch banned the streaming of live gambling on its platform late last year.

But Craven and Tehrani adroitly launched their own global streaming service called Kick, which has grown quickly and offers content creators a 95/5 per cent revenue split in a move that undercuts existing streamers.

In an April post on Medium, Craven said it had taken Kick only 69 days to gain 1 million users. Craven himself hosts a weekly stream on Kick and the business also sponsors the Alfa Romeo F1 team.