Correspondence betting: how much do stars earn from advertising illegal casinos
Russian streamers and bloggers earn up to 30 billion rubles a year from advertising illegal casinos, Izvestia found out. And the payment for one broadcast reaches $ 3 million. The illegal gambling industry can afford it: its annual turnover is estimated from 1.2 to 4 trillion rubles, and revenue is at least 400 billion. Streamers and bloggers are attracted to advertising in order to attract the attention of young people, because almost half of the players in Russia are under 30 years old. Their infatuation often turns into ludomania and leads to tragedies — the latest case in Ulyanovsk caused a resonance, where the head of the family, who lost 500 thousand, killed his wife and two young children. Who of the Internet celebrities earns money by promoting gambling, and how the state intends to deal with it, is in the Izvestia article.
Internet stars' income from online casino advertising
The intrusive advertising of illegal casinos and bookmakers is abundant on video hosting and streaming platforms like Tiktok, Twitch, YouTube, and even more so on Kick hosting, which was created by one of the popular online casinos specifically to distribute advertising through bloggers.
There are many such advertisements, including on video hosting sites with pirated films. For example, in the form of disclaimer films integrated into the picture, since casino-sponsored studios are engaged in dubbing these films.
Estimates of the illegal casino market vary. At the Gambling: Sports Contributions forum, which was held in Moscow in September 2025, the president of the International Boxing Federation (IBA), Umar Kremlev, said that their turnover (the amount for which the total number of bets was made) reaches 4 trillion rubles. The estimates of the Federal Tax Service for the past year are more modest: the agency noted that the turnover of authorized betting companies in Russia amounted to almost 1.8 trillion rubles, and the share of the illegal market is 35-40% of it (i.e. estimates it at 630-720 billion). And according to a study by Rating Bookmakers, the turnover of the illegal gambling market in 2024 amounted to about 1.2 trillion rubles, with revenue of just under 400 billion rubles.
Of this amount, the part that is spent per year on advertising online casinos through bloggers can be allocated based on open data from such popular iGaming resources as UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal, Flutter Entertainment reports and others.
With an annual revenue of 400 billion rubles (we took it as an average estimate), 30% of this amount should be allocated — this is the share that usually goes to marketing from casino revenue. Of the 120 billion rubles received, the share of bloggers can reach 25%, according to gambling resources. This means that influencers can receive up to 30 billion rubles a year for promoting online casinos.
The most popular stream
The most popular online broadcast in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet for the entire time of its existence was the broadcast of the controversial streamer Melstroy on March 20, 2024, according to the Stream Charts statistics service. His guest that day was musician Alisher Morgenstern (listed as a foreign agent by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation).
The stream lasted almost four hours, attracting up to 720,000 viewers at a time. Its participants, among other things, played in online casinos. According to Melstroi, his customers paid him $3 million for this, of which he gave $ 1 million to Morgenstern.
In April 2024, the streamer showed the personal account of one of his partner programs — it turned out that during that stream, users made deposits of more than $12 million using his referral link.
Because of his scandalous videos and streams, Melstroy has become persona non grata on almost all online platforms. As a result, he settled on Kick and became its Russian ambassador. The second one for a while was the singer Egor Creed.
From Creed to Razor
In September 2025, there was a loud altercation on the Internet between Egor Creed and Ekaterina Mizulina, head of the League for Safe Internet NGO. After the singer's concert in Luzhniki, where he behaved frivolously on stage, Mizulina condemned him, calling the action a "sexualized show." She also reminded Creed of the illegal casino ads he had done in the past. She linked one of these casinos to Ukraine.
Egor Creed
Egor Creed does not advertise illegal casinos now, and since August 2025 he has become the "face" of one of the legal Russian bookmakers. This transition is an attempt to "whitewash" the advertising portfolio, Izvestia's interlocutors noted. The singer actively streamed illegal casinos on various platforms in the 2022-2024s.
Of the media characters who advertised online casinos, we can recall the already mentioned Morgenstern. At the end of 2023, he signed an annual contract with an illegal bookmaker for $5.5 million.
In 2023, Ekaterina Mizulina published a list of streamers from the ru segment involved in online casino advertising. It eventually grew to 76 people. Among them, for example, the millionaire blogger Askhab Tamayev. He has 4.83 million subscribers on YouTube. He also owns a network of Telegram channels (the largest with 776,000 subscribers), where he actively promotes the idea that casinos can be deceived. The blogger shares referral links, organizes contests, and also gives out tips on "making money" through gambling. Usually, such bloggers receive deductions from the amount of losses of players who joined the casino through their referral link. With thousands of customers, it is highly likely that we are talking about tens of millions of rubles.
There are also "one—night stands" among the bloggers - for example, Vitus Razor, who exclusively plays casino games on one of their online platforms. All the streamer's activities are related to the promotion of gambling sites, and he himself distributes promo codes and other "bonuses" from them in every possible way.
Most of these characters live outside of Russia, but broadcast their content to a Russian-speaking audience.
Almost no one gives exact figures, but as follows from the statements of the bloggers themselves, on average streamers on popular platforms earn at least 4-5 million rubles per month on contracts from legal bookmakers (this figure was announced by streamer Shapka in September 2025 in a joint broadcast with Uzya, T2X2 and Stint on YouTube). And musician and streamer Danila Kashin said that he refused a contract for 500 million rubles per year offered to him by a licensed bookmaker. Obviously, illegal offices that are not burdened with the need to pay taxes can offer better conditions.
In total, about a hundred Russian-speaking streamers related to gambling are currently active. The largest is Evelon, originally from Ukraine, who now lives in Europe. At the end of 2024, he was the second most paid Twitch subscriber in the world. In 2021, he stated that he would not be involved in advertising gambling and estimated his potential earnings from this activity at 40 million rubles per month. However, in the end, it was online casino advertising that became his main income, which also follows from the analysis of his activity.
Izvestia has sent requests for comment to Egor Creed and Danila Kashin. No responses had been received at the time of publication.
The mechanics of making money from advertising
Streamers have several main ways to monetize their traffic through working with casinos. The first is a referral link (RevShare), the distributors of which receive income from those who have signed up for it and started playing at the casino. A streamer can make such a profit from people's losses for years, but payments on it can be delayed, bloggers say. The second is CPA marketing (Cost per action or cost per action), when a streamer receives a reward from the casino for every click, click, user registration, and so on. There is also a mixed payment option for RevShare+CPA.
The third method is one—time fixed fees for streaming. Casinos and bookmakers have extensive partner networks through which they attract content creators to cooperate.
— Earnings can amount to 400-500 million rubles for one advertising campaign (advertising with one referral link), — according to the League of Safe Internet. — All this is shadow income, taxes from which are not paid, payment for services is mainly in cryptocurrency.
Everyone is playing
The problem of ludomania, a pathological gambling addiction, is closely related to the existence of online casinos. According to Andrey Khodynkov, executive director of the Center for Combating Ludomania, the main audience of streamers advertising illegal casinos is minors.
— According to scientists, the psyche is still being formed before the age of 21. Roughly speaking, such advertising hits our children, who cannot take it critically and form a wrong attitude towards gambling entertainment since childhood," he says.
A study presented at the Gambling: Sports Deductions forum states that there are twice as many gambling addicts (problem gamblers) in Russia than the global average of 12%. There was also a portrait of a ludoman in Russia, a man between 25 and 44 years old. And according to TSUPIS (the center through which all payments from legal bookmakers and sweepstakes pass by law) for 2024, 43% of all gamblers in Russia are young people under the age of 30.
Suicide rates are higher among ludomaniacs and suicidal thoughts are common in general, almost all of them have concomitant psychological disorders. Sometimes gambling addiction ruins not only the player himself. It is enough to recall the last high-profile case when a resident of Ulyanovsk, who lost 500 thousand rubles in an online casino, killed his wife and two young children. He allegedly did not want his family to pay off the debts he had accumulated due to addiction.
Regulatory issues
There are two key frameworks in Russia: the law on state regulation of gambling and the law on advertising. Their general meaning is simple: online casinos are prohibited in Russia, therefore, their advertising is illegal in any form and on any platform, explained Dmitry Krasnov, Honorary Lawyer of Russia, Chairman of the Board of the Moscow Bar Association No. 1.
— The exception is land—based casinos in special gambling zones, but their promotion is also severely limited by location, time and format. You can legally advertise only Russian licensed bookmakers and sweepstakes and only if the following conditions are met: a valid license, work through a single online betting regulator, mark "advertising", age limit 18+, indication of a legal entity and license, absence of promises of "easy money" and "guaranteed winnings", a ban on targeting and showing to minors"placement outside of children's and educational content," Krasnov said.
He added that such advertising on the Internet is additionally subject to labeling and registration in the Unified Register of Online Advertising (ERIR) through advertising data operators.
According to the lawyer, there are formally sanctions: fines under the Administrative Code for violating advertising requirements, for hidden advertising and for promoting prohibited activities, plus blocking links and domains by Roskomnadzor. In practice, they are not comparable to bloggers' fees, which is why the preventive effect is weak. The organizers of illegal gambling are usually brought to criminal responsibility, and not those who advertise it, which also reduces the risks for media persons, he stressed.
— Industry reviews, critical reviews, and news articles about the gambling market without appeals, promo codes, and links are not advertising in themselves. But add a "call to action," a bonus, or a referral link, and the material turns into an advertisement with all the consequences. For public figures, the safe strategy is simple: cooperate only with Russian licensed bookmakers, strictly comply with labeling requirements and audience restrictions," the lawyer concludes.
In August of this year, the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Youth Policy, Artyom Metelev, announced the imminent introduction of a bill to impose fines for online casino advertising in the amount of up to 500 thousand rubles for individuals and up to 7 million rubles for legal entities.
— The illegal gambling business today amounts to about 450 billion rubles a year, which are disappearing into the shadows. The organizers are located abroad, it's not that easy to get to them. At the same time, in Russia, bloggers and various Telegram channels are massively luring young people into a trap, receiving millions for advertising. The fine for them now is only 2.5 thousand rubles, and that is not always the case," said the deputy.
According to Izvestia's interlocutors, fines of 500 thousand rubles may not be an obstacle for those who earn millions per stream, however, this may discourage small streamers with modest fees from wanting to advertise slots.
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