Ukrainian regulator announces cooperation to tackle unlicensed gambling ads on Kick
PlayCity says it’s working directly with the streaming platform to report and block channels that promote unlicensed gambling in Ukraine.
Ukraine.- The national gambling regulator PlayCity has entered into a new cooperation agreement intended to tackle adverts for unlicensed gambling on social media. Having already reached agreements with TikTok, Meta (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Google (YouTube and Google Search), Twitch and Viber, the regulator says it’s now also working with Kick.
Kick is a live-streaming social platform that’s comparable to Twitch and YouTube Live, but the new agreement is notable for a couple of reasons. Kick Streaming Pty Ltd has backing from Easygo Entertainment Pty, the same group behind gambling brand Stake, which has faced scrutiny over its own advertising practices in some jurisdictions.
While companies like Meta have received some heavy criticism from gambling regulators, Kick has been even more controversial since it itself has a dedicated gambling category that has been criticised for minimal age checks and a large presence of influencers who promote referral codes, affiliate links and gamified incentives to drive engagement. In February, there was criticism after the British influencer The United Strand streamed a West Ham vs Manchester United match on Kick while wearing clothing that featured the Stake logo.
PlayCity says Kick’s cooperation has already led to the blocking of two channels that were promoting unlicensed gambling to a combined 1,200 followers. The regulator noted that such activity had become increasingly common on the platform, but said it is now working directly with Kick to report illegal practices and restrict access to offending pages, channels and materials.
Other regulators will now be watching to see if the cooperation agreement represents a change in direction for the platform that could lead to collaboration in other territories.
Meanwhile, PlayCity also announced that it had obtained blocks on 20 TikTok accounts with a combined following of 473,000, 11 Instagram accounts with 314,000 followers and four Twitch channels with 107,000 followers. The regulator said that to date it has had 785 social media accounts blocked.
Published earlier this month, PlayCity’s first annual report since taking over from the previous authority, KRAIL shows that it issued 250 licences in 2025–26.
