When Kazakhstan announced that it's Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) was considering introducing criminal penalties for influencers involved with promoting online gambling this week, it would've been easy to shrug it off as an abstract story. However, it's an interesting development on the issues that are repeating themselves worldwide.
Perhaps Brazil is the most famous country for tackling influencer-led prosecutions in the online casino space. CPI das Bets, Fortune Tiger and members of parliament taking selfies with the accused - all of these have created a 'circus' around irresponsible promotions. Argentina was quick to follow, after it became obvious how much power social media stars had in the LatAm region.
WELCOME TO KAZAKHSTAN
And so the latest country to follow this LatAm trend is... Kazakhstan. It's not quite close in a geographical sense, but it is suffering from the same issues when it comes to the promotion of online gambling. Public and media advertisements for online casinos and bookmakers have been banned in the country since 2024, but that has not stopped 34 individuals this year from promoting them on their social media platforms.
Offshore casinos can offer lucrative deals for people who want to promote them, their marketing budget no doubt boosted by the fact that these companies don't pay taxes, and are usually facilitated through affiliate links or bonus codes. Out of the 34 people, 11 of them have already been fined, but the FMA notes that the money received from the casinos likely outweighs the penalty fees.
The GDA in Kazakhstan is currently $288.4bn, compared to $3.64trn for the UK or $18.7trn for neighbouring China. The main industries in the country revolve around uranium, salt and sulphur mining. Kazakhstan is doing well as a developing economy, but it is also easy to see why citizens may accept illegal offers for simply promoting a product online.
FROM INFLUENCED TO INFLUENCER
The latest developments in Kazakhstan may be a case of other countries witnessing how Brazil is struggling to handle the issue with influencers and putting a stop to things before they evolve that far. After all, one of the biggest facets of Brazil was how far social media personalities embedded themselves within the culture before regulators realised they were a problem. By the time authorities became involved, the influencers already had such strong communities that they could promote anything with little to no pushback - even illegal casinos.
Online casinos are rarely involved with the communities they affect, but the people behind the social media accounts promoting them are. While the Brazilian courts offered a spectacle this year, they may have also put international actions into motion. No-one wants a repeat of how events unfolded in the LatAm regions, and sometimes, the best lessons we can learn come from the failures of others.
So far this year, Kazakhstan has taken down 17,000 websites linked to online gambling platforms. The FMA is hoping to open dialogue with domestic payment providers to halt transactions to illicit services and authorities are calling for enforcement to develop alongside the online gambling landscape. GambleAware in the UK has also just completed research into how influencers can affect children, with more than a third of boys aged 16-17 admitting to partaking in gambling after seeing a celebrity or influencer endorsing it. If criminal penalties are introduced for those who wrongly promote these services, it will serve as another building block in the ever-evolving conflict against the harmful side of this industry.
Online casinos are rarely involved with the communities they affect, but the people behind the social media accounts promoting them are
