Is Stake legal in Malaysia?

The answer in plain words

Stake is not legal to use from Malaysia. Malaysia licenses no online casino, and the Court of Appeal held in October 2023 that online gambling is an offence in Peninsular Malaysia under the Common Gaming Houses Act 1953 [5]. No foreign licence, active or not, changes that.

Stake is one of the most visible gambling brands online, and many Malaysians will have seen its name. Its licence record is less settled than that visibility suggests. Its Curaçao licence is not listed as plainly active, and it has already left one major market, the UK, after the company behind its UK site came under regulatory pressure.

What Stake's terms say about Malaysia

Stake's terms list more than forty "Prohibited Jurisdictions", including Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands [1]. Malaysia is not among them. A separate clause requires every player to be accessing stake.com from a jurisdiction where it is legal to do so.

So Stake does not block Malaysia by name, and it makes you responsible for whether your own play is legal. For a player in Peninsular Malaysia, the answer to that question is no. We read these terms from an archived copy dated 11 October 2026, because stake.com blocked our automated checks; the live wording may differ.

"Assessment in progress" is the regulator's wording, and we take it no further than its literal meaning. It is not a revocation, and it is not listed as active either. The Curaçao Gaming Authority also announced on 2 October 2026 that its online licensing portal had been breached and taken offline, adding that this does not affect the validity of existing licences [3]. Trade press has reported on leaked licensing files concerning Stake; we have not verified those reports and do not rely on them.

Why Stake left the UK

For a time Stake had a UK-facing site, stake.uk.com, but it did not run under a Stake-owned UK licence. It was a white label under a company called TGP Europe. On 12 February 2025 the UK Gambling Commission told consumers that stake.uk.com would no longer be a licensed website, with final shutdown by 11 March 2025 [4].

The point for a Malaysian reader is how fragile this kind of arrangement can be. A brand can appear licensed in a country through someone else's licence, and lose that cover when the licence holder runs into trouble. None of that ever applied to Malaysia, where there is no licence to borrow.

Crypto payments do not change the law

Stake is widely associated with cryptocurrency payments. Paying in crypto rather than ringgit does not make gambling from Malaysia legal, and it can make losses harder to trace or recover. If someone offers to set up a Stake account for you and asks you to pay them, in crypto or by bank transfer, treat it as a likely scam. Check any bank account on the police Semak Mule portal before you pay, and call 997 if you have already paid. Our guide to spotting a scam casino site covers the warning signs.

Stake's VIP Club

Stake's VIP page was blocked from our checking location, but its help centre describes the "VIP Club" in detail [6]. Ranks run from Bronze through Silver, Gold, six Platinum levels and five Diamond levels to Obsidian, and are set by total amounts wagered, from US$10,000 for Bronze to US$1 billion for Obsidian; sports bets count three times. Rewards include rakeback, weekly and monthly bonuses, reload bonuses and, from Platinum IV, "a dedicated VIP host" who offers personalised bonuses and can be contacted on Telegram or by email. The help articles say nothing about responsible gambling.

Stake's VIP hosts have been tested in court. ABC News in Australia reported in December 2025 that a Curaçao court had heard a former player's claim in March 2025 [7]. According to that report, the court found he had not proven a gambling addiction, but that Stake had operated unlawfully in Denmark, should have stopped him using its casino, and must repay half his losses; ABC also reported that his VIP host offered bonuses as his losses grew. Claims by former staff in the same report are allegations, which Stake disputed. Our guide to how casino VIP programmes work explains why regulators restrict VIP hosts.

What we did not check

We did not open an account, deposit, play or withdraw. We could not load stake.com directly or its licence certificate page, because the site blocked automated access; the terms quoted are from an archived copy of 11 October 2026. We did not verify reports of action against Stake in Ireland, Nigeria or Australia, and we found no Malaysian news report or official action naming Stake. The legal position is explained in our guide to online gambling law in Malaysia. Nothing here is legal advice.

Sources