Stake announced Wednesday that Patrice Evra, the former Manchester United and France defender, is the face of Curse of Kong, a new slot from the studio Bad Decision Gaming. The announcement, posted to X, consists of a 68-second video and a single product claim.

What a crossover @Evra x @Haddzy 🤯 Curse of Kong by @PlayBadDecision, Only on Stake.

That is the pitch. No volatility, no RTP, no feature list. The value proposition is exclusivity, and the exclusivity is doing the work a bonus round normally does.

The Roster

Evra arrives with the strongest credentials in the room: a Champions League winner, a five-time Premier League champion, and a former France international who now commands nearly a million followers on X. The bio reads like a prospectus, listing an ambassador role at Stake and a promo code, ILOVETHISGAME, under the instruction 'Predict. Win. Love This Game.'

Opposite Evra stands Haddzy, introduced as an 'iGaming investor' with 'multiple industry awards.' The bio does not specify which awards or which investments, but it does point to Haddzy.com and to @PlayBadDecision, the studio behind the game. Haddzy has 5,095 followers and 59 posts, a scale at which the word 'investor' carries unusual load-bearing responsibilities.

The studio, Bad Decision Gaming, describes itself as 'a premier slot studio powered by the Stake Engine,' building provably fair games exclusively for Stake and StakeUSA. Its account lists 4,628 followers and 63 posts, and its current release is Curse of Kong, delivered with a gorilla emoji.

The Pipeline

Bad Decision Gaming lands in familiar company. In recent days, Stake's lobby has absorbed debuts from Midia Gaming's Crush Depth and Last Resort Gaming's Krazy Karen, both of which arrived with public footprints small enough to fit on a single screen. What separates Curse of Kong is the casting: this installment arrives with a Champions League winner attached, which means Stake's celebrity crossover budget has either grown or finally met a gorilla theme worthy of it.

Taken at face value, the deal is a licensing announcement in which a football legend and an investor promote a Kong-themed slot available only on Stake. The property's value is the company it keeps. In that sense, 'Only on Stake' is pulling double duty as a product description and a seating chart.