Kick, the video platform where French streamer Jean Pormanove's death was broadcast live on Monday, August 18, has never turned a profit. But it is backed by a powerful gambling empire: Stake, one of the world's largest betting sites, which reported revenue of €2.6 billion last year.

Kick and Stake were both created by the same entrepreneurial duo: Ed Craven, a 30-year-old Australian, and Bijan Tehrani, a 32-year-old American of Iranian descent. The two met in the late 2000s on the servers of the online role-playing game Runescape, despite living thousands of kilometers apart. The game was known for its highly developed internal economy based on virtual gold coins. According to them, they were eventually banned for setting up an online casino inside the game.

In 2013, they launched a dice gambling site that allowed users to bet bitcoins, then worth less than €20. Called Primedice, the site operated without a license in a legal and tax gray area, but quickly grew as bitcoin's value soared. The profits enabled the pair to launch a more ambitious project in 2017: Stake, a comprehensive betting and gambling platform where users can wager with both traditional currency and cryptocurrencies.

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