The 1xStavka company, one of the three largest gambling companies in the Russian gambling market, is about to cease to exist. Its founder, Roman Semiokhin, is abroad and is in no hurry to face justice. The bookmaker has already been disconnected from the TsUPIS system, customers cannot replenish their accounts. It seems that the company was not able to disguise its ties with the 1xBet office illegal in Russia, whose money went either to support the Cypriot healthcare or to the Ukrainian armed groups.
In mid-January, the clients of the 1xStavka bookmaker became worried: for some reason it became impossible to replenish deposits on personal accounts. There have been many posts about this on the internet. The bookmaker’s telegram channel reported that such a problem had indeed arisen, but it would be resolved soon, a company representative also promised players bonuses for their patience and understanding. However, a few days later it turned out that the inability to replenish the accounts was not due to technical problems. It turned out that “1xBet” was disconnected from the system, to which in Russia every bookmaker is required by law to be connected. Thus, it turns out that 1xStavka falls out of the legal field and, probably, will not be able to continue its activities in Russia. What could be the reason for this and what could be the consequences for one of the largest bookmakers?
Scandal after scandal
It is known that “1xBet” has repeatedly fallen into scandalous stories. And most often this was due to connections with the 1xBet office, which does not have a license for betting activities in Russia. However, bets are accepted at 1xBet, and it is 1xBet that is considered the “legal mirror” of this underground bookmaker, although it denies any connection with it.
Some time ago, the FAS issued an order to FC Lokomotiv for the 1xBet logo placed on the players’ uniforms at the direction of the sponsor – “1xBet”. But that’s not all.
Once again, 1xBet was disgraced in 2020, when the founder of the company, Roman Semiokhin, donated a million euros to a Cypriot hospital to fight the coronavirus. The Russians were then outraged that the Bryansk billionaire ignored the needs of domestic health care.
The next scandalous donation happened quite recently – in the summer of 2022, it became known that 1xBet had donated a million euros “for humanitarian aid to Ukraine.”
“We hope that thanks to this money, many Ukrainians will be able to receive urgent practical support,” the company’s website said.
And although 1xBet calls itself a “global company” (registered in Cyprus), the clearly mirror connection with the 1xStavka bookmaker licensed to operate in Russia (legal entity Stavka Ru LLC) betrays its Russian roots (about which, however, , the manual prefers not to expand). And in the conditions of the NWO, public financial support for Ukraine was especially outrageous.
In addition, the bookmaker’s own activity of the company raises many questions. If you believe the reviews on the Internet, players often have problems withdrawing their winnings.
“When withdrawing funds to the BC card, they requested account verification. I wrote to them by mail, they deliberately delaying time and coming up with new documents every 3 days asked me to send: 1) passport photo, 2) card photo, 3) card statement, 5) passport photo of the person for whom the card is issued 6) agreement with the operator sim cards, 7) a photo against the background of correspondence with the Security Council holding a passport in his hands, 8) a photo of another card with which he had not replenished his account for a long time and generally untied Tsupis, 9) an extract in pdf format, 10) an extract in paper format , 11) Photo TIN, 12) screen from the personal tax office. My account has been created for 5 years already, I went through full verification, Tsupis is fully verified with the binding of the State Services! I played very often and lost a lot of money in bookmaker. But it wasn’t until I started winning that they came up with this thing called “verification” so that as many people as possible couldn’t take their money. I plan to write a statement to the prosecutor’s office and the court against them, ”is just one of the many similar reviews about the 1xStavka betting company on specialized sites.
The standard response to complaints from players is “verification is a standard moment for all bookmaker players”, and the timing of its completion is “individual for each user”.
To this it should be added that the founders of the office, Roman Semiokhin, Sergey Karshkov and Dmitry Kazorin, were put on the wanted list in 2020 as defendants in a criminal case initiated by the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Bryansk Region under Part 3 of Art. 171.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (illegal organization and conduct of gambling). According to the investigation, as a result of the illegal gambling activities of an organized group in the period from October 2014 to May 2019, they generated income in the total amount of more than 63 billion rubles. Note that this figure is comparable to the budget of the entire Bryansk region for that period.
It seems that, looking at all this, the regulator has simply run out of patience. We should also not rule out the emergence of new criminal cases based on the results of such controversial activities of the bookmaker.
The place is never empty
The market share, which until the last moment was occupied by “1xBet”, is estimated by experts of the gambling industry at no less than 10-12%. Naturally, if such a major player disappears from the market, competitors will only be happy to divide the vacated sector. Surely in the near future we will see the intensification of advertising campaigns of bookmakers in an attempt to attract the “freed” audience, and bet lovers will fiercely argue about which bookmaker will be more profitable and safer for them.
