Why Wagering Brands Are Leaning Into Influencer and Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate and influencer marketing has become one of the fastest-growing acquisition channels for wagering brands.

Recent analysis of major US operators like DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM found that over 80% of social content promoting these brands was organic - much of it created by affiliates and influencers, not the brands themselves.

That shift makes sense. Creator-led content is scalable, engaging, and trusted by audiences in a way traditional advertising isn’t.

But it’s also incredibly difficult to control. And in a category as tightly regulated as gambling, that creates a compliance challenge most brands are not equipped to manage.

The Regulatory Landscape Tightening Around Wagering Brands

Gambling and wagering is one of the most heavily regulated marketing environments in the world, and it's getting stricter.

In the UK in late 2025, the ASA introduced new rules for influencers with large followings of young audiences, and its rulings have already tested these boundaries. Ladbrokes faced complaints over ads promoting a free-to-play currency that the ASA ruled could appeal to minors, while Midnite was ordered to remove an AI-generated video featuring footballer Trent Alexander-Arnold - a post the ASA ruled fell under the CAP Code despite being labelled as editorial. 

Last year, The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) issued formal warnings to social media influencers over the promotion of illegal gambling services, with maximum penalties for individuals who facilitate access reaching AU$2.5 million. 

In the US, compliance is enforced at the state level, and rules vary significantly across jurisdictions. Regulators have already begun cracking down on operators for misleading promotions, including fines for advertising “risk-free” bets that failed to clearly disclose terms and wagering requirements.

Crucially, US regulators are taking the same position as their UK and AU counterparts: operators are responsible for the actions of their affiliates. Several enforcement actions have explicitly called out third-party marketing practices, including affiliate websites and influencer promotions, as part of broader compliance failures.

The Fundamental Problem: You're Liable for What Your Affiliates Post

This is the compliance reality that wagering brands are facing: the regulatory liability doesn't stop with your internal team. If an affiliate or influencer is promoting your product and they get it wrong, the regulator comes to you.

What does "getting it wrong" actually look like?

It’s not just obvious violations. It’s often small details that breach specific regulatory rules - especially when executed by affiliates. Common risk areas include:

• Inducements (Australia): In markets like Australia, regulators have taken a strict stance on inducements - including offers that encourage people to open accounts or continue betting. An affiliate promoting “sign-up bonuses,” “deposit matches,” or “boosted odds” without the right structure or disclaimers can put operators in breach of state-level laws.

• “Risk-free” or misleading offers (US): Regulators across states like Ohio and Massachusetts have fined operators for advertising “risk-free bets” that weren’t truly risk-free - particularly where wagering requirements or conditions weren’t clearly disclosed.

• Missing or inadequate disclosures: Affiliates promoting offers without clearly stating wagering requirements, eligibility criteria, or key terms and conditions.

• Content appealing to minors: Language, imagery, or tone that could reasonably be seen as targeting under-18 audiences - even unintentionally.

• Glamorization of gambling: Messaging that implies betting is a path to financial success, social status, or easy money.

• Failure to age-gate or geo-target content: Especially critical in jurisdictions where access to betting services is restricted.

• Outdated or “drifted” content: Posts that were compliant when approved, but become non-compliant due to regulatory changes, updated offers, or edits made after approval.

The challenge is that wagering brands don't just have one or two affiliates. They have networks of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of creators producing content across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, and Twitch - simultaneously, continuously, at scale.

The Pre-Live Problem: Approval Chaos

Before content ever reaches an audience, it needs to be reviewed. And in a regulated wagering environment, that means legal and compliance teams signing off on copy, creative, claims, disclosures, and disclaimers - for every piece of marketing and affiliate content, every time.

Without software, this process is a bottleneck. A legal or compliance reviewer ends up manually checking every post, every caption, every piece of creative from every creator in the network. They're looking for missing responsible gambling messaging, unsubstantiated claims about odds or payouts, inadequate promotion disclosures, language that might appeal to minors, and dozens of other potential violations - most of which a machine could flag in seconds.

What that process looks like in practice:

• A creator submits a post. 

• It goes to the marketing team for an initial check. 

• Then to legal. 

• Legal sends it back with three rounds of amends. 

• The creator updates it. 

• It goes back. 

By the time it's approved, the sporting event it was tied to has already happened. The window has closed. The campaign has lost its punch.

Multiply that across a network of 50 affiliates posting three times a week, and the manual model collapses under its own weight.

The Post-Live Problem: Once It's Published, Can You Actually See It?

But what happens after content goes live? Who’s monitoring it for compliance then?

An influencer post that was reviewed and approved in January doesn't disappear from the internet. It sits there for months or years, accumulating views, and potentially becoming non-compliant the moment a regulation changes, a platform updates its standards, or the creator adds a caption or edits the creative without going through the approval process again.

Even more concerning: affiliates sometimes go off-script entirely. They add claims you didn't approve. They tag new offers that haven't been reviewed. They reshare old content into new contexts. And in a network of any real size, you have no visibility into any of it unless someone is actively monitoring every channel, every day. And that simply cannot be handled manually.

How to Solve This Manual Compliance Issue

The answer isn't hiring more compliance reviewers, though that's where many brands default. The answer is building the right technology layer into the marketing approval workflows - one that automates the repetitive, rule-based work, and surfaces only the genuine risk to human reviewers.

That's exactly what Haast is built for.

Haast's AI-powered compliance platform sits across the full content lifecycle for wagering brands and their affiliate networks. Before content goes live, it scans every piece of copy and creative against your specific regulatory ruleset - flagging missing responsible gambling disclaimers, unbalanced promotional claims, language targeting vulnerable audiences, and other violations instantly, so creators and marketing teams can correct them on the spot before anything reaches a reviewer.

After content is live, Haast monitors continuously across all channels, including third-party affiliate and influencer posts, scanning for non-compliant claims, unapproved edits, and policy violations as they emerge. When something is flagged, the right person is alerted immediately.

The result: what used to be a slow, manual, high-friction process becomes a fast, automated, auditable one.

Karina Ross, Head of Risk & Compliance, Product & Transformation at Sportsbet, describes the impact directly:

"What used to take a day or two for marketing content review, Haast handles instantly - flagging the exact compliance risk so the team can correct it on the spot. It's become a control in its own right: an extra layer of security across our content process."

The Stakes Are Too High for a Manual Process

Wagering is a uniquely high-risk marketing environment. The regulatory scrutiny is real and intensifying. The influencer and affiliate model, while commercially powerful, creates a distributed compliance surface that's genuinely difficult to oversee. And the liability - financial, reputational, and legal - sits squarely with the operator.

The brands that will navigate this well are the ones that treat affiliate compliance not as a legal checkbox, but as an operational capability. That means automation, continuous monitoring, and an audit trail that can demonstrate due diligence to any regulator, at any time.

Haast is the platform built for exactly that challenge.

Ready to see how Haast helps wagering brands take control of affiliate compliance? Book a demo.