Everton’s former sleeve sponsor, live-streamed the final moments of a French influencer who had previously been filmed being subjected to brutal abuse. Kick has the same owners as Stake, the illegal gambling operator which remains Everton’s front shirt sponsor.
By Philippe Auclair
No words can express the depravity of what streaming platform and former partner of Everton FC Kick offered to paying subscribers in the morning of Monday 18 August. The video shows the inanimate figure of a 46-year-old man called Raphaël Graven, known as Jean Pormanove to his tens of thousands of followers on the live-streaming platform. Promanove is not asleep, or merely unconscious. He is dead. When he died is not yet known. Was it during the stream? Was the camera switched on afterwards? Only the autopsy immediately ordered by the Nice prosecutor’s office after it was made aware of the live stream will tell. Three men are seen by his side on the bed where he lies under a duvet. One of them throws a small plastic bottle at his face. The transmission stops there; but you can still access the stream. According to Le Monde, the video had generated 36,411 euro in twenty-four hours, 5 percent of which was taken as commission by the platform.
Jean Pormanove, a.k.a. Raphaël Graven, whose final moments were live-streamed on the Kick streaming platform.
Graven, who is said to have served in the armed forces, had made a name for himself on Kick by appearing in streams which showed him being subjected to humiliating treatment and actual physical violence. The circumstances of his death have provoked repulsion in France, where Kick had already been investigated in the past for posting illicit content. Two men known as “Narutovie” and “Safine”, who frequently appeared in his videos, had been arrested in January 2025 under suspicion of “committing acts of violence on a vulnerable person”, then released without charge after claiming that these acts were “consensual”.
Kick, Everton’s sleeve sponsor during the 2023-24 season, reacted to the news by sending the following statement to Agence France-Presse: “We are deeply saddened by the loss of Jean Pormanove. We are urgently reviewing the circumstances and working with relevant stakeholders. Kick’s community guidelines are designed to protect creators, and we are committed to enforcing them across our platform“. It was not the first time that Kick had responded in this fashion, playing “freedom of expression” against the need for moderation; but it might not be enough this time.
Feeds on extreme content
French Minister for Digital Affairs Claire Chappaz reminded that for streaming platforms such as Kick, “responsibility is not an option. It is the law”. But Kick is not known for showing “responsibility”, quite the opposite. It feeds on extreme content, and has, for example, enabled white and male supremacists who’ve been banned from other platforms to broadcast their extreme views without consequence. Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes have appeared on Kick streams hosted by MAGA influencer Adin Ross. Other Kick channels host sexualised content and gambling, which anyone, including minors, can access, as it is only necessary to tick the “+18” box. No other age verification was required when Josimar visited the website from a British ISP address on 21 August, in breach of the recently-introduced UK online safety law.
Kick has also showcased IRL (“In Real Life”) influencer Paul Denino, known online as “Ice Poseidon”, live-streaming from a hotel room in Queensland, where one of his friends, known as “Andy” “played a prank” on a sex worker. The prank? Unknown to the sex worker, Danino and another man had hidden themselves in the bathroom and made loud noises as “Andy” and the young woman were about to have sex, simultaneously texting her that she should leave – as they were not alone. At which point “Andy” blocked the way of the scared young woman and kept her inside his room against her will, until the “prank” was revealed to her. Among the viewers of the livestream was Kick CEO Ed Craven, who was posting laughing emojis under the feed.
Those controversies, which were well-known at the time, did not prevent Everton FC from signing a one-year “seven figure” sleeve sponsorship deal with Kick in August 2023, six months after what happened in that hotel room in Australia. It’s true that Everton’s relationship with Kick’s founders goes much deeper than a one-season partnership with the “disruptive” streaming platform.
The Profiteers
Kick and Stake founders-owners Ed Craven (l.) and Bijab Tehrani (r.)
Australian billionaire Ed Craven, the owner of Melbourne’s most expensive home, the man who appeared to enjoy the Australian sex worker’s ordeal so much, founded and runs Kick with his longtime business partner Bijan Tehrani. Together, the two Australians, also founded, run and profit from illegal (*) crypto sports betting and gambling operator Stake, Everton FC’s main sponsor since 2022, the year Kick was launched as a direct competitor to Amazon’s Twitch platform.
Stake is an infamous name in the gambling industry. The operator is banned in multiple countries, subject to cease and desist action in several US states, and was forced out of the UK market earlier this year following action by the Great Britain Gambling Commission (GBGC). Stake had used porn actor Bonny Blue in a stunt, filming her on the steps of Nottingham University, where she claimed she had slept with multiple “barely legal” students.
Stake’s and Kick’s target markets are more or less the same: young men, sometimes minors (as the age verification process is rudimentary on both platforms), who are gaming fans hooked on non-stop action. They are easy prey for the influencers who are employed as “ambassadors” by the sports betting and gambling operator to promote the Stake brand and offer bonus codes on their Kick channels. The connection between the two brands is so strong that they are sometimes presented as two sides of a single entity, as can be seen on the home screen of influencer “Eddie”.
Examples of influencers advertising Stake on his Kick channel.
Josimar had asked the GBGC how it was possible for a company like Stake, which no longer has a licence in Great Britain, to remain the main sponsor of a Premier League football club. We received the following response: “Our webpage on ‘sports sponsorship and advertising‘ explains that organisations engaging in sponsor arrangements with an unlicensed brand must ensure that online gambling activity for that unlicensed brand is blocked and inaccessible to consumers in Great Britain.”
Josimar asked Everton FC if they would re-consider their partnership with Stake in view of the circumstances around Raphaël Graven’s death and Kick’s intimate relationship with their main sponsor. Everton did not respond to our query.
(*) The definition of “illegal betting” used by Josimar is that used in article 3 of the Macolin Convention, which is also accepted by the World Lotteries Association.
