An eight-month investigation by Jackson Ryan at Aftermath has exposed a coordinated scheme to exploit trusted gaming websites for gambling affiliate revenue.
Clickout Media has been quietly acquiring established gaming and esports outlets including The Escapist, GamesHub, and VideoGamer. Once purchased, these sites get stripped of their editorial mission and rebuilt as SEO-optimized affiliate machines pushing online casinos and crypto gambling platforms.
The strategy relies on domain authority. Older websites carry years of backlinks and trust signals that make Google rank their pages highly. By buying these legacy domains instead of building new ones, Clickout Media gets instant search visibility for whatever content they publish next.
What they publish is mass-produced gambling promotion. The sites now flood search results with “best casino” listicles, “VPN-friendly betting sites,” and crypto casino comparisons. Every recommendation includes affiliate links that pay out when readers sign up and deposit money.
Gambling affiliates can earn far more than traditional ads. Casino partnerships often pay through revenue share models, where the site gets a percentage of what users lose over time. Others pay cost-per-acquisition fees when someone makes their first deposit. These numbers can run into hundreds or thousands of dollars per converted user.
To scale content production, Clickout Media uses AI-generated articles. The investigation found fabricated author profiles complete with fake headshots, invented work histories, and nonexistent social media accounts. These phantom writers crank out SEO content designed to answer common gambling-related searches.
Aftermath also documented older articles being edited retroactively. Pages written by former staff members now contain new outbound links to gambling sites. The original bylines remain intact, lending credibility to content the actual authors never approved.
The Escapist represents the most visible example. The outlet historically built its reputation on video game criticism and shows like Zero Punctuation. Former staff departed to form Second Wind after previous ownership turmoil. Now the brand they left behind appears to serve a different purpose entirely.
From games coverage to casino streams
The Escapist’s YouTube channel has reportedly shifted focus to casino streamer highlight clips promoting CoinCasino. Users noticed the channel’s branding briefly changed to match gambling-related logos before reverting. The channel still links to a former staffer’s Patreon despite new management, and listed contact emails either route to previous owners or don’t function.
The pattern extends beyond The Escapist. VideoGamer recently faced scrutiny over an AI-generated game review. GamesHub has undergone similar transformation. Each site maintains the appearance of legitimate gaming coverage while funneling search traffic toward gambling affiliate conversions.
