Drake speaks onstage during Drake's Till Death Do Us Part rap battle on October 30, 2021 in Long Beach, California. Amy Sussman/Getty Images

A judge says class action litigation is not the right forum for Stake to face claims that Drake misleadingly endorsed the online casino and used it to funnel millions of dollars towards artificial streams.

A Thursday (July 30) order out of Virginia federal court, obtained by Billboard, holds that any legal claims against Stake are subject to arbitration due to a binding clause in the platform’s terms and conditions. Such arbitration proceedings would be confidential, and they would have to be litigated by individual users instead of en masse via a class action. Claims against Drake himself still remain subject to court litigation, but that part of the case will be paused indefinitely while arbitration plays out.

Drake has faced numerous lawsuits since last year over his association with Stake, which some users claim is actually an illegal gambling operation despite the rapper “glamorizing” it to “impressionable fans.” The Virginia case, filed at the end of 2025 by a group of Stake users seeking to represent a nationwide class, accuses both the platform and Drake of false advertising. It also alleges that the rapper used Stake’s payment features to “covertly finance the orchestrated procurement of botting and streaming farm activities,” allegedly to boost his catalog on Spotify and other digital music platforms.  

Stake has called the claims “nonsense,” and Drake has not responded. Thursday’s order does not reach any conclusions about the merits of the lawsuit. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema says, however, that the accusations against Stake clearly belong in arbitration rather than a public courtroom given the “unambiguous” terms of service.

In the meantime, the judge froze all of the class action claims brought in court against Drake and other individual defendants. She said it wouldn’t make sense to keep moving forward with that part of the lawsuit on its own, since “any liability these defendants might have would be directly affected by the results of the arbitration.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, Richard Kelsey, told Billboard in a statement on Saturday (Aug. 1) that they “continue to have great confidence in the ultimate outcome of this case.”

“We certainly respect but disagree with the trial court’s ruling, of course, as these purported arbitration agreements are contracts for illegal gambling and thus void,” added Kelsey. “Nonetheless, the court has only sent us to arbitration, where the first thing to be decided is if the contracts are enforceable. They are not. When that’s done, we will expect to return to federal court with all our claims still in place.”

A rep for Drake declined to comment on the development. Reps for Stake did not immediately return a request for comment.

Stake, which employs virtual currency for users to play traditional casino games over livestreams, has successfully invoked its terms and conditions to send many lawsuits to arbitration over the past year. The company currently has pending motions to do the same in at least two other cases involving its partnership with Drake.

These legal proceedings are not the only recent ones to allege Drake has received fraudulent streams on Spotify. Another lawsuit last year accused Spotify of turning a blind eye to the problem, though Drake himself was neither named as a defendant nor accused of any wrongdoing.

Spotify denies those claims, saying it has implemented “best-in-class systems to combat” streaming fraud. The lawsuit was initially dismissed as overly vague a month ago, but it has since been re-filed.

This story was updated on Aug. 1 at 3:13 p.m. ET to add a statement from the plaintiffs’ lawyer.

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