Online gambling companies have spent years borrowing something Hollywood understands better than almost anyone: recognisable faces sell stories.
A casino app can offer hundreds of games like Fishin Frenzy, fast payments and polished graphics, but an advert still has only a few seconds to make somebody pay attention. That is why betting and online casino brands have repeatedly turned to actors from television and film. A familiar face can make a digital gambling company feel bigger, more entertaining and, perhaps most importantly, more memorable.
Jamie Foxx is one of the clearest modern examples.
The Oscar-winning actor has appeared extensively for BetMGM, and in March 2025 became the star of the company’s first online casino commercial featuring him specifically promoting its casino product. The “Vegas Lights” advert showed Foxx using the BetMGM app while famous Las Vegas locations including Bellagio, ARIA and MGM Grand illuminated around him.
Foxx himself said: “BetMGM has been a phenomenal company to work with the past few years and creating this new commercial for their online casino was no exception.”
BetMGM Chief Marketing Officer Casey Hurbis explained why celebrity casting mattered, describing Foxx as “an extraordinary talent and a pivotal part of the way we showcase the best of BetMGM.”
That is really the commercial argument in one sentence. Foxx is not being employed because viewers need an actor to explain how roulette works. He gives the brand personality.
And there is an enormous market fighting for that attention. Gambling Commission figures show Britain’s remote casino, betting and bingo sector generated £7.8 billion in gross gambling yield during 2024/25, up 13.1% from the previous year. Online casino games alone produced £5 billion, including £4.2 billion from slots. The sector had 24.4 million active accounts at the end of the final reporting quarter.
With numbers like those, advertising is not a side issue. Customer recognition can be worth serious money.
Ray Winstone became perhaps Britain’s most recognisable example of an actor becoming linked with an online betting brand. The Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Sexy Beast star fronted bet365 campaigns for well over a decade, beginning around 2009. His gravelly East End delivery became almost inseparable from the company’s televised football advertising.
It was an unusually good piece of casting. Winstone already carried associations with football, pubs, crime films and old-fashioned British masculinity. Bet365 did not need to manufacture a personality for its adverts because Winstone arrived with one.
Aaron Paul provided a very different example when bet365 used the Breaking Bad star in advertising aimed at the American market. In one campaign, Paul appeared in the dark, cinematic style viewers associated with Jesse Pinkman while introducing bet365 to US customers.
That sort of casting shows how gambling advertising increasingly borrows from entertainment rather than traditional bookmaker marketing. The advert is designed to feel like a miniature film, with the celebrity acting almost as a shortcut to mood and credibility.
Caesars went even further.
For its first Super Bowl sportsbook commercial in 2022, Caesars assembled actor and comedian JB Smoove, Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry and members of the Manning football family. Smoove played Caesar, while Berry appeared as Cleopatra in the wider campaign.
Sharon Otterman, then Chief Marketing Officer of Caesars Digital, explained the strategy particularly well: “We’re an entertainment company first and foremost, but we are also storytellers.”
That comment says a lot about how major gambling businesses increasingly see themselves. Caesars was not simply advertising odds. It was building characters and an advertising universe around its name.
Actors can be particularly useful for online casino advertising because casino gaming is less naturally connected to real-world sporting personalities than sports betting. A footballer can promote football odds almost automatically. Selling slots, blackjack or roulette requires a broader emotional idea: glamour, humour, Vegas, excitement or escapism.
Actors are very good at selling exactly those things.
BetMGM’s newer ambassador line-up also includes Mad Men star Jon Hamm and Entourage actor Jerry Ferrara, showing that the relationship between Hollywood and gambling marketing has hardly disappeared.
There is, however, a major complication in Britain.
Since October 2022, gambling adverts have been prohibited from using people or characters likely to have “strong appeal” to under-18s. The rule specifically affects celebrities, sportspeople and influencers whose following reaches younger audiences.
Shahriar Coupal, Director of the Committee of Advertising Practice, said when the rules were introduced: “The days of gambling ads featuring sports stars, video game imagery and other content of strong appeal to under-18s are numbered.”
Interestingly, that can make established film and television actors more useful rather than less useful.
A Hollywood actor primarily associated with adult dramas or films may be commercially recognisable without necessarily possessing the strong youth appeal that could make a campaign unacceptable under British advertising rules. Operators therefore have to think about more than star power. They need to think about who recognises that star.
The economics explain why brands continue trying.
Britain’s total customer-facing gambling market generated £16.8 billion in GGY during 2024/25, while remote gambling represented £7.8 billion. By October to December 2025, online casino alone was generating £1.5 billion in a single quarter and accounted for roughly 70% of remote casino, betting and bingo GGY.
When an industry operates at that scale, turning an actor into the face of a brand can be a rational investment.
The best celebrity gambling adverts also tend to understand that fame on its own is not enough. Ray Winstone worked because he felt believable for bet365. Jamie Foxx works because BetMGM wants to connect online casino gaming with Las Vegas entertainment. JB Smoove and Halle Berry fitted Caesars because the company could literally turn its name into characters.
That is why actors are likely to remain part of online gambling advertising even as regulations become tighter. A famous face can do something a banner offering free spins cannot: make people remember who was advertising them.