Mike Tyson sued by Rabona casino over giant pigeon advert dispute
Medier Ltd, operator of the Rabona online casino, is pursuing Mike Tyson and his promotional firm Tyrannic for $1.5m after the boxer pulled out of a marketing deal involving a costumed pigeon and an Evander Holyfield dummy.
Mike Tyson is being sued for $1.5m (£1.1m) by Medier Ltd, the company behind the Rabona online casino, over an alleged breach of a marketing contract, according to reporting by talkSPORT and The Independent.
The lawsuit also names Tyson's promotional company, Tyrannic, as a defendant. Tyrannic and Medier signed a deal in 2024 for the former undisputed heavyweight champion to appear in promotional material for the Rabona brand.
Tyson withdrew from the arrangement after being asked to appear in an advert alongside four other presenters, one dressed in a giant pigeon costume. The planned concept had Tyson giving the pigeon a boxing tutorial using a dummy bearing the face of Evander Holyfield, his 1990s rival whose ear he bit during their 1997 rematch.
Tyson's lawyers argue the scope of the proposed advert fell outside the terms of his original contract. Rabona disputes this, alleging Tyson failed to meet his marketing obligations and lost interest in the campaign after he was offered a lucrative exhibition fight against influencer boxer Jake Paul in late 2024.
SBC News noted that licensing details for Rabona itself are unclear. Comparison sites such as AskGamblers list the operator variously as holding an Anjouan or a Curaçao licence, but neither Rabona nor Medier Ltd appears in the official licence registers of either jurisdiction.
The case has nonetheless given Rabona an unusual amount of coverage in the British press, with the dispute written up by talkSPORT, The Independent, the Telegraph and the Sun, among others.
SBC News drew a parallel with another gambling-adjacent advertising row this year, involving the prediction markets platform Novig and actor Sydney Sweeney. Novig's campaign, which featured a nude Sweeney posing with sports equipment under the tagline that the platform trades on 'Just Sports' rather than politics or war, drew criticism from current and former female athletes who accused it of objectifying women.
In both cases, the controversy generated significant attention for brands that would otherwise struggle for visibility: Novig is dwarfed in the prediction markets sector by the duopoly of Polymarket and Kalshi, while Rabona remains largely unknown to mainstream bettors.
SBC News observed that such outcomes sit awkwardly with the efforts of regulators and licensed operators to curb the marketing reach of offshore, unlicensed gambling platforms on social media.