Former journalists’ bylines revived for AI casino articles after Clickout redundancies
Cartoon · AI-generated
Former staff say gaming and esports sites linked to Clickout Media published AI-generated gambling articles under the names of journalists who had left, after Google penalties triggered editorial cutbacks.
Several journalists have been made redundant across a string of gaming and esports websites linked to Clickout Media, while former staff say articles written by AI are still appearing under the names of people who no longer work there, according to Press Gazette. The reporting centres on Esports Insider and Gambling Insider, both of which appear to have been affected after Google imposed manual penalties that pushed the sites lower in search results.
The pattern reflects a wider model often described as parasite SEO: buying or controlling sites with established authority, using that credibility to drive search traffic towards casino and betting content, and then cutting staff once the domain’s value has been extracted. Press Gazette reported that Clickout Media has used this approach across a number of titles, with former employees saying teams were abruptly reduced and staff were removed from company Slack channels with little warning.
At Esports Insider, Press Gazette said at least five journalists appear to have disappeared from the site and been replaced by an "ESI Editorial Team" byline. The articles attached to that shared byline were said to be identified by the AI detector Pangram as fully AI-generated. The same report also said that promotional gambling copy on Gambling Insider appeared to have been written, at least in part, by AI, despite the site’s editorial branding.
The byline controversy has intensified around freelance journalist Ben Touati, whose name was attached to a fresh batch of casino articles on Esports Insider after he had already lost access to the site, Press Gazette reported. Touati told the publication: "Every one falls after 9 March, the day Clickout revoked my access, and from 23 March I wasn’t even employed. Whenever they were first written, every change happened while I was locked out…
"I never wrote or touched any of it, and couldn’t have. I covered esports for ESI, my last major piece, in February, was about AI eating esports from the inside. Casino copy is a different job. I never wrote it, then or now."
Those articles, published on the site’s German-language pages, carried casino-related headlines and were dated between mid-May and mid-July 2026, according to Press Gazette. The publication also reported that Clickout Media briefly brought the site back to life after its earlier coverage, and that additional gaming-related domains may have been added to the portfolio as penalties hit other properties.
The corporate picture remains opaque. Press Gazette said Clickout Media told it that it did not own Esports Insider, despite employees linking the title to the company and to its legal entity Finixo. The same report said the business, trading as Finixio and chaired by Adam Grunwerg, reported turnover of £1,972,275 for the year to September 2025, down sharply from £40m the year before, and a loss of £1.7m. It also said the latest accounts indicate all employees were terminated at the end of 2024, suggesting the operation may now sit inside a different corporate structure.
Google says manual penalties are applied by human reviewers when sites breach search rules, including for site reputation abuse, and the company says such penalties can cause pages to rank lower or disappear from results without any visual warning. In principle, sites can appeal and recover. But in this case, the result appears to have been a hollowing out of editorial teams, the continued publication of AI-generated gambling content, and growing concern that former journalists’ bylines are being used long after they have left the building.
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Source: Noah Wire Services · Original