Sean Strickland has spent years building a reputation online as the UFC’s unlikely financial advisor, hammering his following with blunt lessons about high-yield savings accounts, mutual funds and the dangers of letting cash sit idle.
Now the two-time middleweight champion has put his name behind Rainbet, an online gambling platform that just signed him as its newest UFC ambassador, a pairing that has left plenty of his followers scratching their heads.
The partnership went public through a 35-second promotional clip that leans hard into spectacle. It opens on an elderly woman working a slot machine in a traditional casino, then swings into a comedic bit built around Strickland wielding a flamethrower, the whole thing designed to draw a line between old-school, brick-and-mortar gambling and the online version Rainbet is selling.
Strickland closes it out by telling viewers to sign up and give the platform a try.
The timing stands out because Strickland has built a small side career telling people to do the opposite of gambling with their money.
Back in July, he posted a message aimed squarely at his younger followers: “Listen little motherf**kers. Open a highyield account. Save up 3 month of life. Then open a Fidelity go with FXAIX. Any solid fund. Invest every dollar you have in it. When draw from your high yield stop Investing, refill high yield. Then back to Investing. I believe in you YNs.”
The replies came fast. One account, Kenya Data Index, pressed him on the numbers, noting that FXAIX had returned 15.4 percent over ten years and asking whether he was actually following his own advice.
Strickland answered that he was “in charles swab the robot said that is the best performing with lower fees.”
When the same account pointed out he was giving out financial tips while sitting on a reported four million dollars in liquid net worth, he pushed back, explaining that his liquidity was tied to a real estate purchase in progress and that everything else was going straight into the market.
“Yeah man im only liquid so much because im investing in real estate the moment I get it done every other dollar is going back into the market,” he wrote. “saving money is losing money.”
It is not a one-off talking point for him. In April he described the pattern he runs into whenever he tries to nudge people toward investing: “I will talk to people and tell them to invest and its usually followed by ‘The internet says it’s a bad time.’ 6 months to a year ill send them a screen shot and remind them that is was a bad time. I wish I started when I was 18 vs 28.”
Back in 2024 he made a similar point with a sharper edge, contrasting how easy it would be to cash in on hype versus how little traction sound advice gets him: “I don’t get people… I can make a scam crypto currency and tell you guys to buy it and people would….. BUT when I tell you to invest in solid stable mutual funds…. crickets haha Yall…. your HIGH YEILD SAVING ACCOUNT WONT BEAT INFLATION.”
He has also poked fun at friends who treat index funds with more suspicion than they treat crypto. “Ill tell friends about investing, they think it’s a ponzi scheme lmao!! It’s mildly frustrating,” he wrote, before circling back to a memory from childhood, staying home from school to help patch a leaking roof, as the reason he pushes people to start small rather than wait. “Being broke sucks invest, even if it’s 100 dollars.”
In another post he recreated a familiar back-and-forth: “Do you invest” “yes, mostly in crypto” “So instead of a solid mutual proven mutual fund you picked crypto hmmmm” “what’s a mutual fund.”
He has traced some of that frustration back to his own upbringing too, contrasting it with how his friends were raised. “My FRIENDS parents taught them to INVEST at 17, they own houses, graduated COLLEGE, have financial portfolios,” he wrote. “My parent’s taught me ‘you gotta rob Peter to pay Paul’ ‘you can bounce a check at this store’ and ‘when the water gets shut off use bolt cutters for the lock’ SUCH BS!”
When someone said that he would bet everything on Strickland’s next match, he spoke against it asking him to invest in mutual funds instead.
That is the backdrop against which the Rainbet deal now sits, and it is a strange one given what Strickland said the last time he found himself around one of the platform’s associated ventures.
Rainbet also backs Brand Risk, the event run by streamer Adin Ross that Strickland attended and then walked away from, telling people afterward exactly how he felt about it. “I’ve never been part of anything so shameful in my life,” he said. “I feel like less of a man after being here. I’m sick to my f**king stomach.”
Rainbet, for its part, has been building out a roster of combat sports names for a while now. Lightweight standout Justin Gaethje signed on as a brand ambassador back in July, joining a lineup of personalities the platform already leans on for visibility, including Adin Ross, Jay Ferrer, Lenny Miller, Louie Gambles and Nikola Mijomanovic, along with past ties to boxer Ryan Garcia and rapper Lil Pump.
The company became the main jersey partner for Counter-Strike 2 org Ninjas in Pyjamas back in May 2025, picked up the title as first official sponsor of the Slots section on Kick this year, and signed on as title sponsor of a BKFC card in Birmingham.
The pattern is clear enough: an online gambling operator steadily working its way into esports, str3aming, influencer culture and combat sports promotion all at once, and now adding a UFC champion’s face to the mix.
The irony is hard to miss: after years of urging his followers to save, invest in mutual funds and avoid letting their money sit idle, Sean Strickland has now signed a sponsorship deal with an online gambling platform. The UFC champion has repeatedly warned fans against risky financial decisions, making his decision to promote gambling a glaring contradiction to the advice he has spent years preaching.
