1. The agreement, and who it is with
These Terms of Service form a binding contract between you and Sebastian Seidel, Zum Isetal 1, 38518 Gifhorn, Germany ("Podium", "we", "us"), covering the Podium mobile application, the public website at podium.lol, and the related services.
You accept them by ticking the consent box on the sign-in screen. If you do not accept them, do not create an account. Continuing to use Podium after a material change, which we will ask you to accept again in the app, means you accept the changed version.
Podium is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Apple, Google, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, or any other platform you may link to from your profile.
2. Eligibility
You must be at least 16 years old to use Podium, and old enough under the law of the country you live in to enter into this contract on your own. If your country sets a higher digital age of consent, that higher age applies to you.
You must use your own account, keep your sign-in method secure, and not let anybody else bid from it. Everything done through your account is treated as done by you.
You may not use Podium if a previous account of yours was terminated for breaking these terms, or if sanctions or export law prohibit us from providing the service to you.
3. What Podium is, and what it is not
Podium is a paid-placement entertainment leaderboard. You publish a profile card and spend an in-app currency called Crowns to hold a position on one or more boards. A higher stake means a higher position. That is the entire mechanic.
The public website is a read-only view of approved board and profile information. Account creation, purchases, wallet access, and bidding remain inside the mobile application unless we expressly add a secure web flow later.
Podium is not an advertising marketplace, an investment, a savings product, a payment service, a money transmitter, a competition with a prize, a sweepstake, a lottery, or a game of chance.
- Position is determined only by the size of your stake, resolved deterministically. Nothing is randomised and no draw takes place.
- The price of any position is visible before you commit to it, so no outcome is uncertain at the moment you spend.
- There is no prize, no pot, no payout, and no way to convert anything on Podium back into money or anything else of value.
- Ranking positions are not sold as advertising inventory and carry no promise of clicks, followers, sales, exposure, or any other commercial result.
Podium is not gambling. There is no element of chance and nothing of value can ever be won or withdrawn. Crowns leave the system when they are spent.
4. Crowns
Crowns are a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable and non-sublicensable licence to use a feature of the Podium app. They are not money, not a deposit, not electronic money, not a security, not a crypto-asset, and not your property.
Crowns have no value outside Podium. They cannot be sold, gifted, transferred between accounts, traded, staked, exchanged, cashed out, redeemed for money, or inherited. Any attempt to do so is a breach of these terms and the Crowns involved may be removed.
Crowns you paid for remain available for as long as your account exists and we keep the service running. Crowns you were given for free, including starter grants, profile-completion grants, daily streaks, referral rewards and the Pro monthly stipend, are promotional. They may be changed, expired, or withdrawn if they were obtained through abuse, and they are removed when the account is closed.
Crowns are bought only through the Apple App Store or Google Play. We credit your wallet after the store confirms the transaction to our server, which is normally immediate but can be delayed by the store, for example while a family approval is pending.
The full history of every Crown you receive and spend is kept in your wallet ledger inside the app so that any balance can be reconstructed and checked.
Crowns are a licence to use a feature, not a balance you own. There is no cash-out, at any amount, at any time, for any reason.
5. Bidding: read this before you spend
A bid converts Crowns from your wallet into a stake on a listing. The stake is what determines your position on that board.
- The smallest stake that can take a place on a board is 100 Crowns.
- Taking a position costs one Crown more than the stake of the person currently holding it.
- Raising your own stake costs only the difference between the stake you hold and the stake you want.
- Crowns are consumed at the moment the bid is accepted. They are gone from your wallet from that point on.
- Bids are final. A stake cannot be reduced, cancelled, withdrawn, refunded, or converted back into Crowns.
- Anyone can outbid you at any time, including seconds after you bid. Being outbid is how the board works. It is the product functioning correctly and is not a defect, an error, or grounds for a refund.
- No position is permanent, reserved, or guaranteed for any period of time.
- If the board moves while you are bidding, the bid is re-priced and you are asked to confirm again. You are never charged for a position you did not receive.
Crowns spent on a stake are consumed immediately and are never returned, including when you are outbid moments later.
6. Podium Pro
Podium Pro is an auto-renewing subscription sold through the App Store or Google Play. It is offered monthly and yearly; the exact price, currency, billing period and any introductory or free-trial terms are shown on the paywall in the app before you buy, and those displayed terms are the ones that apply to you.
Payment is charged to your store account at confirmation of purchase. The subscription renews automatically for the same period at the then-current price unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your store account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the period ends.
Manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple ID or Google Play account settings. Deleting the Podium app does not cancel a subscription, and neither does deleting your Podium account. We cannot cancel it for you.
Where a free trial is offered, it converts into a paid subscription unless you cancel before it ends. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited if you buy a subscription during the trial, where the store requires this.
Cancelling Pro leaves Pro features active until the end of the period you already paid for. It does not remove Crowns already in your wallet and does not refund stakes you already placed. Pro benefits, including the monthly Crown stipend, the Crown-pack discount, the higher board limit and Auto-Defend, stop when the entitlement ends.
Auto-Defend, when you switch it on, spends Crowns from your wallet automatically, up to the per-listing ceiling you set, whenever somebody takes a position you hold. You choose the ceiling and you are responsible for the spending it authorises. Switching Auto-Defend off stops all automatic spending immediately.
Pro renews automatically until you cancel it in your App Store or Google Play settings. Deleting the app does not cancel it.
7. Right of withdrawal, and its waiver
If you are a consumer in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction granting an equivalent right, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a contract concluded at a distance.
Crowns and Podium Pro are digital content and digital services supplied immediately. By completing a purchase you expressly request that we begin performance at once, and you acknowledge that you thereby lose your right of withdrawal in respect of digital content once delivery has begun, and in respect of a digital service once it has been fully performed.
This does not affect your statutory rights where the digital content or service supplied is defective.
8. Refunds
All purchases are made through Apple or Google, not through us. Refunds are therefore governed by the store’s policy and are granted or refused by the store. We are not able to issue a store refund, reverse a charge, or overrule a store decision.
When a store refunds a Crown purchase, the corresponding Crowns are removed from your wallet. If you have already spent them, the removal can leave your balance negative. A negative balance must be cleared before you can bid again. Stakes placed with refunded Crowns are not reversed and positions bought with them may be removed.
Deliberately buying Crowns, spending them, and then requesting a refund is abuse of the service and will result in the account being frozen.
None of this limits any mandatory statutory right you have against us in relation to defective digital content.
9. Your content
You keep ownership of everything you upload: your photo or video, your display name, your tagline, and your links. We claim no ownership of it.
You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, resize, re-encode, adapt for display, and publicly display that content, for as long as you keep it on Podium, for the sole purpose of operating and promoting the service. This includes displaying it in the app, on the public website and profile URLs, in the activity ticker, in social previews, and in share images that you or another user generate from your listing. Public web pages may be indexed, cached, or previewed by search engines, browsers, and messaging services outside our direct control. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies already shared by others, third-party caches, and copies we must retain by law.
You are responsible for what you publish and you must have the right to publish it.
10. Likeness, publicity, and other people
Podium is a leaderboard of people. That makes the rules about faces stricter than they would be for ordinary user content.
By uploading an image or video of a person you warrant that you are that person, or that you hold every consent and release necessary from that person, including consent under data protection law and any applicable right of publicity or personality right, for their image to be published publicly, displayed alongside a rank and stake, and reproduced in share images.
You may not upload an image of anybody who has not agreed to appear on Podium, an image of a public figure you are not, an AI-generated or manipulated image presented as a real person, or an image of a child.
Any person depicted on Podium without their consent may have the content removed by writing to the takedown contact in section 12, and we will act on that notice without requiring them to hold a Podium account.
Uploading a photo or video of somebody else without their consent will get the account removed and can expose you to personal legal liability.
11. Rules of conduct
The following are prohibited on Podium without exception:
- Nudity, sexual or sexually suggestive content, and anything involving a minor in any context.
- Hate speech, slurs, harassment, bullying, threats, or incitement to violence.
- Impersonating another person, a brand, or Podium staff, including through a misleading handle.
- Links to illegal content, malware, phishing, paid sexual services, or the sale of regulated goods.
- Content that is defamatory, that discloses another person’s private information, or that infringes anybody’s intellectual property.
- Bots, scripts, emulators, automated bidding, multiple accounts used together, or any exploitation of a bug to obtain position or Crowns.
- Buying, selling, or advertising the transfer of Podium accounts, handles, positions, or Crowns.
- Payment fraud, including chargebacks made in bad faith and the use of stolen payment credentials.
- Reverse engineering, decompiling, automated scraping, or otherwise extracting the app or board data outside normal use of the official app and public website.
12. Moderation, reports, and takedown
Every profile photo, video and piece of profile text is checked automatically before it becomes visible, and re-checked whenever you change it. Content stays hidden while that check runs. Borderline results go to a human reviewer.
Any user can report a profile from inside the app. A report re-runs the automated check and places the profile in the human review queue. Reports are anonymous to the person reported.
Anyone, whether or not they use Podium, may give us notice of illegal content, impersonation, defamation, a privacy or likeness violation, or copyright infringement by writing to legal@podium.lol. Tell us the handle concerned, what is wrong, and why you are entitled to complain. For copyright, include a statement that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.
We acknowledge notices within 48 hours and decide within 7 days, faster where the content is manifestly illegal or involves a minor. If we remove your content or restrict your account we will tell you why, and you may appeal by replying to that message. An appeal is reviewed by a person, not by the automated system.
13. Suspension and termination
We may remove content, hide a listing, limit an account, or freeze an account that breaks these terms. We aim for the least restrictive measure that fixes the problem, and we escalate for repeat or serious breaches.
A frozen account keeps its wallet ledger but cannot bid, and its listings are hidden from the board. Crowns spent before the freeze are not refunded. Where an account is terminated for a serious breach, particularly fraud, exploitation, or content involving a minor, remaining Crowns are forfeited without compensation, which is proportionate because Crowns are a revocable licence rather than property.
Content involving a minor results in an immediate freeze and a report to the appropriate authorities.
You may request account deletion at podium.lol/delete-account or by writing to privacy@podium.lol. Deletion removes your profile, photo, links, and listings from the board. It does not refund Crowns and does not cancel a store subscription, which must be cancelled separately in the App Store or Google Play.
We may terminate or suspend the service, or your access to it, on reasonable notice, and immediately where required by law or to prevent harm.
14. Changes to the service and to these terms
Boards, categories, prices, Crown pack contents, free-grant amounts, and features can change, and we may add or retire boards. Changes apply from when they are made and are not retroactive: a stake already placed keeps the position it bought under the rules in force at the time.
We may change these terms for a valid reason, such as a change in the service, in the law, or in a store requirement. We will notify you in the app before a material change takes effect and ask you to accept it. If you do not accept, you may stop using Podium and delete your account; unspent purchased Crowns cannot be refunded, as set out above.
15. Availability, warranties, and liability
Podium is provided as it is and as available. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any particular position, visibility, or result will be achieved.
We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act, and to the extent we have given a guarantee. For slight negligence we are liable only for breach of an obligation the fulfilment of which makes performance of this contract possible in the first place and on which you may reasonably rely, and in that case only for foreseeable damage typical of this kind of contract.
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you, and your mandatory statutory consumer rights are unaffected.
16. Governing law and disputes
German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you habitually reside.
The European Online Dispute Resolution platform was discontinued on 20 July 2025 under Regulation (EU) 2024/3228. We are neither obliged nor willing to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.
Questions about these terms: legal@podium.lol.
17. Miscellaneous
If any provision of these terms is or becomes invalid, the rest remains in force. You may not assign this contract; we may assign it as part of a transfer of the business, with notice to you.
Podium Pro and Crowns are sold by us through the store as the reseller or agent, depending on the platform. Your relationship with Apple or Google in respect of payment is governed by their terms, in addition to these.