iGB Affiliate 33 Jun/Jul 2012

JUNE/JULY 2012

INFORMATION, INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS FOR THE BUSINESS OF INTERACTIVE GAMING

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SportSbetting and the olympicS

iGB Affi liate JUNE/JULY 2012 3

If you didn’t know that the Olympics were descending on London this summer then you certainly will after reading this issue of iGB Affi liate. What this edition will also remind you is that when opportunity comes knocking at your door, you can’t afford not to answer. ‘Olympics? ‘Opportunity?’ Yes, the Olympics do bring opportunity to affi liates, and not just to be entertained at the games by your sportsbook affi liate managers. Couple the Olympic SEO opportunities with the Penguin update mixing things up in SEO-land, and you could fi nd yourself outranking the traditional SEO stalwarts if you take advantage of this fortuitous circumstance. Good luck, but before you do anything at all, make sure to read this edition’s article entitled ‘Marketing at the Olympics’.

Michael Caselli, Editor in Chief

FREE SUBSCRIPTION email: [email protected]

Printed in the UK by: Pensord Press, www.pensord.co.uk

Published by: iGaming Business,

33-41 Dallington Street, London EC1V 0BB

T: +44 (0)20 7954 3515 F: +44 (0)20 7954 3511

www.igamingbusiness.com

© iGaming Business 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this

publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

by any means, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature

without prior written permission, except for permitted fair dealing

under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. Application

for permission for use of copyright material including permission

to reproduce extracts in other published works shall be made to

the publishers. Full acknowledgement of author, publisher and

source must be given. iGaming Business Affi liate Magazine is

published by iGaming Business Limited of 33-41 Dallington Street,

London, EC1V 0BB, UK. The views expressed by contributors and

correspondents are their own. Editorial opinions expressed in this

magazine are not necessarily those of the Publisher.

The Publisher does not accept responsibility for advertising

content. Cover image: istockphoto.com

Editor in Chief: Michael Caselli

[email protected]

Editor: James McKeown

[email protected]

Publisher: Alex Pratt

[email protected]

Designer: Jessica Croome

Production Manager: Craig Young

[email protected]

Production Assistant: Laura Head

[email protected]

Sales Manager:

Richard Wanigasekera

[email protected]

Senior Sales Executive: Ed Grundy

[email protected]

CONTENTS

http://tinyurl.com/igbaffi liate

@igbaffi liate

3

04 Events Calendar

06 Webmaster News

12 Backlink Profi ling

15 Opening Pandora’s Box?

16 Social Measurement and Monitoring

18 Building a Niche Olympic Betting Site

20 Negative SEO

22 How to Win With a One Man SEO Team

25 Interview: Jochen Dickinger, bet-at-home.com

28 Dealing with US Land-based Operators

29 Sportsbetting and the Olympics

30 Introduction

31 Strategies, Marketing and the Olympic Opportunity

38 Marketing at the Olympics

41 What’s Next for In-play Betting?

42 In-play Betting in Numbers: GamblingData Report

44 The Psychology of In-play Betting

46 The Fall of an Empire: a Full Tilt Poker Timeline

48 Poker Affi liate Forum: 2012 Forecasts and Predictions

50 The Mobile Gambling Market

52 Social: the New Business Paradigm

54 Online Gaming, iPads and Tablets

56 Integrate your Marketing

58 Turning One-off Customers into Repeat Business

59 The Industry’s Key Performers

64 A Year in Words

66 What is Ring Fencing?

67 Google Penguin Impact Examined

68 Data Centre: International Market Snapshot

70 Data Centre: UK Search Trends

72 Market Place

74 Nobody Asked me, But…

v

4

affiliate events calendar

iGB Affiliate JUNE/JULY 2012

Due to their popularity and wealth of information, analysis and discussion, conferences have become an integral part of the affiliate industry and a key communications bridge between affiliates and affiliate managers. Whether used for networking, education or just an excuse to meet up with friends, the affiliate conferences listed below provide all the tools you need to improve your business.

AffiliAte Summit eASt New York AuguSt 12 – 14

The Affiliate Summit was founded for the purpose of providing educational sessions on the latest affiliate marketing industry issues and fostering a productive networking environment for affiliate marketers. The event brings thousands of attendees from affiliates, networks, merchants, agencies, and vendors together to meet, network, do business and learn industry best practices.

www.affiliatesummit.com

CASiNo mArketiNg CoNfereNCe lAS VegAS JulY 24 – 26

The Casino Marketing Conference is a senior-level conference that addresses marketing challenges across all facets of the gaming industry, including commercial casinos, tribal casinos and racetrack casinos – virtually any gaming venue around the world. More than 100 different gaming operators and companies involved in the gaming industry attended the 2011 event from throughout North America and beyond.

www.casinomarketingconf.com

the igAmiNg CoNgreSS At g2e lAS VegAS oCtober 3 – 6

The Internet has been a game changer for the gaming industry. This conference will address the potential impact of Internet gambling legalisation in the US, and advise the gaming market on how to react to the changing face of the industry and take advantage of new opportunities. This information packed programme will appeal to existing offshore Internet gambling operators, as well as commercial casinos, Native American casinos, manufacturers and affiliates.

www.globalgamingexpo.com

bArCeloNA AffiliAte CoNfereNCe & igb eSpANA bArCeloNA oCtober 11 – 14

After a triumphant return to the Catalan capital in 2011, the iGB Affiliate events circuit will once again be visiting Barcelona for its 2012 autumn affiliate conference, the original home for this leading European affiliate event for the online gambling industry. This year’s event will also incorporate iGB Espana with a separate zone and conference session specifically for the Hispanic market.

www.igbaffiliate.com

K. BenzemaFrance

M. ÖzilGermany

X. AlonsoSpain

Friendship lasts for a lifetime.Victory for an eternity.

Welcome to the world’s biggest sports betting arena.

webmaster news

6 iGB Affiliate JUNE/JULY 2012

ExchangE WagEring DElayED in californiaThE ThoroughbrED oWnErs of

California (TOC) horseracing organisation

used a recent board meeting to delay a

vote on whether to authorise exchange

wagering for one year.

This most recent delay will come as a

blow to operator Betfair as it had hoped to

have its Betfair TVG subsidiary conducting

exchange wagering from San Diego’s Del

Mar Racetrack as early as June.

“The concept of exchange wagering

has been a polarising issue among

the stakeholders in California racing

and this action will give us additional time

to study this betting alternative

and consider if it is in the best interests

of the industry in our state,” said Mike

Pegram, Chairman for the Thoroughbred

Owners of California.

TOC President, Lou Raffetto, added,

“We will continue to seek alternative

revenue sources and have not slammed

the door closed on the concept of exchange

wagering. We are simply putting this

contentious issue on the back burner until

we can analyse it further and, hopefully,

build a consensus within the industry.”

The Thoroughbred Owners of California

took its decision despite strong lobbying

from Betfair TVG and the 75-year-old Del

Mar Racetrack with officials from the

California Horse Racing Board state agency

due to meet later this month in order to

discuss the issue.

“This is a bleak day for California horse

racing,” read a statement from Betfair TVG.

“Not only has the TOC turned down

millions of dollars of guaranteed revenue

in 2012, it has aligned itself to a track

ownership group with a long record of

broken promises. We look forward to a

fuller explanation of their motives because,

presently, any rational observer who takes

time to examine the full facts behind this

decision will struggle to comprehend it.”

bETraDar sEcurEs scanDinavian loTTEry DEals

sporTs anD bETTing-related data

supplier Betradar AG has signed deals with

Veikkaus Oy and Norsk Tipping AS for the

deployment of its Live Odds Service in their

betting offer.

Betradar revealed that it now serves

over 30 state lotteries on four continents

with its extensive product and service

portfolio while the Finnish and

Norwegian Live Odds Service agreements

follow similar arrangements with Tipp3

Austria and Sazka.

“We are very pleased to welcome

Veikkaus Oy and Norsk Tipping as

new partners of Betradar’s Live Odds

Service,” said Carsten Koerl, Chief

Executive Officer for Sportradar.

“We are convinced that together we

can shape future developments and play

an active part in the creation of an even

more exciting live betting offering for the

Scandinavian market.”

Tommi Jokinen, Live Betting Product

Manager for Veikkaus Oy, added, “Veikkaus

Oy was the first national bookmaker to

launch its live betting service back in 2004.

We have, since then, steadily increased

live betting turnover. In order to raise our

service to a whole new level we decided to

turn to market leader Betradar.

Veikkaus Oy is also the Finnish national

sportsbetting agency while Norsk Tipping

offers Norwegian customers a wide range

of lottery, sports and instant games.

“Norsk Tipping will launch a new

and innovative live betting product,

Liveoddsen, for Euro 2012,” said Ole

Morten Bratberg, Head of Odds

Compilers for Norsk Tipping.

“With Betradar’s Live Odds Service we

can achieve a great number and variety of

events per week for our customers. Thanks

to the support of Betradar during the

development and testing phase, we are now

looking forward to Euro 2012.”

purplEloungE.com goEs inTo liquiDaTion

afTEr TEmporarily suspEnDing the operation of its PurpleLounge.com

online casino and poker operation in May,

Media Corporation has announced that it

has now decided to liquidate the loss-

making service.

The London-based firm is also behind the

Eyeconomy.co.uk Internet advertising service

and stated on May 1 that PurpleLounge.com

had been “trading materially behind the

same period of the previous financial year”,

which will result in “increased losses for

the company as a whole”.

Media Corporation acquired Intabet

Limited appointed Adam Fraser-Harris to

the role of Interim Chief Executive Officer

in place of the outgoing Sara Vincent

and unveiling Phil Jackson as the

replacement for the departing Justin

Drummond in the position of Chairman.

“Since their appointment, Adam and

Phil have been conducting a strategic and

financial review of the enlarged group,”

read a statement from Media Corporation.

“It has become clear during the review

that the financial and trading position

of the PurpleLounge.com division is no

longer tenable due to historic operational

and financial failings within the business.

Accordingly, it is with regret that the

board announces that it has made all of

the staff within that division redundant

and will be instructing lawyers to file the

relevant documentation to put the relevant

companies into liquidation.” The statement

from Media Corporation revealed that it

will “specifically request” that liquidators

investigate the financial arrangements

within PurpleLounge.com and “review

the position as to player funds”.

“The board regrets any corporate

failings in the past and seeks to assure

shareholders that it is exploring routes

to try, in some way, to mitigate the

expected player losses, though this is

against a background where the group has

loaned well over one million pounds to the

division since its acquisition in October

of 2009,” continued the statement from

Media Corporation.

“The board does not believe that

the group will incur any further

liabilities in respect of PurpleLounge.com

over and above the realisation of the

above loan. Notwithstanding the difficult

decision it has made, the board believes

that it can put the poor trading of

PurpleLounge.com behind it and will

be working to bring the group back to

profitability as quickly as possible.”

webmaster news

7iGB Affiliate JUNE/JULY 2012

inTraloT goEs onlinE anD mobilE in souTh africainTraloT has launchED fixed odds

online and mobile betting sites in South

Africa under the JustBet brand. The

firm’s licence covers sports and horseracing

betting facilities in the area of Western

Cape in South Africa and Internet,

telephone and mobile betting for players

across the country.

“With our new websites we are offering

to our customers in Western Cape, and

countrywide, the opportunity to bet online

in a responsible way at any time and at any

place of their convenience,” said Dr. Yannis

Rondiris, Managing Director of Africa Sub-

Sahara Region of the Intralot Group.

“The trend-setter of the gaming sector

worldwide, Intralot, has brought innovation

to South Africa with pioneering gaming

solutions that satisfy all players’ needs

and habits.”

The sites, which went live on June 1,

offer markets on a broad variety of sports,

with emphasis on football (soccer), rugby,

cricket, tennis, and selected golf events.

licEncE issuancE unDErWay in spain afTEr monThs of delay and

negotiations, Spain has awarded its first

set of online gaming licences to operators

including bwin.party Digital Entertainment,

William Hill, Jaxx Ag, 888 Holdings,

PokerStars and Sportingbet.

According to a report from the Reuters

news service, 59 companies had applied

for Spanish online gambling licences

with officials in the nation hoping that the

attached 25 percent gross gaming revenue

tax will help the cash-strapped country rein

in its spiralling deficit.

Recent weeks have seen Spain raise

approximately €87 million in back taxes

from online gambling operators including

Sportingbet, bwin.party and 888 while the

nation’s Treasury Department revealed that

it was currently in the process of informing

successful candidates but would not yet

make the full list public.

Spain is one of Sportingbet’s main

European markets but the firm’s operations

there have been suspended since March

due to local company Codere winning a

legal injunction, which is a restriction the

London-listed company revealed it will now

apply to have overturned.

“The grant of the iGaming licence

negates part of the injunction, which

was imposed on Sportingbet’s Spanish

business on March 27, 2012 and thus

allows Sportingbet’s Spanish business

at Miapuesta.es to commence trading

when this regulated market opens,”

read a statement from Sportingbet.

nEvaDa givEs grEEn lighT To licEncE applicanTsTechnology provider International Game Technology (IGT), British bookmaker William Hill and online and land-based supplier Bally Technologies are the latest firms to have received a recommendation from the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) for an online gaming licence.

“We are honoured to be one of the first recommended providers by the Nevada Gaming Control Board,” said Patti Hart, IGT’s Chief Executive Officer. “This important step will allow IGT to better support our customers as they expand their offerings to their players to include interactive wager based entertainment. We are thrilled to be at the forefront of this exciting and necessary expansion of gaming in the US.”

William Hill made its initial foray into Nevada in spring 2011 when it agreed to purchase American Wagering Incorporated, Club Cal Neva and Brandywine Bookmaking LLC.

“We are extremely pleased to have the Nevada Gaming Control Board's recommendation for licensing,” said Ralph Topping, Chief Executive at William Hill. “We now look forward to our hearing with the Gaming Commission in two weeks’ time. Nevada regulators have been extremely fair and detailed in their assessment of our entry into the state, and we are grateful for their decision today.”

Bally Technologies was the first company to receive a recommendation from the NGCB for a supplier licence. “This is a historic day for Bally Technologies, for Nevada and for the gaming industry,” said Richard Haddrill, Chief Executive Officer for Bally.

“We are very grateful for the Board’s recommendation and are excitedabout being the first company recommended by a US state for licensing to offer online gaming products and services. We are proud to achieve yet another milestone in our 80-year history and look forward to further supporting our Nevada casino customers with our technology in this exciting arena.”

The final decision on IGT, William Hill and Bally will be made by the Nevada Gaming Commission on June 21.

gala coral rEporTs q2 groWTh

gala coral group Limited has released

its financial results for the second quarter of

2012 showing a three percent year-on-year

increase in turnover to £284.4 million.

May saw Gala Coral conditionally agree

a deal with Rank Group worth £205 million

that would see it offload 23 of its land-based

UK casinos with the London-based operator

revealing that its statutory gross profit for

the 12 weeks to April 7 grew by four percent

year-on-year to £220.6 million.

Gala Coral stated that its second quarter

earnings before interest, tax, depreciation

and amortisation improved by £300,000

year-on-year to £71.8 million despite “an

estimated £2.2 million negative impact of

weather” and “the movement of the Grand

National into quarter three in 2012”.

Regarding its remote gambling division,

Gala Coral declared that gross profits had

risen by four percent year-on-year to £17.1

million with active customers up 39 percent

for Gala Interactive and nine percent at

Coral Interactive while earnings before

interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation

improved by four percent when compared

to the same period in 2011 to £7.1 million.

“This quarter has seen another solid

performance by the group,” said Carl Leaver,

Chief Executive Officer for Gala Coral.

“The trading environment for leisure

and retail businesses remains difficult but

within this context all of our businesses

have delivered gross profit growth in the

quarter with growth over the first half

standing at five percent.

“Following the end of the quarter we

announced the proposed sale of our casino

division to Rank in a deal that will deliver

excellent value for our shareholders and

debt investors. This last month has also

seen the launch of the first of our new

websites, GalaCasino.com, with positive

early results.”

webmaster news

8 iGB Affiliate JUNE/JULY 2012

caEsars EnTErTainmEnT losEs cfoCaesars Entertainment Corporation has announced that Jonathan Halkyard has resigned as its Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer in order to “pursue an opportunity outside of the gaming industry”.

Halkyard’s responsibilities are to be assumed by other members of its senior management team including Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President Gary Loveman on an interim basis.

“We have an experienced team of senior leaders who will oversee the finance functions and ensure that we maintain our momentum as we execute on our growth plans,” said Loveman.

“We have made significant progress in improving our operations and balance sheet and will ensure these efforts continue. Jonathan has played an important role in managing the company’s financial position and in helping us return to the public equity markets earlier this year. We thank him for his service and wish him well in his future endeavours.”

ausTralian rEsulTs boosT sporTingbET

sporTingbET has announcED its

unaudited financial results for the three

months to the end of April and revealed

that total amounts wagered grew by almost

ten percent year-on-year to £555.9 million.

Sportingbet recently reached an

agreement with officials in Spain that

will see it pay €17.2 million in back

taxes in order to qualify for an online

gambling licence and declared that net

gaming revenues for its most recent

three-month accounting period dropped

by over 20 percent year-on-year to £43.4

million although its Australian business

experienced a 116 percent rise in net

gaming revenues when compared with the

same period in 2011 to £18.1 million.

Its Australian division also saw

total amounts wagered improve by 78

percent year-on-year to £369.1 million,

Sportingbet reported, while mobile

accounted for 34 percent of online net

gaming revenues in April.

Sportingbet blamed the “underlying

recession and regulatory uncertainty”

alongside “the imposition of new betting

taxes and the suspension of our Spanish

business” for its poor results in Europe,

which saw the total amounts wagered

decrease by 38 percent year-on-year to

£186.8 million while net gaming revenues

dropped 47 percent when compared with

the same period last year to £24.2 million.

Overall, Sportingbet declared that earnings

before interest, tax, depreciation and

amortisation before exceptional items and

share option charges for the three-month

period fell by 33 percent year-on-year to £10.8

million while its operating profit plummeted

by £10.4 million when compared to the same

period in 2011 to £1.6 million.

“Our Australian business, which

accounts for over 90 percent of our profits,

continues to go from strength to strength,”

said Andrew McIver, Sportingbet CEO.

“The integration of Centrebet is nearly

complete and our combined Australian

business grew net gaming revenues by 116

percent in the quarter. Europe continues to

be impacted by the recession and the effects

of regulation. As we have demonstrated

in Australia, the long-term benefits of

regulation are clear but take time to

manifest themselves.”

bWin.parTy EnTErs social gamEs markETbWin.parTy DigiTal EnTErTainmEnT

has announced that it intends to spend

up to $50 million over the next two

years to fund its expansion into the social

games sector.

The company has already agreed to

purchase “a number of assets” from

Velasco Services Incorporated and Orneon

Limited for $23 million, of which $17.25

million has already been paid, that should

speed its entry into the market.

bwin.party declared that these

acquisitions include “a number of existing

business-to-business social gaming

contracts” along with “significant software

engineering resources” that will form the

foundation of its new Win social games

studio complete with its own dedicated

development teams.

“We have chosen a ‘build and partner’

strategy, one that provides us with both

the resources and additional management

expertise to execute our planned extension

into social gaming, which is an exciting and

fast growing area of digital entertainment

that is the latest addition to our business

strategy,” read a statement from Jim

Ryan and Norbert Teufelberger, Co-Chief

Executive Officers for bwin.party.

“We are focused on building

a meaningful stand-alone enterprise

that will operate outside our core real-

money gaming business but which

will benefit from the group’s significant

resources and assets. Our investment

will enable us to launch Win, our dedicated

social gaming studio, with its own

development centre that will increase

our speed to market both for social as

well as mobile games.

“Intent on securing a meaningful

position in the marketplace, we expect a

€5 to €10 million impact to clean earnings

before interest, tax, depreciation and

amortisation in 2012 and 2013. However,

we are excited by the potential of this

new market and believe we can deliver

attractive returns in the medium-term

through relatively modest investment

funded from operating cash flow over

the next 18 months.”

The company also revealed that the

former CEO for Myopia, Barak Rabinowitz,

has been recruited to lead a specialist

management team for its new Win

social games subsidiary that is also set

to include Alex Usach, Dennis Hettema,

Dan Matkowski and Tilli Kalisky.

nEogamEs aWarDED Danish licEncEOnline scratch card and instant win games provider NeoGames has been awarded an operator licence by Spillemyndigheden, the Danish Gambling Authority.

“We have high hopes and are thrilled to enter the newly regulated market in Denmark,” said NeoGames Managing Director Shay Bar-Joseph.

“As we have learnt in other regulated markets, such as Italy and Belgium, there is a true market need for an offering that does not necessarily focus on hardcore casino, but rather combines a softer and more mass market approach. The fact that we already have a few customers that will launch their sites immediately is yet another demonstration of our strategy.”

NeoGames said that it has already signed deals with a number of skilled and experienced marketing and media companies to launch websites targeting the instant win and soft casino market in Denmark.

webmaster news

9iGB Affiliate JUNE/JULY 2012

gigi lEvy sTEps DoWn aT 888

gigi lEvy has stepped down from the

board of directors at 888 Holdings with

immediate effect. Levy served as 888

Holdings’ Chief Executive Officer for four

years before stepping down in April last

year “to pursue other interests”.

However, the 40-year-old subsequently

agreed to remain on the operator’s board

of directors until a replacement could be

appointed and was re-elected as a non-

executive director at the company’s annual

general meeting last month.

888 released a trading update

concerning its financial performance

over the first quarter of 2012 showing that

total revenues had increased 25 percent

year-on-year to $94 million while the

number of active customers for its casino

and poker operations had enlarged by 87

percent year-on-year to 566,000 due

to “successful new customer recruitment

and marketing initiatives”.

“Our focused strategy has led to another

excellent quarter with ongoing strength

in poker driving March to the highest

ever monthly revenues in the history of

888,” said Brian Mattingley, the recently

appointed Chief Executive Officer for 888.

“Poker has continued its robust

performance in the early stages of the

second quarter with our other product

areas seeing an expected return to seasonal

patterns. As stated at our full-year results,

there are significant growth opportunities

offered by the liberalisation of new markets,

which will take investment to realise.

We will continue to invest throughout

2012 in order to build market share.”

WEsT brom anD boDog parT company English Premier League football side West Bromwich Albion has ended its shirt sponsorship deal with online gambling firm Bodog Europe halfway through a two-year arrangement.

The rumoured seven-figure deal, which was unveiled in late-June 2011, was described at the time as the largest in the club’s 133-year history and saw the logo for Bodog replace that of emergency domestic repair service HomeServe on the team’s home and away shirts.

“We have enjoyed a wonderful relationship with Bodog,” said Mark Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer for West Bromwich Albion.

“It is a vibrant brand and has been a pleasure to work with over the course of what has been an important season in the club’s history.”

The club declared that it had enjoyed an “excellent working relationship” with the operator behind the online casino and sportsbook at Bodog.co.uk while its supporters had benefited from a ‘Baggie of the Month’ competition to win VIP match tickets as well as many betting initiatives.

“The mutual decision to part company with Bodog was not an easy one for the club based on the fact we were very happy with our relationship,” said Adrian Wright, Sales and Marketing Director for West Bromwich Albion.

“However, the club has been presented with an attractive new opportunity and Bodog was more than happy to accommodate our request to step aside and enable us to pursue a different avenue.”

Ed Pownall, Public Relations Director for Bodog, added, “We have very much enjoyed working alongside West Bromwich Albion during another successful season for the club as well as teaming up once again with Roy Hodgson. We would like to thank the fans, the club and the playing staff and wish them and the new club sponsor all the best for the future.”

gambling commission ToinvEsTigaTE social gamingThE uk gambling Commission

government watchdog will undertake an

investigation into the rise of social gaming

with a view to determining whether the

market needs to be better regulated.

According to a report from the Daily

Mail newspaper, social gaming has largely

avoided the attention of UK regulators as

games are usually played for free and as

such haven’t been viewed as real gambling.

“The key question is; is it gambling

or not,” read a quote in the Daily Mail

attributed to John Travers, Corporate

Affairs Manager for the Gambling

Commission. “We are monitoring

developments and assessing any wider

implications for licensing objectives.”

The Daily Mail went on to quote Travers

as saying that social gaming was “at the

perimeter” of current legislation.

The New iGB Affiliate website is now online, visit www.iGBAffiliate.com

DElaWarE housE approvEs inTra-sTaTE igamingThE us sTaTE of Delaware has taken another

step towards legalising online intra-state

gambling and expanding sportsbetting after

proposed legislation passed through its House

of Representatives on Tuesday evening.

The proposed Delaware Gaming

Competitiveness Act of 2012 made it

through the House Gaming and Parimutuels

Committee last month before being put

forward for a full House of Representatives

vote earlier this week and would authorise

Internet gaming for players over the age of 21

in the state under the control and operation

of the Delaware Lottery.

Supported by first-term Democrat governor

Jack Markell, the proposed legislation, which

is also known as House Bill 333, made it

through the House of Representatives by

a vote of 29 to 8 and would also authorise

online slots and table games while expanding

keno beyond Delaware’s three existing

casinos to at least 100 sites.

The bill is now scheduled to go before the

Delaware Senate for a vote and would, if

passed in its current form, additionally

authorise residents to wager on National

Football League (NFL) games in at least 20

sites other than casinos.

The Delaware Gaming Competitiveness

Act of 2012 was sponsored in the House of

Representatives by John Viola, who stated

that the proposed legislation represents

‘the next logical step’ in the evolution of the

state’s gambling industry.

The Act would enable state officials to

eliminate the $4 million in slot machine

fees currently paid by casinos in ‘The

First State’ while table gaming duties

would be slashed from $6.75 million to

around $3 million. In return for these

breaks, casinos would be asked to spend

an equal amount on traditional business

expenses such as marketing, capital

improvements and debt reduction.

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TRAFFIC

12

Knowing what your competitors’ backlink profiles look like is key to understanding how to outrank them in the SERPs and where to draw the line in your link-building efforts. However, before doing so you need to be able to differentiate the spam from the good, and make sure you are focusing on the right sites. This article will explain how to do so.

We have all been there: we have a

quick check at the SERPs for our money-

making keywords and a few sites seem to

be constantly outranking us. How can these

terrible sites outrank us? Why can’t we

beat them? These questions are more than

legitimate, and possibly the best starting

point for an effective SEO strategy and link-

building campaign. However, focusing and

trying to emulate the wrong kind of sites

can make you lose focus, time, money or,

even worse, your beloved money-making

websites, due to some serious penalties or

to the effects of Google’s recent Penguin

update. Therefore, the first step of every

serious backlink analysis should concern

the choice of our target competitors.

In this article, we will go through a

simple process you can follow to understand

who to compare yourself with, how to

quickly create the right competitors’ roster

and how to gather all the data you need to

finally identify your real competitors.

Step 0: What game are you playing?Nobody knows the answer to this question

better than you. Just like in poker, you should

choose your game carefully, depending on

your bankroll, on the amount of time you can

invest in it and on your attitude and skills.

●● How much money have you invested in

your affiliate business, and how much

money is it generating for you?

●● Are you one of the big guys running

your affiliate empire full-time or are you

running some sites in your spare time?

●● Are you a business-minded person

focusing on a long-term strategy or a

tech-savvy hustler looking for a quick

win, ready to burn a few sites each week

to start some new ones in no time?

By asking yourself these three basic

questions you should be able to understand

what kind of affiliate you really are, and

what range your competitors should

therefore fall into. If you are a mid-size

poker affiliate trying to rank for mid-tail

and long-tail keywords, you shouldn’t

consider big-brand poker rooms as your

direct competitors. On the other hand, if

you are a purely white-hat SEO (do they

still exist?) working for a big network of

trustworthy affiliate sites, you should not

compare the sites you are pushing with

sites whose domains.look.like-this-or-even-

worse-for-free.info.

Note: In this article, we will assume you

are running a relatively conservative, grey-hat

(after Google Penguin white-hat does not exist

anymore, in our field), mid-size affiliate

BACKLINK PROFILING 1: SERP REALITY CHECK – WHO ARE YOUR REAL COMPETITORS?

iGB Affiliate JUNE/JULY 2012 13

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site, generating a relevant amount of money

but not able to compete directly with the

‘big guys’ in terms of budget.

Step 1: Create your competitors’ rosterNow that you know what game you are

playing, the first thing you need to do

is create a list of the sites constantly

occupying the SERPs for your target

keywords, including your own. The

quickest way to do so scientifically is to

use a SERP checking/scraping tool like

AdvancedWebRanking1. Checking page one

rankings for a broad set of the keywords

you are getting traffic for (minimum

100); you should compile a list of the sites

ranking more often in top three, five and

ten (this is what AdvancedWebRanking

calls a Visibility Report). You should then

limit the list to approximately ten to 15 sites

and remove all big brands and off-topic

sites (online magazines, Wikipedia, etc) as

they are playing a different game and you

most likely would not be able to compete

with them anyway.

In preparation for the next steps, I

recommend exporting the list obtained

to an (Microsoft) Excel file, without

forgetting each site’s visibility score. I also

recommend adding each site’s IP address

to the list, so to spot possible relations

between different sites.

Note: AdvancedWebRanking will

automatically recommend you the sites

to show results for in your Visibility Report

(select all of them) but if you are using

different software you may have to manually

add them. A quick way to generate such

a list is to export all sites ranking in Google’s

top 100 for a few of the main keywords in

your niche, by customising Google’s SERPs

depth to 100 and using SEOQuake’s2

CSV export function.

Step 2: Get on-site data Now that you have your preliminary list,

you need to understand what’s happening

on these sites. Again, the tool that can

help you here is SEOQuake. Using

SEOQuake’s Check/Compare URLs and

domains function, you can quickly pull

the following information for each site:

PageRank, indexed pages and age. Once the

parameters have loaded, you should export

them to a CSV file and add the results to

the Excel file created at the end of Step 1.

Step 3: Get off-site data Once your on-site data research is complete,

it is time to get some raw backlink data. My

tool of choice in this case is MajesticSEO.

Using its Bulk Backlink Checker you

can easily and quickly pull all kinds of

quantitative data about your target sites’

backlinks. Also, in this case, I recommend

exporting all data to a CSV file and adding

them to your Excel file.

Step 4: Spam-hunting timeCombining the URLs from Step 1 with the

data from Steps 2 and 3, you should now have

a good overview of your potential competitors,

allowing you to easily spot odd profiles.

The main things you should watch

out for are:

●● Very new sites: a few months old and

already ranking for lots of keywords?

Most likely, the site will be gone just

as quickly as it came.

●● Very old sites: pre-2000 sites are either

authorities or ‘revived’ sites. Do you play

the same game they do?

●● Sites with high PR and very few

backlinks: possibly the result of a change

of domain. You should double check

their backlinks to see if you can find the

old site’s name, and its backlinks.

●● Sites with very few pages: 30 pages and

ranking for 100 keywords? A little too

ambitious to be normal.

●● Non-US sites with many .edu/.gov

links: do you see any reason why

a significant amount of US-based

educational and governmental

institutions should be linking to a

non-US gambling site? In most cases,

Google doesn’t – just give

it a bit of time and you will see the result.

●● Sites with high Ref.domains/IPs and

IPs/Subnets ratios: most of these sites’

links are coming from sites on the same

IPs or on the same Subnets… I doubt it’s

a bizarre coincidence.

Looking and each of these occurrences and,

even more so, looking at all of them as a

whole should allow you to easily identify

the most spammy competitors of the roster,

which you should filter out and have a

more careful look at.

This same data will also allow you to

easily see which competitors are far out

of your league in terms of age, size and

backlink volume. My recommendation is

to be realistic and remove them from your

backlink profiling targets.

Most of the time, you should end up

with just four or five sites left: these are the

sites you should focus your analysis on.

In the next installment of this series on

backlink profiling we will see how to check

your competitors’ backlink profiles, emulate

it and beat it. In the meanwhile, feel free to

ask any follow-up questions you may have

at [email protected].

Matteo Monari is the COO of BizUp, a result-driven Internet marketing agency specialising in competitive segments and international link building (http://www.bizupmedia.com).

With a background in Languages and Human Computer Interaction, Matteo has been a successful Internet marketing specialist for more than six years. During his career, he has worked for some of the biggest affiliates and operators in the iGaming world, helping them to successfully expand their businesses across Europe.

After heading the SEO department of Europe’s leading content-on-demand company, Matteo is now leading BizUp’s link building team, providing links in five languages to clients in more than fifteen different countries. You can follow him on Twitter as @matteo_monari and contact him at [email protected].

1http://www.advancedwebranking.com2http://www.seoquake.com


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James Lowery, Head of SEO at Latitude Digital Marketing, examines the impact of Google’s Penguin update on the iGaming affiliate community.

On ApriL 24 2012, Google changed

how its ranking algorithm scored links and

changed the game about what mattered in

SEO. Overnight, iGaming affiliates around

the world found that previously strong sites

with great rankings and high traffic had

nose-dived.

Google said the Penguin update was part

of its on-going high quality sites algorithm

but, at first, it appeared almost arbitrary.

Sites with great content saw their traffic

decimated, content websites that had

been built as a labour love were as prone

to penalisation as the most aggressively

optimised low quality sites.

Within the SEO community, consensus

about Penguin came quickly. Leading up to

April, Google made noises about changing

how it treated anchor text in links. Until

fairly recently, SEOs would recommend

that people get links using optimised

phrases as anchor text to make pages

appear more relevant.

Real people link using shortened

URLs, brand names, ‘click here’, or

‘more info’, and they link from places

like Facebook or Twitter rather than

networks of sites. Real people link

differently to SEO people, and as more

and more of the links online are made

by real people, this has made pure SEO

links look increasingly obvious and less

relevant to what matters when it comes

to recommendations and authority.

In an industry like gaming where

the prevailing wisdom is that it’s tough

to get ‘natural’ links, website owners

across the board got a kicking. Big brands

weren’t as badly hit as affiliates because,

generally speaking, brands tend to have

more people linking to them because

they’ve heard of them. People link naturally

to websites such as 888.com or Ladbrokes

because they’re in the news whereas

affiliate sites aren’t.

Penguin was so hard, so fast, and so

indiscriminate that it felt like a weapon,

and pretty quickly, people began to realise

it could be used as one. If links could hurt

your rankings, then surely they could be

used against others.

negative SEONegative SEO is not new. For years, it’s

been theoretically possible to harm other

people’s rankings as easily as you can

improve your own, and Google recognises

that. There was a clause in Google’s

Webmaster Guidelines that said: “There’s

almost nothing a competitor can do to

harm your ranking or have your site

removed from our index.”

That’s gone. Now it says: “Google works

hard to prevent other webmasters from

being able to harm your ranking or have

your site removed from our index.”

When asked about whether the latest

backlink considerations could be used to

attack a competitor, Matt Cutts and the rest

of the search quality and web spam team

at Google have cited Google’s guidelines or

stated that time spent on negative tactics

would be better invested in optimising your

own presence. That’s not reassuring.

Gaming is hugely competitive. For

a term like ‘casino’ which has around

half a million searches a month across

Google, the difference between position

four and position three could mean an

extra ten thousand visitors each month.

With a one percent conversion rate,

£50 per funded account means £5,000

in extra revenue.

Under penguin, websites where the

bulk of links have been focused on a single

anchor text variation have been hit hardest.

Big link networks like BuildMyRank have

been completely de-indexed, and old school

techniques like articles and directories

have been devalued. These techniques

are pretty cheap. If someone wanted to

harm your rankings, getting a thousand

directory links, spinning a hundred

articles, and buying a hatful of links from

a spam network would only cost a couple

of hundred pounds. Add automated blog

comments and forum posts using Xrumer,

and the numbers of links increase, but the

cost doesn’t. In weeks, all your hard work

could be destroyed.

What can you do?You work in a highly competitive field

where the odds are against you. On the one

hand you’ve got Google doing all it can to

promote trust – which ultimately means big

brands, and a marketplace where limited

investment can mean substantial returns.

Tracking the inbound links to your

site via MajesticSEO will give you an

early indication of what’s happening.

Big increases in the number of links

you weren’t aware of will tell you that

something’s happening, but it won’t give

you much time to react. Having a Google

Webmaster account will provide you with

a warning about links before a penalty, but

not much before.

The risk of negative SEO means that

you need to focus on the strength of your

site. You’re less likely to be affected by the

actions of others if your profile is clean and

relies more on brand rather than keyword

anchor text.

You need to look at your site and ask

whether it really adds value to users. If you

get penalised, a reconsideration request

to Google is much more likely to be

successful if your site adds value to the user

experience. If all you do is pull traffic in

and then push it on to another site, Google

doesn’t want you at its party. Legitimise

your website with frequently updated

content; go beyond just having affiliate

links – add links to useful resources, video

tutorials and social media services.

With Google Penguin, Pandora’s

Box is open, and negative SEO is more

of a reality than ever before. Gaming is

not about friendships – the stakes are too

high – and anyone who has a chance to

take an advantage, whether legal or not,

is going to be tempted to take it. Reading

this, you’re probably tempted too.

Don’t. You only make it more likely that

someone will go after you.

Opening pandOra’s BOx?


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16

Matthias Bachor of Searchmetrics explains how to monitor and measure the effectiveness of your social media.

Social Media iS a way of life. In one

minute, there are 30 hours of video posted

on YouTube, 100,000 Tweets, and six

million Facebook page views. Businesses

who don’t participate in social media are

missing out on communicating with an

increasingly large number of customers. In

fact, from 2009 to 2010, Facebook added

100 million users – a 145 percent growth

rate. By comparison, in 1997, the entire

Internet had only reached 50 million users.

However, the problem is that unlike

traditional marketing and advertising

or even search engine optimisation

(SEO) and search engine marketing

(SEM), it’s incredibly challenging to

measure the impact and value of social

media – especially when you consider

all the channels out there. Facebook,

Google+, Twitter, Delicious, LinkedIn

and StumbleUpon, just to name a few

of the top social media sites, all have

different users and different benefits. So

how do you compare and quantify social

marketing? Do you know the number of

Facebook ‘likes’ vs ‘shares’ vs ‘comments’

for your website? Do you know how this

compares with your competitors? Can you

combine this with detailed analyses of

LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Delicious, and

StumbleUpon?

Here are a few things to consider when

developing your social media measurement

and monitoring metrics.

1. Be sure you actually monitor and

measure your social media outreach.

According to eConsultancy’s State of

Social Report (November 2011), “41%

of more than 1,000 companies and

agencies surveyed had no return on

investment figure for any of the money

they had spent on social channels as of

October 2011.” Perhaps these companies

were exaggerating when answering the

question, but there are always ways to

measure some of the expense – whether

likes, or retweets, or Pins, or user-

generated content.

2. Understand what you need to measure.

One current methodology, proposed

in ‘MIT Sloan Management Review’

advocates tracking metrics in three

categories: brand awareness, brand

engagement, and word of mouth across

each social media application in order to

measure effectiveness. So, for example,

in measuring a Twitter account for

brand awareness you would look at

the number of number of Tweets and

followers. For brand engagement you’d

look at the number of followers and the

number of @replies. For word of mouth

you’d look at the number of retweets.

It’s a lot of information, especially when

you consider that you must measure

Social Monitoring

30 hours of video posted

on YouTube

100,000 Tweets

6 million Facebook

page views

The Internet Minute


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your blogs, Twitter accounts, social

bookmarking, forum and discussion

boards, product reviews, social networks

(such as Facebook), and video and

photo sharing (Flickr, YouTube,

and Pinterest). And each of these

categories has different variables

under the three categories.

3. Have a list of all the brands and

sites you need to monitor and know

that this list will change based on

internal and external factors. For

instance, when Motrin launched a

video that offended many mothers

in November 2008, the misstep was

compounded by a failure to monitor

and respond to the turn the program

had taken. Obviously, we are all the wiser

three years later, but just for the sake of

discussion, in retrospect the campaign

and hashtag #motrinmoms, generated

by outraged consumers, should have

been carefully monitored.

4. Be aware of all the accounts you need

to monitor. According to Altimeter,

companies now face an overwhelming

number of corporate owned accounts –

an average of 39.2 Twitter accounts, 31.9

blogs, and 29.9 Facebook accounts. If it

isn’t possible to reduce the number of

official social outlets, then they will need

to be monitored.

5. Integrate your social site monitoring

for each brand – combining tracking

data from relevant sites such as Twitter,

Facebook, Google+, Delicious, and

StumbleUpon. Without this capability,

social media marketing really becomes

just another shot in dark – an intuitive

sense, rather than a campaign based on

customer analytics. One way to do this

is by choosing a tool that provides one

social visibility score.

6. Remember it’s about more than just

‘converted customers’. If almost 60

percent of companies and agencies do

perform some sort of ROI tracking (see

point 1), it’s likely that some of them

have imposed old marketing constructs

– leads, converted customers – onto

social media tracking. Of course, most

people realise that this misses out on the

cost savings generated from providing

consumers with online forums to solve

usage problems, but it also misses an

important point that now the marketing

objectives themselves are being provided

through social media instead, it shifts the

related costs.

7. Calculate the business value of social

media. Just as you must consider ROI

beyond converted customers, you must

consider that the business value of social

media moves beyond marketing and

customer relationship management.

The MIT Sloan Management Review

conducted the 2012 Social Business

Global Executive Study and Research

Project and found four distinct areas

including marketing that benefit from

social media. The other three might

surprise you: innovation, operations

and leadership. According to the study,

these areas “are where social business

is creating significant opportunity and,

for some companies, significant value.”

The toy company Lego, for instance, is

launching a new product line based

on a suggestion from an adult – not

a child – via the company’s Lego

enthusiast website. Within 24 hours

of submitting the idea, the proposal

received 10,000 ‘votes’ from other

enthusiasts – which brought it to the

attention of Lego management who

believe that customer collaboration

is the key to innovative new products.

Growing importanceSocial networks continue to grow in

importance. Facebook now has 800 million

(and growing) active users. LinkedIn has

100 million users. More than 200 million

tweets are sent each day. However, social

media monitoring does take work – and,

ideally, dedicated resources. Although we

don’t know which social media platforms

or mechanisms will dominate in ten years,

we do know these communication tools

will only continue to gain importance;

recent studies show that over 80 percent

of organisations have indicated their intent

to increase investment in social media

moving forward. That’s a great reason

to spend more time on improving your

ability to be successful by managing,

monitoring and measuring it.

MatthiaS Bachor leads global marketing initiatives for search and social analytics software leader Searchmetrics. He brings over 14 years experience in online marketing, previously working with various Internet companies helping to build high-performance websites, managing online shops and optimising multiple campaigns. You can contact Matthias directly via email at [email protected] or via Google+ (https://plus.google.com/111526970413036813842).

USA 141.2

INDIA 68.1

INDONESIA 49.1

BRAZIL 45.4

MEXICO 25.6

Top 5 Facebook Countries by Users 2012 (millions)

Source: eMarketer


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18

As the UEFA Euro 2012 football

tournament concludes, the next major

sporting event on our horizon is the

summer Olympics in London. Creating a

website for a niche such as betting on the

Olympic Games can be as problematic

or simple as you make it, depending on

your approach and how you tackle the

process. Using Euro 2012 as an example,

it is possible to create such a niche site

and generate decent rankings, traffic and

commissions. This article will explain the

processes you can undertake to get a niche

site off the ground – especially for sporting

events that are either seasonal or occur on

two or four year cycles – and how to get the

most out of it. You can apply many of these

principles on future websites, whether

you want to try an Olympic betting site or

something like the 2014 World Cup.

Looking at the problem objectively,

the solution is somewhat simple: create

a website that is optimised, write really

good content and build links for it. The

good news is that, theoretically, niche sites

have less competition so by creating the

pages you have an easier chance of ranking

well. Conversely, if you tried to create a

generic casino portal, the competition is

tough; their sites are well established, they

have thousands of pages and thousands of

links… sometimes more. With a niche site

like Olympic betting, you still have a chance

to create a website, get content and links

and see traffic come in. You can also apply

these steps on other niche sites for future

sporting events.

Here is a breakdown of the steps towards

creating your niche site:

●● Creating a website

●● Content and conversion

●● SEO, link building and traffic

Creating a websiteWhen creating a website you are also

picking a topic; for the time being, we

are going to focus on Summer Olympics

Betting 2012. The sooner you can get your

website up and running the better your

chances of ranking for a topic. One month

before the event is very short notice but it

is still possible to pull it off, get traffic and

make some money. We will also assume

you are on a limited budget – there is no

point in spending too much money not

knowing what your ROI will be. So you can

buy a domain and hosting for around $50

for a year or go down the ‘freemium’ route

using hosted or blogging sites. Examples

include Live Journal, Wordpress.com or

Blogspot/Blogger. The advantage of using

some of these sites is that you can get traffic

from the networks by writing content and

not have to build a single link. At the time

of writing, Google is giving itself more

traffic via its own networks like Google+ and

blogspot. For simplicity, we’ll recommend

you start your site with blogspot.com.

Selecting a domainWhether you buy a domain or select one

on blogspot you should pick your domain

wisely. There are many arguments in the

SEO world about whether exact match

domains are important anymore but in

my opinion, they will always be relevant.

Whatever your domain is, you are either

building up a brand or you want the name

to be self explanatory. For example:

●● davesblogoftheday.blogspot.com

●● betonsummerolympics2012.

blogspot.com

Which is a better domain to select? With

the first one, I have no idea what the blog

is about but if I was searching for ‘bet on

swimming summer Olympics’ and I found

the second site, I’d probably think I’m at

the right place. Do it firstly for conversion

and secondly because there is still some

relevance for exact match domains.

Content and conversionThis is where a lot of people get their

websites wrong – I have been guilty of this

myself in the past. One person I have learnt

a lot from on this topic is Graeme from

AffiliateBible.com and, sure enough,

he has launched beteuro2012.org, which

is currently doing well.

There is nothing wrong with writing

content that doesn’t convert but if all of your

content is focused in this manner then none

of the traffic you do generate will convert

into sales. Let’s look at examples of bad

converting and good converting content.

Bad converting content●● Michael Phelps going for

more gold medals

●● Summer Olympic Games schedule

●● Medal count by countries

●● Most memorable Summer

Olympics moments

good converting content●● Bet on Michael Phelps

●● Where to bet on Summer Olympics 2012

●● Odds for total Olympic Golds

for Great Britain

●● Sportsbook promotions

for London Olympics

Again, there is nothing wrong with

writing content that won’t convert, just

don’t expect your traffic to click on any

of your banners or links. If a person is

searching for a schedule, they probably

don’t have any interest at all in betting and

the conversion rate on this topic is going

to be extremely low. That said, this is still

useful information to have on a website

especially for your visitors that do like to

bet and perhaps found your site through a

different page. Writing previews of events

will also get you traffic but, again, is unlikely

to improve your chances of converting.

The bad converting examples listed will

get more traffic but lead to almost no sales

while the good converting content examples

will generate less traffic but will contain the

depositing players you are looking for. Have

a look at beteuro2012.org as a great example

for content ideas and website structure.

One last note on content is to try to get

into the mind of what the user would want to

BUILDING A NICHE OLYMPIC BETTING SITE


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search for and what appeals to them. If you

have a page focused on ‘Michael Phelps Odds

for Summer Olympics in London’, then try

to write more content focused on things

that matter to the odds. So, rather than write

about the swimmer write more about his

chances of winning in relation to the odds

and/or list the best odds for Michael Phelps.

go nicheOlympic betting is a niche topic, but you

can go even deeper. Every country is a niche

you can focus on, using sites dedicated

on betting for all the events for a specific

country; such as athletes from UK, Canada,

Sweden, etc. Likewise, you can also focus

on individual games like swimming and list

all of the latest odds and betting options on

all the swimming events and swimmers.

Seo, link building and traffic

on-page SeoSEO is still a big mystery to many people

and it doesn’t need to be. If your content

is good then you’ll want to make sure that it

is presentable with well written page titles

and descriptions.

Link buildingLinks will help you rank and there

are enough options available where

you don’t have to buy them. In general,

just try to focus on social media links

and sites that are as relevant as possible.

So, for Olympic betting as a topic,

you’ll want links from sites that talk

about the Olympics, sports and betting/

gambling and, increasingly, the links that

are becoming more influential in 2012

are those from within social media.

There are now hundreds of these sites

but you can simplify things by sticking

to the main ones: Twitter, Facebook,

Google+ and YouTube. There are also

many sports and gambling webmaster

forums available as further sources of

links and information. When approaching

link building, it is also worth noting

that link exchanges are not as helpful

as they used to be and could actually

be harmful. In addition, Google+ ‘shares’

are having a bigger impact on ranking,

which is no real surprise given that it

is Google’s own social outlet, but guest

posting is still the way to go.

trafficSEO shouldn’t be your only means of

traffic. Social media outlets can be treated

like search engines themselves and they

offer the chance to gain more traffic

without having to be dependent on a search

engine. Ironically, a site that has a stronger

social media presence tends to get better

search rankings as a result.

For a while, too many webmasters cared

about getting a nofollow link with a high

page rank regardless of if that link came

with relevant traffic. Go for links or places

that can get you relevant traffic regardless

of whether the link is nofollow or not.

If you need a coach to help with your website, contact John WrIght from gaffg at [email protected].

iGB Affi liate JUNE/JULY 2012

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20

Within the recent blog network penalties handed out by Google and the WMT (webmaster tools) warnings that many affi liates will have received, we have seen undisputed proof that being linked-to from the wrong areas can get you penalised. The real issue is ‘what if you’re innocent?’

YoU’Ve BUiLt GReAt content, you’ve

interacted with the community and built

a website to be proud of, only to have

a competitor throw a load of ‘spammy’

network blogroll links amongst other

fi lth to your site resulting in you being

penalised. So what do you do now?

Submit a re-inclusion to GoogleIn all honesty, this approach is likely to get

you nowhere. Google receives thousands of

these every hour and if it ever gets to yours,

the fact that you’re in gambling will probably

weigh against you. I’ve tried this with some

of the world’s biggest brands (inherited

issues) and that was after we’d cleaned up

an awful lot of the rubbish. The response

was still something of a disappointment.

the 301 quick fi xThis isn’t necessarily an awful idea

assuming that you can get away with it in

terms of branding. Many businesses are

unwilling to take this approach but if you’ve

picked up a penalty and lost your traffi c

then what do you have to lose? It should

be noted that this probably won’t work if

you are switching from ‘example.com’ to

‘example.net’, but changing from ‘example.

com’ to ‘examplepro.com’ works most of

the time. Don’t just take my word for it:

“I’ve seen a bunch of these and weirdly, the

301s do seem to (often) remove the penalty

in cases where it’s a true penalty.” Rand

Fishkin – SEOmoz.

the Google WMt warning emailIgnore it! If you do anything about it

then Google knows that you have been

building links. By admitting to this you

are guaranteeing your penalty; if you

ignore it, play dumb or blame it on an

SEO company then you are far more likely

to survive than if all of the unscrupulous

links disappear overnight (in addition to

which you risk taking out links that are

helping you). If you still get penalised

then react; send an email asking for

help because you don’t know what you’ve

done – then act. Following that, try asking

nicely to be re-included – although

as per my previous point, it may not

be the quickest solution.

Pre-empting the penalty Pre-empting the penalty is the best

course of action, and many affi liates

ask me what they can do to stop

competitors from negatively attacking

their site. Unfortunately, the

answer is ‘nothing’, other than not

appearing on their radar which

means not ranking, rendering the

whole point moot. But, there are

a couple of steps you can take to

make yourself a less appealing target.

1. Stop buying bad linksOne of the key issues is that you bought

bad links to begin with. Pre-empting a

manual penalty is much more likely to

be successful than trying to get out of

one after you have received a warning.

But, you need to keep buying links, right?

Maybe, but if you are going to do it then

you need to be much more careful than

previously. Make sure you time your link

building efforts together with your social

media – you will also need to consider

LIVING IN THE WORLD OF NEGATIVE SEO

then react; send an email asking for

help because you don’t know what you’ve

done – then act. Following that, try asking

nicely to be re-included – although

as per my previous point, it may not

Pre-empting the penalty Pre-empting the penalty is the best

course of action, and many affi liates

ask me what they can do to stop

competitors from negatively attacking

their site. Unfortunately, the

answer is ‘nothing’, other than not

appearing on their radar which

means not ranking, rendering the

whole point moot. But, there are

a couple of steps you can take to

make yourself a less appealing target.

1. Stop buying bad linksOne of the key issues is that you bought

bad links to begin with. Pre-empting a

manual penalty is much more likely to

be successful than trying to get out of

one after you have received a warning.

“ Google receives thousands of (re-inclusion requests) every hour and if it ever gets to yours, the fact that you’re in gambling will probably weigh against you.”


TRAFFIC

metrics much more than you used to.

Think about deep link ratios, brand vs non-

brand anchor split, tld type, IP location,

theme, image link proportion and quality

split (SEOmoz’s authority is a reasonable

indicator) and remember that the quality of

the content containing the link is paramount.

Be smart, check out a site which hasn’t been

overly optimised to compare against your

own efforts and see what’s natural.

2. Clean up the bad linksStart working on this now as you will

see the benefits later. This task can be

somewhat daunting and you may have

to be prepared to shell out some cash in

‘admin fees’ to the more unscrupulous

webmasters out there. There is no quick

fix with this; best to just analyse your link

profile, sift out all of the bad links and get

contacting the webmasters. But, this will

again make you a less appealing target.

Social is the way forwardWhilst gambling might not be the

easiest of products to get people talking

about, it certainly isn’t the hardest.

Remember that Google knows when your

links went live so if you got a huge amount

of links but nobody mentioned anything

socially, what sort of message does that

send out? Probably that you bought them.

After all, if people aren’t even willing to

tweet about something, why would they

link to you? The fact is that they wouldn’t,

so you need to tie-in link building off the

back of the social boom and the easiest

way to do this is by incentivising it. So

think competitions where you enter by

tweeting, or articles where you’ve asked

for input from relevant people in the niche

– promoting deep page content which you

build your links to will do you far more

favours. And remember: a good social

profile covers a multitude of sins.

Mike LitSon has been in Search Engine Optimisation for several years and specialises in competitive markets, predominantly iGaming. Having worked with many major players in the sector he has a solid understanding of what goes into making a successful campaign, both on and off site. Focusing mainly on SEO, Mike is also very well versed in SMO, PPC, Affiliate Management and Email Marketing believing that none of the skills are mutually exclusive and that having strong knowledge across online marketing channels can provide unique opportunities. Mike currently heads up the Blueclaw iGaming and affiliate department.

“ Pre-empting the penalty is the best course of action… it is much more likely to be successful than trying to get out of one after you have received a warning.”


TRAFFIC

22

This article looks at what I would consider to be an optimised process for a small in-house SEO function. Having built SEO departments of all sizes ranging from large scale iGaming specialist agencies through to small affiliates, the one thing I can be sure of is this: performing SEO in-house is the best way forward. We won’t go into the many reasons why this is true here, as we’ve covered it in great detail in previous articles.

Let’s Look at the most typical of

affiliate SEO departments… the lone

gunman. You’ve employed or contracted an

SEO expert to work on your affiliate site(s).

In a department of one, process is crucial as

the lone SEO will we tasked with executing

everything; this may even include running

PPC and maintaining a social media

presence – so they’ll be under a

great deal of pressure with everything

falling on their toes.

Firstly, who do you hire?Typically, there are a few ways

to approach this:

1) You hire a strategist: someone with

experience and a proven track record in

delivering results through the SEO or

integrated search strategy. If you’ve hired

the right SEO, he/she will be expensive

and this leaves you with a problem –

who will execute the strategy?

2) You hire a delivery guy: ‘the doer’,

the hard working, attention to detail guy

who delivers the strategy. These guys are

far cheaper and if you hire a diamond,

they will ultimately get you to where

you want to be. But who will devise and

oversee the strategy?

so what needs to be done?1) Strategy and research

2) On-site SEO

3) Ongoing off-site SEO

4) Ongoing review of strategy against KPIs

(Key Performance Indicators)

Naturally, a delivery guy will need

a well-researched strategy to work with

and will need a process to follow. They

will bridge the gap between the strategy

and the on-site development, as well

as between the strategy and the off-site

development (link building).

An experienced set of eyes will be

required to oversee the strategy – only with

experience can an optimiser get a feel for

the kind of subtle adjustments required

along the way. Things such as wrong page

ranking for a specific term, or introduction

of new target phrases into the strategy are

just two examples.

one man seo teamThe most effective way to operate with

a one man SEO team is to hire the

delivery guy and outsource the strategy

development and on-site optimisation,

as this is usually a one-off task. So unless

you’re a big affiliate, you will probably not

want an expensive SEO on your payroll,

when your budget would be better spent

on link building. The experienced SEO

may oversee the delivery of the strategy

on a monthly basis and make any required

adjustments by Skype – you can hire

the experienced SEO either on a retainer

or on an hourly rate, but if you can swing

a partially incentivised performance-related

deal, then do so.

outsource your technical seo – if correctly implemented, it will stay donePlatforms like WordPress and Drupal

can be optimised out of the box. Bespoke

developments may need more work –

get the experienced technical SEO

involved as early in the development

process as possible. Don’t wait until

the build has been completed if you

can possibly help it.

Your lone gunman will be best

leveraged through managing relationships

with various suppliers of links and

coordinating the SEO recommendations

with the web developers – never become

dependent on a single link network no

matter how well shrouded they are from

detection. Spread the risk.

Always assign your in-house guy a

female alias. In all seriousness, if you’ve

hired a male, create the outward facing

persona of a female. In every instance

where I have implemented this strategy,

this has proven to:

1) Get higher response rates from webmasters

2) Get better prices on link deals

In every SEO department I’ve built,

this (for me at least) has become a

standard approach, and it works very

well in iGaming.

Note: Do not use this technique

for an Arabic Forex site. It will have

the reverse impact.

In the outreach process; you should

soften your opening email to encourage

an informal dialogue. This is probably

one of the most powerful techniques for

optimising your outreach process.

One of the key metrics you should

monitor (outside of the usual response

rate) is response to flirt ratio – the use of

flirtation in email communication with

suppliers of links is proven to drive the

price down massively.

You may be wondering why I would

want to share some of these techniques

and lose a competitive advantage. The truth

is that there is another step we also use

which maximises response to flirt ratio and

renders the negotiating webmaster unable

to negotiate (an ace card up my sleeve,

which I may even share with you at the

Barcelona Affiliate Conference).

There are a number of tools out there

for identifying quality links. I personally

use LinkResearchTools.com; a powerful

suite of link tools for identifying links

which also helps find the webmaster’s

contact details. For recording link deals

How to win witH a one Man Seo teaM


TRAFFIC

and rank tracking I use Raven Tools. This

should be all you need and more for a small

yet effective SEO operation.

Before commencing with seo…Does your site already have a history?

Before investing in any activity you should

eliminate the possibility of there being

hidden penalties on your site.

This is a simple procedure which can be

completed in one step and provide valuable

insight usually within four days. Simply

put, it involves redirecting your domain to a

subdomain and waiting to see if any of your

rankings move up.

Often, the backlink profile of a site

will reveal abnormalities that are likely

to trigger subtle penalties – an experienced

pair of eyes should recognise these issues

at a glance.

the biggest key issue with seos working in-house is this…They lose their bottle. Or to put it another

way, they can become crippled by fear. This

is another good reason to outsource the

expertise in the case of one man teams.

In larger teams where you bring the

experienced SEO in-house, the best

way ensure your in-house guy remains

confident is through SEO counselling. He

will be far more effective if he has access

to an external SEO, be it just to discuss

his thoughts or bounce ideas off. This is

massively overlooked and is crucial when

the SEO becomes isolated.

As ever, the key to success is just to get

on with it as soon as possible. Don’t wait

for the perfect moment to take action. The

perfect moment never comes.

Reward your one man seo team – set goals and share the success Your SEO strategy will mutate as

opportunities appear, so be prepared

to adapt to things like fortunate double

listings, magically appearing low hanging

fruit, favourable algorithm updates,

unfavourable algorithm updates and

penalties. These will become apparent as

your experienced SEO reviews performance.

Sometimes, a keyword may appear

to get stuck; if this happens, follow the

money, adapt and refocus on what will

generate the easiest wins. Again, the

experienced SEO will guide you on what

can be realistically achieved.

Finally…Beware of charlatans – the SEO industry

is full of snake oil salesmen. Be careful. If

you do need an SEO evaluation, feel free

to contact me personally. I’d be more than

happy to help.

Remember...●● Follow your instincts when hiring expertise

●● Don’t believe the hype

If you have any specific questions email

me directly at [email protected]

or follow me on http://twitter.com/paulreilly

or stalk me on http://foursquare.com/

user/paulreilly

With over 12 years’ experience in search engine optimisation, PauL ReiLLy is one of the most experienced and influential professionals in the industry. With a wealth of experience in highly competitive sectors, Paul has worked on many of the UK’s largest brands in the toughest spaces, both in-house and at large reputable search marketing agencies. In most recent years Paul has focused and specialised in online gaming.

Paul is the founder of MediaSkunkWorks, a new and pioneering service provider which dissects the traditional agency model, building world-class, hand-picked specialist teams either in-house or as outsourced think tank and creative problem solving services.

50%revenue sharefor all new affiliates!

At myBetPartners we believe every good partnership should start with a fair share. That is why we offer new affiliates a 50% revenue share for the first three months. Find out more at http://partners.mybet.com

mybetPartners is the partner programme for mybet.com - one of the leading sports betting brands in Europe licensed in Malta and Germany. [email protected]


THe Here and now

“The future is always interesting,” says Jochen Dickinger, Board member at bet-at-home.com AG, but that nothing is of more importance to his company than the present. iGB Affiliate talks to Dickinger about a successful 2011, the impact of the affiliate sector on the company’s wider business and what we can expect from the sportsbook for the remainder of 2012.

Let’s start with the background to your affiliate program and how it directly benefits your overall business. We started the affiliate program in

November 2005 and, since then, we have

been welcoming new partners every day.

In addition, I believe that part of the reason

behind the program’s success are the

family values that are employed throughout

every sinew of the company. Integrity and

openness is very apparent resulting in

people being very secure about where they

stand both within the company and as a

strategic partner.

In terms of how it has affected

the business, with the aid of our

affiliate program partners we have

managed to significantly increase brand

awareness in recent years, establishing

the bet-at-home.com brand as a reliable

partner in the gambling industry.

The program therefore makes a

significant contribution to the

continuation of our growth curve.

The last couple of years have seen significant growth for sportsbetting businesses. What sort of year was 2011 for bet-at-home.com?

2011 was a successful year for the company.

We achieved sales in betting and gaming of

around €1.78 billion, which is in comparison

to €1.48 billion the previous year. Gross

gaming revenue (betting wagers less betting

winnings), the key number in online gaming,

increased to approximately €73 million in

contrast to €66 million in 2010. At our

offices in Austria, Germany, Malta and

Gibraltar, we have 200 highly qualified and

motivated staff and we have 2.8 million (as of

May 2012) registered and satisfied customers.

When we listed on the (Frankfurt) stock

exchange in December 2004, we embarked

on an important journey into a successful

future. In this way, we demonstrated that

we intend to remain true to our growth

strategy into the future. Indeed, we have

recorded double digit annual growth

percentages, so this considerable increase

in value will also be reflected in the

medium-term share values.

Returning to the affiliate program, besides trust, what are the keys to building successful relationships between affiliates and affiliate programs?Firstly, you need to offer a strong product

and a solid affiliate program. Without

these, it simply wouldn’t work. For both,

you also need a fast, user-friendly website.

No less important are excellent customer

service and speedy pay-outs. Our affiliates

also recognise that bet-at-home.com

customer lifetime values are particularly

high, something that enables us to have

long-standing relationships which, in turn,

strengthen trust. Ultimately, affiliates are

happy when they feel that a program is

rewarding them for their efforts and is

likely to continue doing so for the long run.

What strategies do you employ in attending to the maintenance and development of your program for the future market? Every day we are putting our heart and soul

into the constant expansion of our offer. To be

even more attractive to our partners, we also

depend on their support and, of course, we

appreciate questions, ideas and suggestions

of all kinds. Because partner service has

top priority, we have a separate department

solely to service the needs of our partners.

The future is always interesting but

much more important to me is what is

happening now for the company. At the

moment, we offer a €500 welcome bonus

across all our products to new affiliate

partners. For the UEFA European Football

Championships in Ukraine and Poland,

all our partners have the incentive of

a championship bonus: i.e. every new

customer delivers 60 percent revenue

share. Furthermore, we offer our partners

new promotion materials such as banners,

especially developed for the tournament

and with click warranty. Attractive

promotions are continuously being

thought up to try and promote our

products further, but I feel that the

quality of our products actually do a

very good job in promoting themselves.

“ Ultimately, affiliates are happy when they feel that a program is rewarding them for their efforts and is likely to continue doing so for the long run.”

INTERVIEW


What is your outlook for the remainder of the year ahead both for your company and the wider industry? We still have many plans for 2012

and, as in the past, we will continue

to offer our affi liate partners attractive

promotions in the future. Furthermore,

we expect considerable growth for the

2012 fi nancial year. Another signifi cant

increase in customers as a result of

continued, intensifi ed marketing

activities and the forging of even

closer and, above all, long-term links

between the customer and bet-at-home.

com, should lead to an increase in gross

revenue of at least ten percent. We are

applying for more and more licenses in

regulated markets and intend to structure

massive growth in the non-regulated

markets as well.

The culmination will be the European

football championships in Poland and

Ukraine, where we have recently gone on

air with our new advertising campaign.

As in recent years, we will again increase

our marketing expenditure in 2012:

we anticipate spending €45 million,

so against this backdrop, we expect a

renewed surge in growth.

We have been following a clear growth

strategy and have, to date, recorded annual

growth fi gures consistently in the double

digit range. This development is sure to

refl ect in the medium-term share value.

We also have teams of technologically

innovative staff looking to push and develop

our products and services to a wider range

of customers than ever before. We will also

be looking to grow our already extensive

affi liate team to enable us to offer an even

more personal touch, catering to each

affi liate’s specifi c needs.

Finally, what advice do you have for someone just starting in the industry?Be prepared to work hard every day, listen

to other people (both colleagues and

affi liates) and learn from your mistakes.

“ We anticipate spending €45 million in 2012, so against this backdrop, we expect a renewed surge in growth.”

INTERVIEW

StanJamesAffiliates.com

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INSIGHT – OPINION

28

As the interest and excitement grows around the potential for one or more US states to provide a regulated environment for online gaming, affi liates are once again looking to the American market as a place to do business. The question is; who wants them?

WITH NO LEGAL framework in place

for the type of relationship that a licensed

US operator can have with affi liates,

this is an area of their marketing that

has not received much attention. Many

operators that we speak to are unsure of the

defi nition of an affi liate and, in too many

cases, affi liates are seen in a negative light.

For those that do understand the value, the

majority don’t know where to start; how

to fi nd affi liates, what they need, how to

manage them, and they certainly have no

idea on how to compensate them.

Lest you think that this discussion on

affi liates is premature, not only can (and

should) land-based operators be using

affi liates to drive traffi c into their casinos

today but, in my opinion, the affi liate

community itself needs to be proactive

in this regard so that it is not left out

of the equation. If the casino operators

understand the true value of affi liates

to their land-based and proposed online

operations, their ability to extend their

brand and their reach, and in increasing

their overall business and revenues, then

they would also be interested in seeing this

‘advertising’ channel open to them.

Publications such as iGaming Business

are working to educate the stakeholders, as

are experienced online gaming consultants,

but while the operators are learning,

regulations are being proposed and written

and this lack of knowledge extends into

the regulatory bodies and governments,

as we are seeing in Nevada. As I wrote in

a previous article, the proposal to include

affi liates as an “…interactive gaming service

provider that provides products, services,

information or assets to an operator of

interactive gaming and, therefore, receives

a percentage of gaming revenue …” would

likely result in affi liates having to be

licensed; an onerous, extremely restrictive

and (likely) costly process.

Affi liates do not want to have their

businesses controlled by the state; I dare say

this goes against their very nature. Affi liates

can simply be viewed as another marketing

channel, and you can be sure that the

newspapers, radio stations, magazines and

TV stations are not licensed vendors.

Moving forward, assuming that you do

have the opportunity to become a licensed

affi liate for a land-based operator, you

will want to look at the business you are

doing now, and decide if you need to make

any changes. Certainly, it would stand

to reason that regulators would frown

on you promoting non-regulated sites,

especially those taking US action. You

may be required to provide a full history

of your business, your fi nances, and your

experience in this space.

When dealing with regulators, remember

that telling the truth is always the best

option, even if you have some history of

earning revenues from US player activity.

If there is any record of those earnings,

they will more than likely be found,

and the application could be declined.

My hope is that affi liates, operators and

regulators all understand that this is a new

beginning, and that the focus should be on

building respectful and mutually profi table

relationships between operators and

affi liates moving forward.

FORMING AN AFFILIATE RELATIONSHIP WITH US LAND-BASED OPERATORS

GIAN PERRONI is with American iGaming Solutions, (www.americanigamingsolutions.com), a Las Vegas-based consultancy that works with land-based North American operators to provide them with an effective online presence. He is also the owner of AffPoint, (www.affpoint.com), the new central hub for the iGaming affi liate marketing industry. Gian is a frequent speaker at international gaming conferences and a regular contributor to gaming publications. Skype: gianperroni; email: [email protected].

SportSbetting and the olympicS

Sponsored by:


feature SPortSbetting and the olymPicSSponsored by:

Structuring campaigns around major sporting events is nothing new to sportsbooks and affiliate marketers but, to date, the Olympics hasn’t been an event that has influenced much investment from either party. Will this summer’s Games change that philosophy?

We are currently in the middle

of the UEFA Euro 2012 Football

Championships in Poland and Ukraine

with European sportsbooks bracing

themselves for a month of fervent

betting activity that they hope will

eclipse that of the preceding two major

international championships.

Indeed, many within the industry

will point to the 2008 UEFA European

Championships in Austria and Switzerland

as the catalyst for the online sportsbetting

explosion. Many more observers will point

to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South

Africa as the true reference point for what

is now driving revenues in the sector to ever

higher levels: mobile betting.

Both of these major football tournaments

have served as landmarks in the

development of the sector thus far; firstly

for online and latterly for the mobile

segment, with both sharing a common

denominator – in-play betting.

What the current European

championship should provide operators

is an opportunity to see how these

sufficiently matured channels work

together and whether this tournament

can provide yet another springboard

to further growth for the sector.

the OlympicsThe advance of technology and the

propensity of people to bet on a wider

range of sports due to greater accessibility,

air time and, notably, an increase in live

streaming has many believing that the

London Olympics will present the best

betting opportunity of any Summer

Games to date.

Our panel of experts will share their

views on this in the feature on the opposing

page and will differ slightly in opinion.

Operators may continue to see London

2012 as a market laden with one-off bettors

that will prove difficult to retain given their

passing interest in the event, making any

developed strategy requiring investment a

risk for the bookmaker.

The contrasting argument is that the

Games could influence the UK public in

the same way that the Grand National

inspires many people to make their

solitary bet of the year; generating lots

of one-off bets on specific events like the

100m final, the men’s football tournament

and on British gold medal hopes. It may

not be a market flush with potential for

retention, but it can provide another touch

point with a demographic that rarely

engages with betting activity. As James

McMaster points out in the following

feature, “if the Olympics doesn’t take

off as a betting medium this year then

it likely never will.”

restrictive landscape Another key area that will be discussed

in this feature is how limited operators

and affiliates are in promoting and

marketing around the Olympics in

accordance with the guidance set down

by the ‘Organising Committee’. Gambling

Law specialist, Peter Wilson, will provide

an overview of the guidelines that prevent

certain associations with the Olympics

and the London 2012 brand which

makes for essential reading for all those

implementing campaigns around this

summer’s Games.

We will also look into some statistics

and psychology behind the driver of

sportsbetting’s meteoric rise: in-play betting.

London 2012 – a Change of phiLosophy?


featureSPortSbetting and the olymPicSSponsored by:

To discuss the specific opportunities that exist around this summer’s Olympics and major sporting events in general, iGB Affiliate sat down with Harry Bowden, Commercial Manager at Oddschecker, James McMaster, Business Director at KMi Gaming Consultancy and Keith O’Loughlin, CEO of Boylesports Online.

Before we get to the Olympics specifically, what are some of the key facets to marketing effectively and sensitively around major sporting events for a) operators and b) affiliates? James McMaster (JM): For operators, it’s all

about good planning to make sure that they

focus on the events they believe will gain

them the most exposure in order to acquire

new players and generate revenues during

those periods. To give you an example,

certain sponsorship opportunities on the

large affiliate and media sites are booked as

far as 12 months in advance so marketing

teams have to adapt to this or risk missing

out completely. The major sporting events,

such as Euro 2012, are ultra competitive

for operators so they all seek ways to offer

unique messages to players, such as special

bets, new promotions and a wide selection

of markets. These are all ways of attracting

new players.

The next challenge is retaining these

new players and giving them reasons to bet

with them again, therefore increasing their

lifetime value. In certain markets, such

as the UK, which are well established and

saturated with so many operators competing

for the same traffic and a finite number of

new players, retention is absolutely vital

and companies are beginning to focus on

this more than ever before.

Keith O’Loughlin (KO): The key to

retention is an engaging CRM strategy

which focuses on customer segmentation

and appropriate targeting. It is unlikely

that these customers care about the 3.40 at

Haydock on a Saturday so it is important

to tailor your message for the audience you

are speaking to.

JM: The key for affiliates is converting

players so they aim to promote the operator

brands who they believe are most likely

to sign up new players around key events.

StrategieS, Marketing and the OlyMpic OppOrtunity



For example, certain operators traditionally

convert very well when it comes to football

bettors so affiliates would prefer to

promote them than a horseracing-focused

bookmaker during Euro 2012. The other

consideration for affiliates, certainly those

on revenue share deals, is which operators

are best equipped to retain the players and

maximise the revenue they derive from

them – therefore, increasing the earnings

for the affiliate.

As a major sportsbetting affiliate, what sort of strategy do you employ to maximise the opportunity of a major sporting event, and how is your Olympic strategy different to other, more traditional betting events such as Euro 2012? Harry Bowden (HB): We’re focusing

heavily on PR ahead of the Olympics and

we’re looking to provide a betting context

to the top Olympic stories. We do use

PR widely as part of our daily marketing

activities, however, we feel the Olympics is

a unique opportunity to build upon this and

consequently the Oddschecker brand.

What are some of the most common mistakes that campaigns around these events seem to make? JM: In my experience, poor planning is

often the cause of mistakes. Exposure is at a

premium and so the marketing teams have

to be planning months before these events

to make sure they reach as much of the

market as possible. There’s no point having

the best campaign in place if players don’t

know about it. As long as you have the right

message in front of the right audience at the

right time, you shouldn’t go far wrong.

What would you say has prevented bookmakers in the past from investing more readily in markets for events at the Olympic games – was it/is it simply a case of low market appetite? KO: There are a number of items at play

here. Firstly, large scale sporting events

are too infrequent and suffer from poor

terrestrial TV coverage to warrant resource

investment in the trading product and

marketing of the betting opportunities. Two

weeks of Olympic betting on sports that few

people are well informed of does not make

it a lucrative proposition for bookmakers.

In addition to this, the appetite for risk is

low. If full-time specialist resources are not

warranted you will find yourself reacting

to news slower than the sharp players in

the market – this is a natural occurrence

as specialist trading resources who live

and breathe the product (as with football,

racing, etc) are not on duty 24/7. On this

basis, the ratio of sharp money to casual

money is so distorted that making it a

profitable proposition from the sportsbook

perspective is difficult.

Additionally, bookmakers’ risk appetite

is closely aligned to market liquidity and

efficiency, hence, we will regularly take bets

of €20,000 or more on football games.

Liquidity and efficiency does not exist on any

large scale on Olympic sports, for that reason

they rest just above novelty market class.

Would you say that because of its location and where technology is in terms of access and availability to place bets on the move, that this summer’s Olympic Games represents more of a betting market than it has before?

“ Large scale sporting events are too infrequent and suffer from poor terrestrial TV coverage to warrant resource investment. Two weeks of Olympic betting on sports that few people are well informed of does not make it a lucrative proposition for bookmakers.”



HB: Without a doubt, the London Olympics

will be far bigger than any previous events,

certainly from a betting point of view. The

constant coverage across the BBC and the

locality of events will make a whole variety

of sports accessible to the nation.

What we continue to see week in week

out is people betting with their hearts. The

recent Jubilee celebrations highlighted how

patriotic Britain is and we expect massive

interest for the likes of Jessica Ennis, Tom

Daley and Sir Chris Hoy. Traditionally,

punters would not bet on sports like

athletics, diving or cycling, but given the

sheer interest, expectation and patriotism,

that is likely to change.

JM: It’s definitely the most engaged I’ve

known the industry when it comes to the

Olympics or any other athletics event and,

whilst it won’t drive anywhere near the

same revenues as Euro 2012, it could still

be an important period of acquisition. The

time zone will make it accessible to a truly

global audience and, as you say, there are

more ways for punters to play than ever

before and live betting has grown at an

enormous rate over the past few years so

everything is in place for the operators.

As my colleague Keith McDonnell said

at this year’s LAC conference, if the

Olympics doesn’t take off as a betting

medium this year then it likely never will.

KO: The general public doesn’t switch

on to betting opportunities based on the

location of the event, so for that reason

there is very little unique about the betting

opportunity presented by the Olympic

Games being held in London.

Most people who will watch the Olympics

will have a passing interest, and I’m not sure

that passing interest will be enough to get

them to pull out their wallet to have a bet en-

masse. The major events such as the 100m

sprint will always attract bettors, and womens’

beach volleyball will attract other interested

parties, but I suspect not for betting.

HB: The technological developments

will, of course, play a massive part. The

rise of mobile has been quite staggering

over the past 18 months along with the

integration of Facebook and Twitter.

The fact that all three are intertwined

together makes it far easier for the public

(regular/non regular punters) to stay

informed and far more likely to place

a bet than seen in previous years.

What sort of betting activity are you anticipating from this summer’s Olympics? HB: This Olympics seems to be a bit of an

unknown quantity. Typically, it hasn’t been

a priority within the sporting calendar, but

there does appear to be a strong amount

of interest from our sportsbook partners.

There a hundreds of markets already

available, with loads more expected closer

to the time. Whilst it won’t be nearly as

big as Euro 2012, it is certainly a welcome

addition to a normally quiet period.

KO: If we can break even in trading

and register some new genuine punting

accounts then we will call it a success.

Our expectation is that the punters will be

heavily weighted to one-time-only bettors.

We would love to be pleasantly surprised if

this is not the case.

HB: I think the higher profile sports

such as football and tennis will certainly

attract a lot of money. But what everyone

really wants to see happen is for Usain Bolt

to win the 100m in a new world record

and the home grown British athletes to

romp home. With this in mind, I think

there will be plenty of action on athletics in

general, notably the 100m and Women’s

heptathlon, plus cycling and diving.

“ It’s definitely the most engaged I’ve known the industry when it comes to the Olympics or any other athletics event and, whilst it won’t drive anywhere near the same revenues as Euro 2012, it could still be an important period of acquisition.”



Do you think there will be markets that might surprise us – sports that may become more ‘bet-able’ markets due to their exposure? HB: Most definitely, I have already

seen markets available for the likes of

handball and water polo. I’m not too sure

of the scoring for either, but I’m sure

odds compilers across the country will

be swatting up to make sure they are

on top of everything.

Before the Olympics are upon us, there is a certain European football tournament in Poland and Ukraine to contend with. This is clearly a more lucrative event for sportsbooks but how challenging is it preparing for multiple major events in one year so that one campaign doesn’t overshadow another? KO: This year we have a reasonable flow

from one event to the next. The Euros will

finish, followed by Wimbledon, then the

British Open Golf followed by the Olympics

and then back into the Premiership season.

As our business has evolved, we have

become very tuned to planning several

campaigns to run in short succession on

small and large scales. That is the fantastic

aspect of the industry that there is constant

challenge and variety of events coming

thick and fast throughout the year.

Beyond promoting offers on markets around the Games, how important is content in any marketing strategy for an affiliate? Should they be looking to provide unique content or draw in news feeds from existing authorities considering that they don’t want to be taking on the likes of the BBC for quality of content, unless they have insider knowledge?

JM: This is a really good point because

I’ve been in many marketing meetings

in which this topic has been discussed.

My personal view is that there are so

many dedicated news outlets, both

online and on TV, that it is near

impossible for affiliates and operators

to provide unique content to their players.

Many have tried but I’m not convinced

they’ve offered any real value to their

users. In my opinion, there are other areas

they’d be better off focusing on in order

to engage people and drive traffic. An

RSS feed is a simple way to offer news

stories without the need for internal

resource and there are many good

ones out there.

What are the benefits and, conversely, the negatives of creating a standalone site to house your Olympic campaign? Does it help or hinder particularly if you want to try and retain many of the new players you’ve acquired through the process? JM: The main benefit for an operator is that

it offers a streamlined product to punters

actively looking to bet on the Olympics that

is very easy to navigate and offers all of

the relevant bets and markets in one place

– all good for converting and engaging

players. The downside is that it can often

make it a disjointed process when you

then try to cross sell your players to other

products as the messages and branding

can be inconsistent. As there are very few

high profile athletics events in the sporting

calendar, operators simply have to get them

betting on other sports and products in

order to retain them long-term and increase

their margins. I don’t expect to see too many

operators offering standalone Olympic sites

but instead think they’ll look for ways to

integrate the content into their main site.

What sort of year has 2012 been so far for sportsbetting considering the growth of the product matched up with the contracting of the economy and disposable income? Is it still a sector on the rise? HB: The contracting economy doesn’t

seem to be impacting the gambling

industry, the sector is undoubtedly on

the rise. We’ve seen a substantial increase

in traffic to the site and, in-turn, an

increase in sign-ups to partners. Betting

“ If bookmakers are to have as much success on mobile as they have had online then it is essential that affiliates are at the heart of it.”

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KEITH O’LOUGHLIN is CEO of Boylesports Online. Keith joined Boylesports in 2011 as Head of Online. In 2012, he was appointed CEO to the newly restructured Boylesports Online Business division. His vision is to develop Boylesports.com to be the best sports, games, betting and entertainment business on the planet.

JAMES MCMASTER is the Business Director at KMi Gaming having joined from Betting Partners, where he managed the affi liate program for one of their largest clients, the Bodog Brand. James is one of the industry’s most respected affi liate managers, having been responsible for some of the most competitive and challenging betting markets at Sportingbet prior to joining Betting Partners.

is becoming more and more prevalent

within society; you are hard pushed to

watch a football match without two or

three different bookmaker adverts. It’s

certainly a competitive market, but if

you invest within it then you should

reap the rewards.

KO: I can’t speak for the industry,

but 2012 has been an exceptional year

of growth for Boylesports. We have

had a major investment in people,

technology infrastructure and our web

and mobile sportsbook which have seen

high double digit growth year-on-year

for us. We surpassed all internal records

during the Cheltenham and Aintree

Grand National festivals for bets taken,

and bets per second and our infrastructure

suffered no outages, which wasn’t the

case for many bookmakers.

If you were advising a start-up sportsbetting affi liate on how to approach this summer’s opportunities, given that we have the Euros shortly preceding the Olympics as well as the annual major events, what sort of strategy would you suggest to them as a rookie in the space? JM: My advice is to try and focus on

the areas in which you feel you can

offer something new and unique to a

saturated affi liate market – although

that’s far easier said than done. With so

many events coming up it’s tempting to

try and promote them all, but some may

fi nd that they convert more effectively

and increase their levels of traffi c by

picking out certain events and offering

more detailed, interesting content.

This will also have long-term benefi ts

from an SEO perspective.

Keith, how do you foresee the growth of sportsbetting continuing into the next few years and how can the affi liate sector ensure that they are central to that development?

KO: I think that mobile access will

change the way we all look at sportsbetting

over the coming 24 months. I think

affi liates will need to evolve somewhat

to more of a partnership with bookmakers

on a sustainable basis rather than just

provide a feed of new accounts. When

industries go through great change

some non-core business areas like

affi liates can be vulnerable, so the more

value affi liates can bring to bookmakers

the better they will navigate through all

metamorphic phases that might be lying

in wait around the corner.

In terms of future growth, where do you see the market going in the next fi ve years – will we see mobile and in-play betting almost completely eclipse the desktop consumer? HB: The mobile web will never fully

replace the desktop computers, however,

it will become the principle medium for

transacting and communicating with

customers. In-play betting and mobile

betting perfectly complement one another

and I believe the growth of mobile betting

will directly impact the growth of in-play

and vice versa.

Whilst there are certainly advantages

of betting on your mobile, I cannot

envisage the desktop coming to an

end. People spend so much of both

their working and social lives in front

of a computer that it seems unlikely that

it will die out. I’m sure the likes of Apple

or Facebook will bring out another

state-of-the-art device in the near future

which will change the landscape within

which we work.

How integral will affi liates remain in the product’s growth? HB: If bookmakers are to have as much

success on mobile as they have had online

then it is essential that affi liates are at the

heart of it. Mobile is certainly a priority of

ours and we are very aware that we need

to remain part of the customer journey

whether it’s online or on mobile. Overall,

I think affi liates are having to play catch up

and it is up to us to envisage future advances

in technology so we are not left behind.

HARRY BOWDEN is the Commercial Manager at Oddschecker.com. He joined the team in November 2011 after nearly three years at Sky Bet. This month Harry looks ahead to the London 2012 Olympics and the impact that it is likely to have for the online betting industry.



As marketing opportunities go, the London 2012 Olympics may stand out as a prime vehicle for sportsbook marketers to take advantage of, but the reality is that due to restrictive advertising regulations, great care must be taken in the development of any campaigns associated with Olympic events so that they do not contravene guidance set down by the ‘Organising Committee’. Peter Wilson, iGaming law expert and Founder of Peter Wilson Legal LLP, explains what the regulations prevent advertisers from doing at this summer’s Games.

The combined effecT of restrictive

Regulations on advertising during the

Olympic and Paralympic Games1, and

the registration of a number of Games-

connected trademarks, creates a marketing

equivalent of martial law. Breaches of

the Regulations are criminal offences

punishable by criminal prosecution and

fines of up to £20,000 per offence in the

Magistrates Court or even higher if tried

in the Crown Court. Infringement of

trademarks may result in civil suits with

injunctions and huge claims for damages.

No doubt there will be a real temptation

for some businesses to try to find a way

to use the draw of London 2012 to their

own commercial advantage. Apart from

The National Lottery, which is a major

contributor to the Games, there are no

other gambling operators who are sponsors

or partners. With so many sports to bet on

(although views about the level of likely

interest differ markedly), many operators

and affiliates must be looking to gain

some material benefit by mentioning the

Olympics on their websites. Doing so would

raise a number of complex legal issues

due to the strict intellectual property rights

protecting various registered Olympic

marks including the various Games’

logos and the words “London 2012”, “Get

Set”, and “Olympic” and even simply the

number “2012”.

The London Organising Committee of

the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games

Limited (‘the Organising Committee’) has

produced some guidance (available on the

www.London2012.com website) in which

they warn against any suggestion of any

association or link with the Games that, in

their view, would extend to the use of any

“athletic images” or anything similar that

could be intended to evoke the Games. The

guidance emphasises the need to avoid, if

at all possible, any use of words or imagery

to single out bets on the Olympics that

might imply some branding association.

The recommendation is that bets on the

Olympics should be marketed in the midst

of other regular sports bets, without any

special treatment. It has to be said, however,

that the guidance is not the law; it is the

Organising Committee’s interpretation

of the law and so may be a little on the

cautious side for obvious reasons. It is

certainly a document that should be taken

into account by every sportsbook marketing

department and affiliate manager.

flash mobsAs to advertising offline, the Regulations

severely restrict any advertising by non-

sponsors during the Games and they

establish advertising free zones around

each Olympics event. The Regulations

are a reaction to the growth of ambush

marketing and other non-sponsor

advertising at previous Olympics and

other notable sporting events such as the

World Cup. Remember the 36 attractive

models in orange mini-dresses that caused

a distraction at the Netherlands v Denmark

match during the FIFA World Cup in

South Africa in 2010? If you do, that is

the point; as the Dutch brewery, Bavaria,

succeeded in creating world-wide TV

coverage and publicity at a very limited cost

much to the chagrin of Budweiser, which

probably paid huge sums of money for the

privilege of being the official beer sponsor.

It was not the first time Bavaria used a

‘flash mob’; in the 2006 World Cup in

Germany, 28 male supporters wearing

orange Lederhosen in a similar stunt ended

up having to sit in their underwear after

Police intervention. At least they got to see

the game. The British Police will have a

similar right to seize offending articles used

in illegal ambush marketing, be it mini

dresses or Lederhosen.

Should the organisers of flash mobs or

other ambush marketing campaigns be

punished by the criminal law? The 28 or so

sponsors of London 2012 would probably

think so as they do not want anyone

freeloading on the back of a total £700

million investment in securing a tier one,

two or three sponsorship deal. The contra

view is that the government has no place

criminalising what might otherwise be fair

brand competition in order to protect the

commercial interests of huge corporations

such as McDonald’s, Coca Cola and Visa

with what some might characterise as a

leading sponsor advertising cartel over

a largely publicly funded international

event – particularly when the cost of any

sponsorship of the Olympics is totally

outside the reach of most businesses.

controversy What makes these Regulations so

controversial is their draconian nature and

broad application. Regulation 6(1) provides

for a protective advertising free zone

around the Games, stating, “A person must

not engage in advertising activity in an

event zone during the relevant event period

or periods.” If a company or individual

does so, then they could be committing an

offence unless they had authorisation from

the Organising Committee, applications

for which should have been submitted by

the end of March 2012. Directors or other

officers of a company will be assumed to be

responsible as having arranged the illegal

advertising and could have committed

an offence, unless they can show that

they had no knowledge of a breach of the

Regulations and took all reasonable steps

to prevent one. The prohibition has various

Marketing at the OlyMpics

1The Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Advertising and Trading) (England) Regulations 2011 (“the Regulations”). The Regulations came into force on 2 December 2011 and last until 11 September 2012 There are equivalent regulations for Scotland and Wales.



limited exemptions including shop signs

and the like for existing traders, that is

unless they adapt or change their usual

business offering, for example, to associate

themselves with the Games.

There are 25 of these event zones

covering all the places where competitive

events are being held including Earls

Court, the ExCel, Wembley Stadium,

Wimbledon, Horse Guards Parade, and the

whole Olympic marathon route, to name

but a few. There is a postcode checker on

the Olympics website www.London2012.

com so you can search to see if you are in

an event zone. If so, you might want to

check that your advertising will not breach

the Regulations and that goes for all your

advertising, whatever the delivery channel.

The event periods, referred to in the

Regulations, are from July 23 to August

13, 2012 for the main Olympics and from

August 28 to September 9, 2012 for the

Paralympics. During these “closed periods”,

all advertising hoardings, temporary

signs, etc, will have to be covered over,

no advertising banners or balloons can

be flown, no street trading can take place

(unless authorised), and no flyers or other

material distributed. Potentially, you cannot

even have a group of friends all carrying

the same unofficial branded bottles of

soft drink in an event zone in case it is

considered illegal ambush marketing.

The Regulations are specifically directed

at ambush marketing campaigns, described

as campaigns intended specifically to

advertise goods or services, or advertise

persons who provide goods or services

(i.e. the brand), in an event zone during

the relevant event periods. Advertising

includes displaying an advertisement

and that covers a variety of possibilities

including, in the case of an ambush

marketing campaign, carrying anything

displaying an advertisement, wearing

advertising attire or displaying an

advertisement on an individual’s body –

so forget the painted models.

But as an individual you can still go to

the games wearing your favourite branded

shell suit; as there is an exception for

individuals who are displaying advertising

provided they do not know or have

reasonable cause to believe that they are

part of an ambush marketing campaign.

And frankly, it seems unlikely that the

Crown Prosecution Service is going to take

on anything other than the most serious

cases and it should not busy itself looking

for companies to prosecute which might

cogently argue that any breach was not

intended. The real target is likely to be

either the orange clothed or similarly mass

branded mobs that are trying to harness

the goodwill attached to the Olympic events

and the mass audience from blanket TV

coverage, or the crafty worded comparative

advertising undermining the branding of

an official sponsor.

Having said all that, unless for once,

history is not to be repeated, there will

still be unofficial advertising during the

Games (as there has been in almost every

other Games in recent history) and some

businesses might think it worth taking a

risk with ambush marketing campaigns.

The IOC and the Organising Committee

have extracted a high price for the privilege

of being a Games sponsor (£40 million

to be a tier one), so they are duty bound

to ensure that the Police enforce the

draconian laws available under the

Regulations. The IOC says that any

company that tries to create a false

association with the Games, or gives the

impression that they are an official sponsor

is, “cheating Olympic athletes, Olympic

Games’ organisers and Olympic fans”.

In truth, the IOC will not tolerate anyone

trying to undermine the value of what

is a multi-billion dollar business.

This article is not intended to constitute

legal advice and is merely general comment

that may not apply to your circumstances,

therefore, you should formally engage the

assistance of a lawyer for advice before taking

business decisions in relation to the matters

covered in this article.

“ The guidance emphasises the need to avoid any use of words or imagery to single out bets on the Olympics that might imply some branding association. The recommendation is that bets on the Olympics should be marketed in the midst of other regular sports bets, without any special treatment.”

PeTer Wilson is a regulatory lawyer and the founder of his own niche firm Peter Wilson Legal that specialises in gambling and business investigations. The gambling practice has been built up over 20 years expanding from advising UK land-based businesses to an international iGaming practice with clients in over a dozen jurisdictions. Peter is known for his comprehensive industry knowledge and sensible, practical advice. He lectures widely and provides training and consulting.The firm has a wide ranging and varied business investigations practice and over the years Peter has represented both companies and individuals facing civil and/or criminal investigation by government agencies. His experience over the years includes dealing with allegations of fraud, tax evasion, bribery, money laundering and breach of statutory obligations in matters of gang master licensing, food safety, environmental law, trading standards and financial services.

ContactTel: +44 (0)208 364 1270Cell: +44 (0) 7880 734 260Email: [email protected]

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Lee Richardson, ONEworks Limited’s Director of European Sales, looks at today’s in-play betting market and how it is likely to develop into the future.

It’s ceRtaInLy no exaggeration to

describe the recent growth of ‘in-running

betting’ (IRB) on sports as explosive. IRB

can be defined as any sports bet struck

after the start of the event itself, with up

80 percent of all betting revenues made

on that event now being struck by sports

bettors ‘in-running’.

Just five years ago, the position was

probably the exact reverse, with 80 percent

of revenues being struck before the event

got under way; that’s an extraordinary

change in player behaviour, and few people,

frankly, successfully predicted the seismic

change seen since the UEFA European

Football Championships in 2008.

Nonetheless, it’s been easy to see

why consumers have taken to this new

opportunity, and the fundamental reasons

for its growth.

Live streamingFirstly, we’ve seen an explosion in the

amount of live sport being broadcast,

whether on satellite TV, over the Internet

or via the tailor-made live streaming many

operators now provide their customers on

their sites.

This live-streaming sector for

sportsbetting was embryonic just a few

years ago; now, the largest sports-rights

aggregators are making available more

than 5,000 live sports events, up nearly

50 percent from just two years ago,

with football, tennis and basketball

collectively taking the vast majority of

events and betting revenues. This live

sport is often shown at convenient times

for consumers and is now increasingly

accessible through mobile, tablet and other

apps, all of which has contributed to the

sector’s extraordinary growth.

Additionally, we’ve seen a huge uplift in

both the range of markets and the ‘depth’

of subsequent prices offered on those

markets, aided by smarter trading tools.

A good indication of the sector’s growth

can be seen in the figures published by

two listed European operators, who started

providing analysts and investors their

IRB share of total sportsbetting revenues

in 2006, realising the potential of this

buoyant new sector.

Then, it represented considerably

less than ten percent; in 2011, that share

had risen to over 50 percent, and both

listed operators forecasted this to be

“above 75 percent” for 2012 and beyond.

The all-important gross win margins

have improved too, from perhaps two

to three percent five years ago, to a far

healthier five to six percent today, achieved

largely through operators relying less on

guesswork, and employing better tools and

more accurate prices.

so where does this sector go from here?One could argue that despite all the creative

efforts of the operators, the sports bettor is

still something of a creature of habit.

A typical high-profile football match

(still clearly the most preferred sporting

event for IRB) shown live on TV, would

generate the vast majority of its total

in-play betting revenues on the traditional

‘outright’ 1X2 market.

In Europe, for every Euro bet during

the 90-minute event, perhaps 60 percent

would be on the 1X2 outright market,

30 percent on the ‘over-under’ goals

markets, and the remaining ten percent

on the many other markets available

throughout the game.

In Europe at least, consumers clearly love

playing on the two markets they know and

love, on their favourite sports, almost to the

exclusion of everything else. That position

would be similar for the Asian operator and

Asian player, albeit on the Asian handicaps

with the ‘over-under’ markets dominating.

Encouraging the consumer to expand

their betting repertoire is a constant goal for

operators, as this typically leads to margin

improvement, and it seems certain that

this will continue to dominate operators’

plans for the next decade. Having up to 90

percent of IRB bets made on just two core

markets is something operators will surely

want to adjust over the next five years.

Whether that’s a continued search for

new betting markets that better piques the

interest of players, or by growing the share

of ‘other’ markets through better promotion

remains to be seen, but the search will

no doubt continue. Adjustment of the

pricing of those events will also likely

be a future requirement for operators,

and a development from suppliers.

One notable feature over the

past few years has been the gradual

‘commoditisation’ of pricing, particularly

on the key markets of the number one

IRB sport, football.

The increasing use of automated trading

tools and the collation of market prices

through their associated algorithms have

tended toward homogenous prices, thus

removing any obvious differentiation for

operators who use the same tools, and

perhaps tending against customer loyalty.

Those operators who choose to use

software suppliers with human traders to

support their trading platform and trading

tools will surely be at an advantage as

they continue to find sustainable ways of

offering their customers value, and beating

their competitors in the ultra competitive

in-play market over the next five years.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR IN-PLAY BETTING?

Lee RIchaRdson is Director, European Sales at ONEworks Limited and can be reached at [email protected]. www.oneworks.com; [email protected].


FEATURE SPORTSBETTING AND THE OLYMPICSSponsored by:

IN-PLAY BETTING BY NUMBERS

Sports offered 1 or more times in the 14 day trial – by companyFigure 1

The biggest growth driver for sportsbetting in recent years has been the proliferation of in-play betting, widely cited as the new battleground for European sportsbooks. Here, we examine the industry’s fi rst in-play betting report, carried out by GamblingData, which provides a unique insight into the companies at the forefront of the real-time wagering phenomenon that is driving huge growth across the sector.

IN BECOMING THE new battleground on which sportsbooks now compete against each other both online and via mobile, in-play betting has established itself as the key revenue driver for most, if not all adoptive sportsbetting operators. However, until recently, there had been little independent market research that could allow us to better understand the impact of this dynamic market trend on the nature of betting and the strategies that operators now implement as a result.

The fi rst research of its kind to surface was released in September 2011, published by GamblingData in conjunction with Sporting Solutions. The ‘In-Play Betting Report’ sought to examine the growth of live betting in two parts: a qualitative analysis of the in-play offering of fi ve leading sportsbooks in tandem with an examination of the impact that in-play is having on the sector itself.

Since then, GamblingData has issued an updated version (Winter 2012 In-Play Tracker) that comprises eight companies over an extended 14-day period to gain a more developed insight into the average number of markets and events that today’s betting operators are offering.

The reportIn providing statistics from GamblingData’s Winter 2012 In-Play Tracker (IPT), we can see that live sports streaming has become an integral component of today’s in-play betting offerings; the report detailing how the volume of events streamed by the leading sportsbook operators is matching the rate of overall in-play growth.

In its inaugural quarterly IPT report, GamblingData found that Bet365 led the way in terms of both sports covered and events offered within its in-play proposition, while William Hill was observed to offer the most in-play markets per event.

Taking place between Saturday November 26 and Friday December 9, 2011, the survey compared the in-play offerings of eight of the leading sportsbooks – 12Bet, Bet365, bwin, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, Sportingbet, William Hill and Unibet – within specifi ed ten minute betting windows during the 14-day survey period. The survey was designed to capture information during two ‘football Saturdays’ as well as successive UEFA Champions League and Europa League weeks, but also more off-peak periods during the remainder of the period.

The survey found that Bet365 came top in terms of sports offered, with the Stoke-based fi rm offering a total of 20 sports, ahead of Ladbrokes and Unibet, which each offered 15 sports, bwin with 13, Paddy Power and William Hill with 12, Sportingbet with 11 and 12Bet with 10. (See Figure 1: Sports offered one or more times in the 14-day trial.)

Bet365 also led the competition by some distance in the key battleground of the number of events offered, racking up 534 in total. Sportingbet was next in line with 358 events over the same period ahead of bwin with 317, Ladbrokes with 313, William Hill at 297, Paddy Power with 280, 12Bet at 279 and Unibet at 277. (See Figure 2: Number of events – by company.)

However, when it comes to in-play markets offered per event, it is William Hill that emerged at the top of the pile. The company’s average number of markets per event within the 14-day survey came to 53, well ahead of the 30 recorded by its nearest rival in the metric, Ladbrokes. Next best was Sportingbet with 25, Bet365 at 24, bwin with 23, Paddy Power at 22, Unibet with 11 and 12Bet with an average four markets per event. (See Figures 3 and 4: Number of events and average markets per event – by company.)


FEATURESPORTSBETTING AND THE OLYMPICSSponsored by:

Number of events – by companyFigure 2

Number of events (excluding fi rst two days of survey) – by companyFigure 3

Number of events and average markets per event – by company

Figure 4



Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies at Nottingham Trent University, provides a brief psychosocial overview of in-play betting.

For those oF us who watch football

on the television in the UK, it is almost

impossible to watch a game without seeing

the many gambling adverts alerting us

to the fact we can now bet on over 60

in-play markets while watching the game.

Should I wish to, I can bet on everything

from who is going to score the first goal,

what the score will be after 30 minutes of

play, how many yellow cards will be given

during them game and/or in what minute

of the second half the first free kick will

be awarded. What’s more, it has been

estimated that 2012 will see 3,000 live

events a month on which punters can bet.

There are also sporting events that may

come to the fore in the in-play market (with

betting on cricket and tennis being ones

that I would pick out to rival the dominance

of the football markets).

Demand and technologyOver the last decade, there appears to have

been a marked shift in gamblers wanting

instant 24/7 gratification when they bet

or gamble. They also want to be able to

gamble instantly on anything they desire,

so gaming operators have to offer a vast

array of games and markets on which the

gambler can bet. Consumers also want

to be paid their winnings instantly (i.e.,

immediately after the result or outcome

is known). Technological developments

such as cloud computing mean that

instantaneous gambling by (and for) the

masses is now a reality. Live betting is

going to become a critical activity in the

success of the future online and mobile

gambling markets. It is already showing

that it can be a major revenue generator

for anyone in the sportsbetting market (for

any company in the sportsbetting market,

it is quickly turning from a betting option

to a betting necessity). It also means that

gaming companies are having to outsource

much of their trading and event generation.

The move towards cloud computing in

the gaming industry is already underway.

In 2011, Bet 365 adopted a cloud computing

solution to reduce the latency of its core

betting system as a way of improving

gamblers’ experiences on its website. In

layman’s terms, it speeds things up for

those accessing the website and can handle

large simultaneous demand. The use

of cloud computing in Bet 365’s in-play

betting system now means that punters

can increase their stake in less than two

seconds with the system now being able to

support millions of gamblers concurrently.

More recently, in December 2011,

International Game Technology (IGT)

announced its ‘IGT Cloud Solution’ that

will allow operators to provide seamless

gaming experiences across land-based,

mobile and online devices.

In addition to increasing revenue,

companies offering in play

options will also use the platform

to increase betting session times

(and therefore increase their

profits), as well as using it to

cross-sell to other products

in the company’s gaming

portfolio (simply as a result

of customers spending

more time interacting

with a company’s games and

products). Some companies

also view sportsbetting not only

as a revenue generator but also as

a casino acquisition tool. There

also appears to be a changing

demographic with online customers

becoming younger, and more tech-savvy,

particularly as the new ‘digital natives’ have

never known a world without the Internet,

mobile phones and interactive television.

As the CEO of OpenBet, David Loveday,

commented in a news release recently,

“The periodic ritual of predicting a daily

or weekly series of events is no longer

the mainstay. Today’s punter wants to be

able to turn on their gadget of choice and

instantly be offered an array of real-time

betting opportunities with immediate

results… Sportsbetting is growing in what

is offered, how it is offered, when it is

offered, where it is offered, and to whom

it is offered… Like the financial markets,

volatile events produce increased liquidity,

and increased liquidity produces greater

revenue to the operator.”

This also means that to stand out

from the crowd in a fast growing market,

gaming companies have to have a USP –

something that marks them out as

different from their competitors.

In-play betting is arguably the fastest

growing form of gambling in the UK

and the country’s leading in-play

bookmaker, Bet 365, made over £500

million last year. What the ‘in-play’ markets

have done is take what was traditionally a

discontinuous form of gambling – where

you make one bet every Saturday on the

result of the game – to one where you can

gamble again and again. What’s more,

gaming operators have quickly capitalised

on the increasing amount of televised

sport. In contemporary society, where

there is a live sporting event there will

always be a betting consumer. In-play

betting companies have both catered for

the natural betting demand but introduced

new punters in the process. The weekly

or daily bettor is now seeing the whole

sporting event as an entertainment

experience (a “natural side order to

the live action” as I saw it described).

Mind GaMes

Dr Mark GriFFiths is Professor of Gambling Studies at the International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University.


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INSIGHT

46

With the first anniversary of Full Tilt Poker’s shock collapse fast approaching, Julian Rogers charts the rise, and spectacular fold, of a former online giant.

With its quiRky cartoon graphics

and vast array of peculiar avatars, Full Tilt

Poker emerged from the pack to become

the second biggest poker site in the world

with estimated revenues of $500 million in

2010, according to Forbes magazine. At its

peak, upwards of 20 million pixilated hands

were being dealt every day.

Founded by Ray Bitar and a group of

pro poker players in 2004, Full Tilt’s

proprietary software, provided by Tiltware,

was slick and user-friendly while the lobby

was soon full to capacity with all-important

players and big guaranteed tournaments,

24/7. In online poker terms, however, this

was a late launch; the first online poker site

to accept real money wagers appeared in

cyberspace way back in the dotcom boom

times of 1998. Full Tilt, though, had an ace

up its sleeve to get the poker room noticed

in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

As part of an aggressive marketing

assault, the site’s owners made it their

mission to sign up a panoply of the

game’s brightest talent – from dyed-in-the-

wool Las Vegas legends to multi-tabling

Internet poker starlets. Full Tilt’s moody

monochrome TV adverts showcasing the

bulging stable of poker pros was a key

marketing ploy to entice new players. These

pros also appeared on high-profile TV poker

games with the famous Full Tilt Poker

logo emblazoned across their clothing.

Amateurs saw this and put their trust, and

their cash, in the site. It was also the first

operator to introduce the groundbreaking

‘Rush Poker’, which is where players are

instantly transferred to a new table and

dealt a new hand when they fold. Perfect for

‘action junkies’.

With poker celebrities playing exclusively

on the site, it became a hub for eye-

watering high stakes action, particularly

on the heads up tables. Finnish pro Patrik

Antonius and Swede Viktor Blom (Islldur1)

contested a $1.3 million pot on Full Tilt in

2009, making it the largest in online poker

history – a record that still stands today.

Anyone, provided they had sufficient funds,

could lock horns across the virtual felt with

the likes of Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan (durrrr),

Gus Hansen et al. Or you could just observe

and learn from the sidelines. For a time,

Full Tilt looked unstoppable in its pursuit

of the industry’s chip leader, PokerStars.

What could possibly go wrong?

Dark daysEventually, though, it did go disastrously

wrong. Full Tilt Poker imploded on June

29, 2011 when its Alderney licence was

suspended (later revoked in September),

and was accused by the US Department of

Justice (DoJ) of defrauding poker players

to the tune of $300 million. Prosecutors

labelled the operator a “massive Ponzi

scheme” and said the business should have

had $440 million in player funds but, in

fact, held a relatively paltry $60 million in

its accounts. “Full Tilt insiders lined their

own pockets with funds picked from the

pockets of their most loyal customers while

blithely lying to both players and the public

alike about the safety and security of the

money deposited with the company,” said

US Attorney Preet Bharara. When the news

broke that Full Tilt was in dire straits, a

‘run’ on the bank was inevitable.

Full Tilt’s troubles sent shockwaves

through the poker world while the negative

publicity was exacerbated when the story

was splashed across the mainstream media

The Fall OF aN eMPIReFigure 1:

Black Friday’s impact on real money cash game player accounts as of May 2011

Site/Network Net change(avg. players)

Net change(%)

Left US Market

PokerStars -7734 -26%

Full Tilt Poker -5538 -32%

Cereus Network -1542 -76%

Still in US

Merge Network +735 +77%

Bodog +184 +28%

Cake Network +155 +28%

Everleaf Network +3 +1%

European Majors

PartyPoker +358 +10%

iPoker Network -13 -0.4%

Ongame Network -102 -4%

888poker +77 +5%

Source: PokerScout

Full Tilt TimelineJune 2004Full Tilt Poker is launched by parent company Tiltware with involvement from poker pros Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Andy Bloch, Mike Matusow and Jennifer Harman.

September 29, 2006US Congress passes the Safe Port Act which includes a last-minute amendment known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). UIGEA forces many leading online gaming companies to flee the US market. Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars continue to operate in the US.

April 15, 2011The fated ‘Black Friday’. The FBI seizes the ‘.com’ domains of Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. The US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York serves indictments against various owners.


INSIGHT

47

and financial press. Accusing the business

of being a Ponzi scheme was bound to grab

the attention of non-poker players. The

game’s credibility was facing its toughest

challenge thus far. If depositors couldn’t

trust poker sites to ring fence their funds

for the sole purpose of playing cards then

the whole industry was under threat.

Naturally, the salient question on most

people’s lips was how this could have

happened to a poker operator as large at

Full Tilt? After all, poker is a relatively risk-

free business, unlike a casino or sportsbook

– it is peer-to-peer gambling as opposed

to playing against the house. All Full Tilt

had to do was process players’ deposits

and withdrawals, run the poker software

effectively, and take a cut of the action

(rake). Was it diabolical mismanagement

and/or a Ponzi scheme?

The DoJ says the owners and the board

used player funds to pay themselves $443

million between April 2007 and April

2011. Co-founder and poker pro Howard

Lederer is reported to have pocketed $42

million while Bitar took $41 million. Chris

Ferguson, another founding member and

2000 World Series of Poker Champion,

was allocated $85 million, although he

received (just) $25 million.

Even after the business went into

financial meltdown, up to $10 million a

month was being paid to the owners. It also

seems some pros were loaned money from

player funds. By September last year, it was

revealed that the stricken company owed

$390 million to players around the world,

including $150 million to US players. It

was a complete financial mess and getting

to the bottom of what exactly was going on

behind the scenes at Full Tilt wasn’t going

to be a facile task.

hidden truthsIt is thought that Full Tilt began

experiencing financial problems in

the autumn of 2010 due to the US

government’s determination to stifle poker

sites’ payment processors. The bosses

kept quiet as player accounts were credited

with ‘ghost’ funds but the problem came

when winning players tried to withdraw

this non-existent money. But the final nail

in the coffin was Black Friday on April 15,

2011, a date that still brings US players

out in cold sweats, especially those whose

main source of income came from playing

cards online. This was when the FBI seized

Full Tilt’s domain (along with PokerStars

and UltimateBet/Absolute Poker) and

indicted them in a hard-line clampdown

on online poker in the US. This was a very

serious problem for Full Tilt because a

significant proportion of its customers were

Americans. Black Friday decimated player

numbers (Figure 1).

The site promised to release players’

money but as time passed this pledge

increasingly looked like another bluff.

Angry customers – some trying to retrieve

up to six-figure balances – were left

frustrated at Full Tilt’s silence, apart from

the drip-feeding of banal statements on

a poker forum. The site was licensed on

the island of Alderney and the Alderney

Gambling Control Commission’s

(AGCC) handling of the situation was

being called into question. The prolonged

information vacuum enraged those with

seemingly lost funds.

In the wake of criticism that it had

failed to properly monitor Full Tilt or

intervene more promptly, the AGCC

launched an independent review

conducted by Peter Dean, the former

Chairman of the British Gambling

Commission. In it, Dean stated that

AGCC “fulfilled its statutory obligations

in relation to FTP and that its actions

were appropriate, timely and fair”.

André Wilsenach, Executive Director

of the AGCC, said the report made

valuable recommendations on how

they can make improvements in the

light of what has happened. He did,

however, concede that none of this will

compensate those players who have lost

money as a result of Full Tilt’s actions

and that he has “great sympathy for

them”. He also added: “As the report

confirms, a regulatory regime cannot

be proof against deliberate concealment

or deception.”

A buyer’s marketIn a surprise twist, PokerStars is thought to

be in negotiations with the DoJ to acquire

Full Tilt’s assets and reimburse players.

This development came out of the blue

after months of protracted takeover talks

and legal wrangling by France’s Groupe

Bernard Tapie (GBT) – the eponymous

investment company run by businessman

Bernard Tapie – to buy the site. But a deal

with GBT and the DoJ, thought to be in the

region of $80 million, collapsed recently

and news quickly emerged that PokerStars

was interested in a deal, although

PokerStars has refused to confirm this.

If the sale goes through then PokerStars

will significantly tighten its stranglehold

on the online poker market, which isn’t

always in players’ interests. However, one

thing is certain: this sorry mess cannot ever

be allowed to happen again to Full Tilt or

any other poker site. The damage to the

industry could be too great next time.

The industry’s reputation was definitely

tarnished. Likewise, Lederer and Ferguson

have been accused of being crooks and

some ex-customers say the business was

a fraud from the outset. If true, were the

pros playing with their own money or

innocent players’ cash? Were the colossal

pots genuine? I guess we will probably

never uncover the full truth. Of course, for

the affected players their primary concern

is whether they will ever see their money

again. There’s a lot resting on the outcome.

JuliAn RogeRs is a freelance journalist with 10 years’ experience specialising in business, sportsbetting, poker and news reporting.

June 29, 2011The Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) suspends Full Tilt Poker’s licence “in the public interest because of the seriousness and urgency of the matter”.

July 4, 2011Full Tilt Poker’s ‘.fr’ licence is suspended by French regulator, ARJEL.

September 29-30, 2011The AGCC revokes Full Tilt’s licence following an investigation and subsequent hearing in London. Groupe Bernard Tapie (GBT) is confirmed as the pending buyer of the company and its assets.

April 24, 2012 The GBT deal collapses over the structuring of player repayment. PokerStars emerges as a surprise buyer of the company in a deal to settle its own affairs with the DoJ.


INSIGHT

48

After digesting the demise of Full Tilt Poker amid the fallout from 2011’s game changing ‘Black Friday’ and all of its wide reaching implications, poker affi liates may feel that the composition of their marketplace has markedly changed as we move through 2012. Jeremy Enke, Founder of Poker Listings, assesses the mood of the affi liates currently plying their trade in the poker affi liate market.

On April 15, 2011, the online poker

industry was forever changed when the US

Department of Justice seized four of the

largest US-facing online poker sites. Known

as ‘Black Friday’ in the industry, this day

will forever go down in infamy as one of the

most signifi cant events ever to transpire in

the world of online poker.

Since Black Friday, the industry has

seen an overabundance of speculation

and predictions in blogs, forums, and

other publications on what the future of

online poker may hold. As each week

goes by, so do the various news stories

and articles about ‘potential regulation’

in the US. At this point, the only thing

certain about the future of online poker

in the US market is its uncertainty.

On the front lines and reporting many

of these stories every day are hundreds of

poker affi liates controlling thousands of

websites. In fact, there is no greater group

in the online poker industry with their

fi ngers on the daily pulse of this ever-

changing marketplace than that of poker

affi liates and poker affi liate managers.

With this in mind, we went directly to

this group at PokerAffi liateListings.com

to get their predictions for the second half

of 2012 and beyond.

POKER AFFILIATE FORUM: FORECASTS FOR 2012

“ With the intra-state model of regulated online poker, it will be imperative that a third-party, and not a bureaucratic agency, manage the player experience.”

Affi liate predictionsAnonymous“After Google will have successfully shot down 90 percent of gambling affi liate sites by the end of 2012, will AdSense be made available for gambling again as of 2013?”

available for gambling again as of 2013?”

KevinMcC – PAL (DropoutGotRich.com)“Not much will change by the end of 2012, but down the road I can see the US and Canada being regulated with little or no plans to keep smaller affi liates around. Work hard diversifying and growing your business in the second half of 2012.”

Work hard diversifying and growing your business in the second half of 2012.”

Cookarelli11 – PAL

“I predict that when we do see US

regulation it will be in the form of individual

states opening up and pooling their

resources to offer intra-state online poker.

Similar to how many states already

collaborate with their lotteries, such

as with Powerball, this may be the only

way to ensure enough liquidity and

players to effectively operate a regulated

online poker site.”


INSIGHT

49

Future role As you can see, the predictions and

speculation coming from the affi liate side

of the poker business is also fi lled with

uncertainty. The other major concern for

poker affi liates in the US is not only what

future legislation might look like, but

also what their role in a newly regulated

industry would be. If individual states do

indeed begin regulating online poker in the

fashion predicted by one of the affi liates in

this article, it’s hard to envision these states

utilising affi liate marketing.

Regardless of any of the predictions

or speculation out there, we should all

keep in mind that it is an election year

in the United States and online poker

is low on the priority list for many

politicians. With so many hoops to jump

through and political nonsense in the

United States, most poker affi liates would

be extremely surprised if there were

any type of regulation passed before

the New Year.

As mentioned earlier in this article,

poker affi liates are on the front line of the

industry and are often a liaison between the

players and operators. As poker affi liates,

we are very receptive to what types of

promotions, bonuses, and software best

converts and retains players. However,

when we look into the dark and murky

world of online poker legislation in the US,

these conversations seem to be missing.

Instead, it’s all about legalisation, how the

taxing authorities will work, what kickback

the politicians will get, and how the states

will benefi t best.

At the end of the day, for any poker

operation to be successful, you have

to put the players fi rst and take into

consideration the overall player experience.

This is where it will be critical even in a

regulated environment that professional

organisations with industry experience

be involved. With the intra-state model of

regulated online poker, it will be imperative

that a third-party, and not a bureaucratic

agency, manages the player experience.

Another prediction coming from the poker

affi liates, and one that is actually realistic, is

that there will fi nally be a resolution to the

Full Tilt Poker debacle this year. Circulating

around the rumour mill is that PokerStars

has struck a deal with the United States

Department of Justice to purchase the

assets of its once biggest rival. Also

expected out of this deal is that PokerStars

would payout the more than $300 million

currently owed to both players and affi liates

since Black Friday. Only time will tell if this

comes to fruition. However, all indications

at this time seem quite positive.

Nevertheless, for the rest of the year

and even beyond, the hot topics in the

online poker industry will remain those

that deal with US legislation. The

uncertainty will remain, and there is

no guarantee that things will be better

or worse for poker affi liates should

we see US legislation pass.

And while it’s impossible to predict

exactly what will transpire in the online

poker market over the next six to 12

months, we are seeing an increase in

strategic partnerships and joint ventures

within the industry. Both online poker

operators as well as the US land-based

casinos are strategically positioning

themselves should regulation, either state

or federal, pass within the United States.

With so much uncertainty in the current

US market, the best strategy for anyone in

the industry is to be diversifi ed and ready

for a variety of outcomes.

“ For all practical purposes, both state and federal governments are clueless when it comes to effi ciently running a proper online poker operation. Even if we do see some form of legal online poker within the United States this year, my fear is that the player experience will be lacking to say the least.”

Anonymous

“The large Las Vegas casinos are already in the

advanced planning stages of being major players

regardless of how legislation shakes out. I could

envision a partnership of some sort between the

casinos, the states, and an existing online poker

operator to provide the software platform. With

the large amounts of lobbyist money pouring into

this cause, however, thinking that there will be

regulated online gambling without the involvement

of Las Vegas casinos would be silly.”regulated online gambling without the involvement

Jeremy – PAL (PokerAffi liateListings.com)“My prediction is that we’ll be making new predictions and speculations about what will happen with online poker in 2013 right around the New Year. I don’t foresee any major regulation taking place given the fact that we are in the midst of an election year in the US...“For all practical purposes, both state and federal governments are clueless when it comes to effi ciently

running a proper online poker operation. Even if we do see some form of legal online poker within the United States this year, my fear is that the player experience will be lacking to say the least.”


INSIGHT

50

The mobile gambling market is in a constant state of flux. Betting on mobile devices is growing at a rapid pace in line with a massive upswing in live betting, leading to widespread expectations that this platform will form in excess of 50 percent of all interactive revenues within 12 to 18 months. Mobile casinos are gaining traction alongside sportsbetting and the underlying technology from operating systems, devices and mobile networks evolve seemingly on a daily basis.

mobile is now a platform that

affiliates must now wholly embrace.

However, with the constantly changing

landscape, it is imperative to keep

abreast of all that is going on in order

to achieve success.

Juniper Research has been the de facto

standard for projections in the mobile

gambling space for quite some time,

and the long-held view was that mobile

gambling would be worth $48 billion in

wagers by 2015. This particular report was

written prior to the emergence of the tablet

market and, therefore, referred to mobile

handsets only. The revised projections,

in a report issued in June, show a massive

hike in revenues and some interesting

data regarding products.

●● In 2011 more than $19 billion was

wagered on mobile devices, of which

Japan and the UK accounted for more

than 70 percent.

●● Total wager on mobile devices expected

to hit $100 billion per annum by 2017,

generating gross win of more than $5.2

billion. This is a figure that incorporates

both mobile handsets and tablets (in

particular the iPad).

●● Sportsbetting currently accounts for

nearly 70 percent of wagers, although

with the growing mobile casino market,

Juniper expects that within the next few

years, gaming products will overtake and

dominate sportsbetting on the platform.

●● The future growth of casino and

gaming products is related to several

developments that are currently in the

early stages of fruition.

●● The big gambling companies who are

currently focussing almost exclusively

on mobile sportsbetting will deploy and

market casino and gaming products as

part of their mobile mix.

●● Long Term Evolution and its big brother

4G will enable better and smoother game

play as bandwidth for mobile devices

will dramatically improve. Sportsbetting

doesn’t require the consistent bandwidth

of gaming which is one of the reasons

why it is the early contender on the

platform. Though on the horizon, 4G is

not an immediate-term game changer

as 3G has yet to fully roll out and those

technologies aren’t yet close to being

exhausted for the companies that parted

with lots of cash for the licences and

need to recoup their investment prior to

repeating the process with 4G.

●● A new mobile-only market is fast

emerging and will continue to grow.

Customers in this segment tend to be

lower depositors but higher margin

players and they do not consider

themselves ‘gamblers’. Instead, they look

at the softer games and slots purely as

entertainment. This market is currently

served well by operators such as All Slots

Casino which has a range of products for

this demographic, but it will continue its

fast growth as more operators begin to

actively target these players.

Two years ago, pre-World Cup 2010,

mobile contributed less than one percent

of most operators’ revenues if, indeed, they

had a product offering on the platform at

all. Now it is a completely different picture.

In Paddy Power’s recent results, it reported

that mobile sportsbetting stakes are

up over 200 percent forming 25 percent

of all stakes, and that the platform

accounted for 29 percent of all active

players by February.

Betfair, another key player, has seen

11 million bets and £5.8 million revenue

generated through the mobile division in

its last financial year, and William Hill

exceeded its mid-2013 target of £5 million

weekly turnover on mobile having already

hit a weekly average of £7.3 million in the

recent trading period and it has now revised

its target for mobile to reach 40 percent of

all sportsbook turnover.

TechnologyIt is known that regular bettors are twice

as likely to own a Smartphone and that

consumers who bet and play via both

mobile and desktop place up to 50 percent

more bets. Smartphones have been the key

to the explosive growth of mobile gambling,

and the UK now has over 50 percent

Smartphone penetration.

While the iPhone is currently dominant

amongst gamblers, this will not continue

to be the case indefinitely, despite the ‘cult’

of Apple:

●● Nokia is the world’s leading

manufacturer, driven by feature phones.

The company missed out on the early

Smartphone market, however, it has

recently announced a range of entry-level

low cost Smartphones – presumably to

target its existing customer base by way

of the upgrade cycle.

●● Samsung has more global penetration,

and as an isolated device, Samsung’s

Galaxy S2 outsells the iPhone. With

the Galaxy S3 on the market in the past

month, this handset supremacy is likely

to continue.

●● Android accounts for 30 percent of

all Smartphone mobile web, and is

growing faster than iOS with projections

that as many web visits will come from

Android-based phones as iOS by the

end of the year.

The Mobile GaMblinG MarkeT


INSIGHT

51

Tablets are the fastest growing

technological device in history, driven

by the iPad, although over 60 Android

powered tablets were launched in 2011

from the key manufacturers.

Apple sold 11.8 million iPads in its fiscal

second quarter and a UK Tablet Survey of

2011 found that two in three tablet owners

are aged 25 to 54, with 60 percent of this

group being male. 81 percent use their

tablets for online search and it is known

that currently conversion rates on tablets

are similar to desktop, yet they are typically

10 to 15 percent cheaper.

AdMob research shows that tablet traffic

is on the way to overtaking that of desktop.

A survey it conducted found that:

●● 77 percent of respondents said

their laptop usage decreased after

buying a tablet.

●● 28 percent said the tablet is now their

primary computer.

●● 82 percent said they primarily use their

tablet at home.

marketingThe sale of Smartphones escalated

throughout 2011, and this has had a

profound effect on mobile web usage.

Affiliates now understand that an

increasing percentage of their natural

traffic is coming from a mobile device and,

therefore, in order to capitalise on this

business they need to make the relevant

adjustments in order to cater to this market.

Primarily, this means redirecting traffic

according to the platform that the player

originated from and working with operators

who offer both mobile and online solutions.

The affiliate tools offered by Brightshare,

one of the most advanced affiliate networks

in the mobile space, are an example

of what is necessary to be successful

on the platform.

●● Specific mobile optimised banners in

terms of size, look and feel and legibility

for a small screen.

●● A variety of mobile promotions targeted

at cross-selling platforms and attracting

the new mobile-only demographic.

●● I-frame sites for player game download

using push technology.

●● Affiliate customisable mini-sites

for Smartphones.

●● QR Codes uniquely coded

to each affiliate.

seo and PPCTo facilitate mobile search, Google has now

incorporated a Smartphone-user-agent to

Googlebot-Mobile, which aims to provide

a ‘better search experience for Smartphone

users’. Since the mobile gaming market

has taken off, there is evidence that natural

search results vary widely between mobiles

and desktops. The Smartphone-user-agent

will cause search results on mobiles to be

further distinguished from desktops.

Web pages that are not optimised for

mobiles are likely to lose rankings in

search results pages.

Mobile searches have quadrupled in

the last year and one in seven searches are

now carried out via mobile. A few months

ago, Google announced that mobile-only

campaigns drive 11.5 percent more click-

throughs than campaigns simply imported

from PC AdWords.

Search on mobile is vastly different

to search online. Due to screen size and

factors such as touch screen typing and

small keys, there are relatively few long-

tail searches on mobile, so the affiliate

has a limited amount of words in which

to anticipate and understand what the

customer is looking for. In addition,

although available on both Internet and

mobile, people use the predictive text in

the search box much more on mobile

than they do online.

social – mobileOn average, people install 25 apps on their

Smartphone, but only use 12, of which

most will be social network apps. Though

separate phenomena, social media use and

mobile growth are constantly intertwined.

This is especially the case for gambling and

in-running betting. The marketing agency,

GMR, recently reported data from KT Tape

which found that people are ten times

more likely to check Twitter or Facebook

for breaking news than sports radio, and 81

percent prefer the Internet for their sports

news. They also found that when watching

a sports event on TV, 83 percent of viewers

will simultaneously check sports social

media sites, and 63 percent will do the

same when actually at the stadium.

425 million users, representing over

half of Facebook’s user base, accesses the

network via mobile on a monthly basis, and

mobile is outgrowing desktop use at a ratio

of two to one. In the UK, Facebook sees 60

percent of its activity on phones and tablets,

representing one in every two minutes of

mobile Internet use. This is despite the

fact that Facebook does not have a strong

mobile product, something which was a

significant part of its under-impressive

IPO. The purchase of Instagram and recent

changes to the mobile platform from a

marketing perspective demonstrates its

push forward on this platform.

Earlier this year, Facebook revealed

a variety of mobile-centric products,

including the introduction and 2012

roll-out of the Timeline feature on mobile

as well as enabling brands to advertise in

mobile news feeds through Sponsored

Stories. Prior to this, corporate/affiliate

pages on Facebook mobile have had almost

no functionality; custom apps haven’t

worked without complications, tabs haven’t

translated, etc.

In addition, until Q1 2012 there had

been no way to advertise to Facebook

users on mobile devices. Now, Sponsored

Stories premium ad units will appear

in mobile news feeds. Considering the

many users who access Facebook from

a mobile device, marketers now have a

significant opportunity to embed sponsored

advertisements within mobile feeds.

Even more recently, Facebook

announced that it was allowing advertisers

to buy its mobile ads (Sponsored Stories)

without having to buy desktop ads at the

same time. Previously, these ads could

only be bought for distribution together.

Because ads appear in people’s news feeds,

it’s not yet clear how well they will work on

the mobile platform as the relevant news

versus spam question may prove especially

acute on small Smartphone screens where

people are increasingly accessing Facebook.

In summary, the options for Facebook

advertising (including mobile) are now:

●● All placements: this option includes

right-hand side plus News Feed desktop

and News Feed mobile.

●● All desktop placements: this option

includes right-hand side plus News

Feed desktop.

●● News Feed (desktop and mobile): this

option includes News Feed desktop plus

News Feed mobile.

●● News Feed desktop: this option includes

News Feed desktop only.

●● News Feed mobile: this option includes

News Feed mobile only.

Aideen Shortt is an experienced consultant, author and researcher in the gambling industry with 12 years of work across all sectors and verticals. [email protected].


INSIGHT

52

Being competitive in today’s global economy now hinges on the ability to interact with consumers online. Social networks have democratised information and empowered consumers. As a result, user networks are changing how customers refer products and services, and ultimately make decisions.

The relaTionship beTween

customers and business is changing and

will continue to evolve as social media

permeates our culture and society.

InSites Consulting conducted an in-

depth study into social media in over 30

countries and has reported that awareness

of Facebook is close to 100 percent, that

58 percent of Facebook users log-in at

least daily, and the average session lasts

37 minutes. However, despite the wide

assumption of many businesses, social

media is more than just Facebook. In

Europe, 50 percent of users are a member

of only one social network (Facebook), but

on average, people join 1.9 social networks.

In the US it’s 2.1, Brazil 3.1 and India 3.9.

FacebookFacebook is undoubtedly the giant in the

social media world. It currently has over

900 million users, including 30 million

in the UK and is expected to pass the one

billion mark in the coming months. The

average user has 130 friends and spends

approximately 700 minutes per month on

the site, with an average session time of

37 minutes. In fact, more than 50 percent

log-in daily. Facebook has overtaken Google

as the most visited site on the Internet, and

despite mobile not being its strong point

the statistics on that platform are no less

impressive, with one in every two minutes

on the UK mobile Internet spent viewing

and interacting on Facebook.

TwitterTwitter is a micro-blogging service

that allows its users to broadcast short,

140-character messages to groups of

‘followers’, yet people commonly think

of Twitter as a variant of Facebook.

This pairing erroneously implies that

the two services are used for the same

purpose, even though the platforms are

very different. Facebook is a few-to-few

communication network designed for

sharing information and life events with

friends. Twitter, on the other hand, is a one-

to-many information broadcast network.

Twitter registered its 500 millionth user

in February 2012, of which over 140 million

are active, generating in excess of 340

million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion

search queries per day.

Google+The big question around Google+ is

whether or not it can mount a serious

challenge to Facebook’s dominance. Google

originally addressed social media as early

as January 2004 with the launch of Orkut,

which was actually one of the world’s

first social media platforms. However,

despite being launched within a month

of Facebook’s limited Harvard launch, it

never gained the same levels of traction as

MySpace (which was once the dominant

network) and the fast emerging Facebook.

Google+ reached 20 million users in 24

days, 1,011 days fewer than Facebook, and

in a company update in January 2012, CEO

Larry Page said Google+ had more than 100

million active users (over 60 percent daily

and 80 percent monthly).

There is much scepticism around the

definition of ‘active users’ as it refers to a

range of products, and the statistic could

mean that users simply check their email

or go to a Google map, as once logged

into the wider system, a user is auto-logged

into Google+.

The reason Google+ has so much power

is because of Google search, and since the

Google Panda update, the social signal

is a strong cue in search. A few months

ago, Google incorporated Google+ into its

algorithm which impacted SERPs. Around

the same time, it also included its +1

‘endorsement feature’ and since then, +1

has been widely adopted with the button

now being served over five billion times

per day globally. In mid-January, Google

announced its most radical transformation

to date, with a new ‘Search Plus Your

World’ format. It finds both content that’s

been shared with you privately along with

matches from the public web, all mixed

into a single set of listings allowing people

to search against both the broader web and

their own Google+ social graph.

beyond the big threeWhile Facebook, Twitter and Google+

each have their own reasons behind their

importance they are not the only networks

for affiliates to consider in a holistic social

strategy. YouTube (owned by Google) is

arguably the most under-rated social media

site. Digital marketing agency Latitude

Group has identified that YouTube visits

make up 23 percent of all social media

traffic, and the site is long known to be

the world’s second largest search engine

(behind Google).

Pinterest is the latest darling of the social

media world. It has grown from a niche

network to a massive site in a matter of

months, being the fastest standalone site

in history to reach more than ten million

monthly unique visitors. Tumblr is an

emerging player in social media, having

nearly tripled its audience in the past 12

months and the network hit 20 billion

posts at the end of March 2012.

The new report, Social Media Strategy and

Implementation, researched and authored by

Aideen Shortt, is available for sale from iGaming

Business. [email protected].

The New BusiNess Paradigm

Looking for a partner?

We don’t hire shady account managers.In fact, our team is among the most professional, experienced and friendly in the industry. And not a bad-looking bunch, either. Learn more at: europartners.com


INSIGHT

54

Virgin Games’ Pierrick Leveque asserts that if there was ever a device that was fit-for-purpose for the gaming industry, it is the tablet, and now is the time to get in shape to welcome it.

As A Premise to our chat about

tablets, I’d like you to participate in a brief

experiment that should hopefully get your

attention. Follow these five easy steps:

1. Open Google Analytics and select your

primary site

2. Open menu: mobile > devices

3. Update date range: compare last month

with same month in 2011

4. Check iPad stats report

5. Faint

Still standing? This either means you’re

already doing something about what you

saw, or you’re planning your retirement.

I wish it wasn’t just one or the other, but

current trends indicate that tablets are

the brightest young stars of our digital

entertainment age, and marketers will

ignore them at their peril.

Landscape and trendsShortly after the launch of the first iPad,

research firms started laying out forecasts

on the growth of the tablet market, and they

got it wrong. Very wrong. So wrong, in fact,

that the much lauded original estimates are

described as ‘comical’ by today’s experts,

some missing actual figures by as much as

100 percent.

Interestingly, analyst re-forecasts on

tablet growth still happen on a very regular

basis. In its latest draft, insight group

IDC currently estimates that global tablet

shipments will reach 106.1 million units in

2012, up from a previous forecast of 87.7

million (Figure 1).

It has already been a formidable success

story for such a high-end device, but

trends tell us this is only the beginning.

Analysts predict that market expansion

will be fuelled by two factors: huge growth

in device penetration and increased

production of cheaper devices from a wider

range of manufacturers. These factors are

already blurring the profile of your typical

tablet device user, from affluent tech-savvy

early adopter to anyone between the age of

four and 100 who can use their fingers. For

40.3 million active PC Internet users in the

UK, there are 26.3 million active mobile

Internet app users, yet only three million

tablet owners.

Also, you can always trust money to

smell money: in 2010, venture capital-

backed businesses forked out $123 million

in mobile marketing and advertising. In

2011, they invested close to $600 million.

DevicesDespite our frustrations with ring fencing,

privacy matters, extortionate App Store

commissions and high device prices, you

have to give it to Apple. The company has

single-handedly created the digital music

market, the Smartphone market, and now

the tablet market with the iPad.

I remember doubt and shrugs, postures

and irony from many in the UK tech media

when the first iPad – that ridiculously

oversized iPhone – came out. Fast-forward

to today, and usage data tells us that a tablet

is not a Smartphone, and nor is it a PC. It’s

a new media consumption device we didn’t

know we needed. Apple told us we needed it.

It’s all about vision, and despite Google

toying with self-driving cars and interactive

glasses, or Facebook having close to a

billion penny-pinching users, no other

digital age behemoths have so far managed

to monetise vision as well as Apple.

In Q4 2011, the iPad still held 54.7

percent of the UK tablet market, down

from 61.5 percent in the previous quarter.

Why? Android.

The increasing number of device

manufacturers shipping low-priced,

Android-based tablets means that Google’s

OS is expected to overtake Apple’s

worldwide market share by 2015.

Noticeably, Amazon’s Kindle Fire is

widely expected to lead the fight against

the iPad. Sold for $199 (£125) in the US,

the minimalistic seven-inch product

has raised consumers’ awareness of the

category worldwide. At the time of writing,

licensing deals have held up the Kindle

Fire’s arrival in the UK and the rest of

the world, but if the impact it’s had on

the US market is replicated – up from a

Figure 1

Worldwide media tablet shipments split by OS historical and forecast* 2010 – 2016 (units in millions)

2010 (actual)

19.4

2011 (actual)

68.7

2012 (forecast)*

106.1

2016 (forecast)*

198.2

Android iOS Others

Online GamblinG, iPads and TableTs


INSIGHT

55

29.4 percent share of the Android tablet

market in September 2011 to 54 percent in

February 2012 – Apple execs are in for a

nail-bite-fest next Christmas.

The forthcoming Windows 8 mobile OS

has also gathered decent feedback so far. It’s

too early to tell whether it’s set to become a

worthy contender, but one thing is certain:

corporate and licensing deals will be as

important as product quality if Microsoft

wants ‘8’ to take off. Whatever happens, and

looking at growth predictions (Figure 1), it

will take a daring player with deep pockets

to step into an arena where the Apple and

Google titans are playing tug of war.

is it a bird? is it a plane?While a Smartphone is primarily a phone,

a tablet is free from such commitment,

which makes it everything you want it to be.

It is a bird in Angry Birds, it is a plane in

Paper Plane HD, it’s a phone, it’s a PC, but

it’s none of them really.

To understand the disruptive nature of

the tablet and the virtual space it occupies,

let’s let usage data do the talking. The

Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently

completed a survey on digital media

devices, and its research will illustrate

our topic (for full details please visit the

IAB website).

Why?When asked what they prefer about using

tablets, most people reply that they like the

fact it’s (physically) easy to pick up, that the

interface is easy to use, that it provides them

with an experience in the format they like,

and that is has the entertainment they want.

Where? 74 percent of tablet usage happens at

home. Tablets have caught up with PC/

laptops for the ‘Most used device in the

living room’ award. They are also the most

used digital devices in the kitchen as they

make very good chopping boards. Or recipe

books maybe. In any case, it’s mobile, but it

doesn’t seem to travel very far.

When? 50 percent of tablet usage happens after

7pm, with after work and weekend peaks.

51 percent of tablet usage happens while

watching TV (35 percent for mobile, 33

percent for PCs/laptops). Mobile usage

data show different patterns: early morning

peaks, countless bursts of activity during

the day, and evening peaks too. Tablet

usage is more sustained and happens

in downtime, when people have more

time to quench their curiosity.

What? The nature of tablet user activities

flows very naturally from this primarily

homebound, downtime usage. For users in

the survey, tablet usage has improved their

digital life on three fronts:

1. Entertainment – 49 percent of

respondents prefer their entertainment

(music, video, games) on tablet rather

than on a laptop/PC (29 percent) or a

mobile (22 percent). Tablet owners also

watch videos for 28 percent longer than

desktop users.

2. Exploration – 42 percent of respondents

prefer using a tablet for exploration

rather than a PC/laptop (36 percent)

or a mobile (21 percent). Tablet owners

prefer to search on a tablet than on

any other device. Still on search, and

gauged against mobile, the tablet share

of paid search clicks is currently at five

percent and is predicted to grow by 0.5

percent each month until the end of the

year. To put this in perspective, tablet

penetration is currently four years behind

Smartphones, yet the share of paid clicks

is only one year behind.

3. Buying stuff – an even cleaner split here:

72 percent of tablet owners purchase

from the device weekly. On average,

they also spend more than four hours

shopping via tablet every week.

A new orderWhat usage data and trends are telling us

is that the tablet holds a space of its own.

This space is growing, but it is doing so at

the expense of other media consumption

devices, increasingly cannibalising the

entertainment, exploration and retail

activities from PC/laptops and mobile.

In today’s tag cloud world, PC/laptop

reads: ‘work’, ‘personal admin’,

‘weekdays’, ‘secure’.

Mobile is about ‘quick updates’, ‘snacking’,

‘morning’, ‘evening’, ‘communication’,

‘news’, ‘always ready’, ‘on the go’.

Tablet is ‘downtime’, ‘evening’, ‘weekend’,

‘retail’, ‘entertainment’, ‘relaxed creativity’,

‘exploration’ and ‘preferred formatting’.

In the ever-changing world of digital

media consumption, mobile is a snack,

tablet is a meal, and using your pc/laptop

increasingly feels like doing the washing up.

What is one to do?It’s not all doom and gloom, and every

device still has its place in our digital

ecosystem, but I believe it’s time for more

online gambling affiliates to start putting

two and two together:

●● Usage data demonstrates that tablet

cannibalises exploration, entertainment

and retail traffic from PC and mobile.

●● Tablet market growth has defied all

expectations so far, and shows no

sign of slowing down.

As online gambling operators or affiliates,

we are in the business of exploration

(search), entertainment (games) and retail

(deposits, revenue). If a device was ever fit

for our sector, this device is a tablet, and

it’s time to get in shape to welcome it. 46

percent of tablet owners are more likely to

use a site if it is optimised for tablets, and

this alone should be challenging affiliate

marketing strategies right now.

epilogueUltimately, the ball is now in the affiliate

corner. Virgin Games might be converting

players coming from mobile-allergic

websites, but for each visitor making it

through, how many dropped off right after

landing on non-optimised affiliate home

pages? The answer closes our circle: go

back to Google Analytics and check out

your homepage’s mobile and iPad bounce

rate. Now faint again.

Pierrick Leveque is Head of Acquisition at virgin Games, managing the home grown affiliate program as part of the overall customer acquisition strategy. “Affiliate Program of the Year” eGr Awards 2010 and 2009 “Best casino/Gaming Affiliate Program” A4u Awards 2008 “Best Bingo Affiliate Manager” cAP/iGB Awards 2009.W: www.virgingames.com/affiliates e: [email protected]: www.pierrickprk.wordpress.com T: (+44) 208 237 1563

“ In the ever-changing world of digital media consumption, mobile is a snack, tablet is a meal, and using your pc/laptop increasingly feels like doing the washing up.”


INSIGHT

56

More channels for more visibility, by Nicky Senyard, CEO, Income Access.

The coNTemporary markeTer,

on both the operator and affiliate side,

has at their fingertips an unprecedented

quantity of marketing channels from which

to choose. Online, these channels include

(but are not limited to) a website, social

media platforms, email and mobile. Offline

marketing channels tend to be what many

would associate with traditional advertising:

television, radio, print, and direct mail.

While it may seem intuitive that more

marketing channels mean easier access

to an audience, in practice, the results

have been paradoxically the opposite.

More marketing channels can mean

a less effective reach.

That’s where an integrated marketing

approach comes in. Through integrated

marketing, you utilise a consistency-

based approach across multiple channels.

In the end, this sort of multi-pronged

campaigning can be used to generate a

marketing reach that exceeds the sum of

its parts and helps increase ROI and brand

value. Given today’s advertising landscape,

integrated marketing is a particularly strong

tool, especially for brand recognition and

reputation, which can lead to successful

outcomes in the long run. As today’s

audiences are used to receiving information

through a variety of channels, adopting a

strategy of integration is a strong way to

ensure that your message is heard.

Integrated marketing is often referred

to as a strategy that is deployed as a means

of implementing a pre-defined marketing

plan. The channels of your integrated

marketing mix should work together to help

you get the result you want. For instance,

your social media channels could fluidly

work with television or radio advertising to

help reach a diverse audience and achieve a

higher customer acquisition goal. The key

is that all involved parts are executed in a

consistent and timely manner.

BenefitsAn integrated approach to your marketing

strategy can have a variety of benefits for

both your brand and business. When

it comes to stock investment, brokers

always emphasise the importance of

diversification. Integrated marketing

provides you this with the diversification

of your marketing campaigns and market

reach. That is, if you focus your entire

marketing strategy on your website,

changes in Google’s algorithms can

have strong effects on your page ranking

and visibility and ultimately impact on

your desired goal. Thus, by deploying an

integrated strategy such as email or mobile,

you can help counter any negative effects of

changes in one channel or approach.

Integrated marketing can also be an

advantageous tool for building a brand’s

reputation. It is one thing for potential

customers to receive email promotions for

your brand. The impact is entirely different if

audiences see information about your brand

in their inbox, in their search results, and on

the social media that they use. Also, since

there is a different audience for newspaper

adverts and Facebook posts, a multi-channel

approach means greater exposure to a

variety of demographics. By integrating

your marketing, it is possible to leave no

stone unturned when it comes to potential

customers. Overall, a brand that is promoted

through a multitude of channels is in a better

position to be recognised and remembered.

By initially adopting an integrated

method, you help your business prepare for

expanding into channels. As there is already

a look and strategy in place, entering a new

channel requires less planning. Another

benefit is that since you do not focus all

of your efforts on a single channel, you

decrease the possibility of over-saturating a

channel past an optimal ROI.

So just how do you integrate marketing channels? The key words to remember are variety,

timing and consistency, and since you

will be utilising several channels of

communication, it will become vital that

you are transmitting the same message

across all of them. An example would be

that if you are trying to get more customers

to participate in a tournament, make sure

that your website prominently displays that

promotion and that your tweets relay the

promotion to your Twitter followers and

conveniently link to it. In the end, when

people see or hear of your brand, they

will have a stronger association with your

promotion and if successful, come back to

look for more similar events.

Thus, when integrating your marketing

channels, make sure you have a long-term

plan already in place. It can be difficult

enough to rapidly alter your strategy for a

single channel; do not make it any harder

by having to do so for multiple channels.

A particularly good way to help

integration is through the use of a

comprehensive analytical tool that allows

you to measure the performance of each

channel for the same campaign. With the

visibility on the outcome of your various

channels, you can tweak your focus to the

channels that have the strongest results.

For instance, if you see that a certain print

ad is converting the best, you can then

put the same ad on your website and, in

turn, link to that site in your social media.

If your personable interactions with your

audience through social media are what

convert best for you, you can then adjust

your print ads to focus on stellar customer

service. With analytics, you can also test

out the efficacy of a new channel you are

considering incorporating before you fully

integrate it with the rest of your marketing

efforts. With this testing, you will only end

up allocating time, money, and effort to a

channel that you know pays off.

Integrated marketing is by no means a

new concept; however, the expansion of

media channels through which audiences

can be reached has now made it particularly

relevant for marketers to leverage. In

addition, a well organised presence on

numerous channels can increase brand

recognition and value, while strong

analytics can readily help you identify the

efficiency of each channel. Ultimately,

integrated marketing will give you the

advantage of flexibility, innovation, wider

market reach and intelligence on your

campaign performances.

Integrate Your MarketIng

Nicky SeNyard is ceO of income access, overseeing their independent iGaming affiliate network, market-leading affiliate software and expert affiliate management services.

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• 5% worked exclusively in the Latin American Market, 73% attract traffic from LatAm & Spain

• 100% of conference sessions were (and will be) in Spanish with expert speakers in their fields helping you create language specific strategies


INSIGHT

58

With this issue’s focus trained on a significant summer for sportsbetting affiliates and operators, iGaming marketing consultant Matthew Castillo investigates how businesses can retain the new players they acquire around major events.

This suMMer, we’ll have a number

of colourful events filling our sporting

calendar starting with the UEFA European

Football Championships and continuing

with the London Olympics. These one-off

events (as they occur only once every four

years) gather so much publicity and hype

around them that they manage to attract even

those who are not avid sport fans but maybe

want to show their support for their national

team. Marketers try to piggyback on these

events as it gives them the chance to tap into

a large audience with a view to expanding

their customer base. Gaming is no different.

Such events make it possible for

sportsbook operators to tap into a seasonal

type of customer; one who is only attracted

to large, widely publicised events. This

represents a potential gold mine for these

businesses as it gives them the chance

(which does not come along regularly) to

try to secure a portion of this infrequent

business and convert it into loyal or more

regular customers.

So how can companies tap into this

potential gold mine? What can be done in

order to entice infrequent customers to

become more regular visitors even after the

event finishes and the hype phases out?

The usual response to such a situation

is to improve the marketing machine

by trying to make the offering more

personalised and tailored for infrequent,

seasonal customers. While this approach

will produce some results, it does lack a

clear integrated strategy and customer

understanding that could turn these one-

off events into successful and profitable

customer recruitment campaigns.

The best way to try and harness this

opportunity is by analysing and mining

data of customers that were attracted

through similar events such as the

World Cup (2010) and the last

Olympic Games and were lost soon

after the event. By analysing these

patterns and characteristics, companies

can start working out the typical profile

of casual customers and devise a marketing

strategy around them.

Such an analysis makes use of

predictive models whereby the profile

of each customer would correspond to

the likelihood of his/her action. Most

companies already have predictive models

in place that tell them the expected lifetime

value of a customer by analysing initial

revenue streams. This has to be replicated

in order to determine the profile of these

infrequent customers that are attracted

to singular or one-off events. Without

knowing in advance which new customers

are likely to be hit-and-run customers, one

could run the risk of devising a retention

campaign that sacrifices too much potential

revenue from the customers who would

have revisited your website even in the

absence of any offer.

In simpler words, if you offer all new

customers a 100 percent bonus on their

next deposit, those that would have come

back regardless of the bonus will typically

end up depositing less money of their

own. Additionally, targeting new customers

with a generic retention promotion runs

the risk of alienating the portion of new

customers who would have returned to

your website but, perhaps, were looking

at other forms of promotion such as loyalty

points or cross sell offers.

Hence, a predictive analysis of past events

and related customers would allow your

system to identify the new customers who are

likely to return on their own and those who

typically will not return again after the end

of the event. By integrating this modelling

technique (as detailed in the diagram) into

your marketing campaign, promotions could

be better used in order to retain occasional

new customers without alienating others.

why invest in such a system?One-off events generate a lot of buzz

around them and create a stream of

potential customers that is difficult to come

across through normal business. In the

absence of targeted retention strategies,

new customers will simply come into

the system and leave as the buzz and

enthusiasm of these one-off events fades

away. This is not to say that such strategies

will enable you to retain 100 percent

of new seasonal customers as, by their

nature, many will stop playing regardless

of incentive, but it will enable you to retain

a small portion of business which would

have otherwise been lost. Even by retaining

ten percent of these new customers, one-

off events would have been turned into a

successful acquisition campaign. The good

thing about this modelling technique is

that the system is always being fed with

new data and, hence, models adapt to the

changing customer behaviour, enabling

you to be continuously more targeted and

precise in your marketing campaigns.

Special eventS: turning One-Off cuStOmerS intO repeat BuSineSS

Customer enters the system

Customer is compared to previous customer models and a predicted profile is developed

Profile 1A customer that is likely to be one-off

and cease to play after the event

ActionProvide bonuses and other incentives

to attract customer back

ResultA percentage of targeted customers would

have converted into repeat business

ActionTarget customer with promotions

that will increase his/her value

ResultCustomer moves ahead

in player lifecycle

Profile 2A customer who is likely to keep playing

on the company’s platform


feature

As we head into the third quarter of 2012, iGaming Business Finance Editor, Melissa Blau, takes a look back at the key events of the previous 12 months and identifies a selection of companies that have the potential to be key players in the short to mid-term future.

A year in reviewReflecting on the past 12 months, there

have been positive trends in both regulation

and operation that continue to preoccupy

both the headlines and our thoughts.

Geographically, Europe continues to

plough forward, though not without its

setbacks. Over the past year, we have seen

the legalisation of slots in Italy, which

has enjoyed more success than operators

had initially expected. We have also seen

the opening of the Danish market which,

surprisingly, went according to plan.

However, the same can’t be said of Spain,

which was expected to open on a similar

timescale to Denmark, but the good

news is that the Spanish market was only

delayed by six months and by mid-summer

should be well on its way to completing the

initial phase of the process, having finally

started issuing licenses in June. Germany

was a surprise contender this year with

Schleswig-Holstein beginning to issue

licenses. Sadly, Greece was the one

casualty that was stymied by its own

economic issues.

On the other side of the pond in Canada,

lotteries continue to move forward starting

with Lotto Quebec and then the British

Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC)

which has tendered for the expansion

and improvement of its gaming offering.

In addition, the Ontario Lottery and

Gaming Corporation (OLG) is making

a concerted effort to follow suit and

there is hope that the provincial lottery

will continue along that path.

In the US, while at the surface it feels like

Groundhog Day with little actual progress,

the past two months (April/May) have

witnessed a massive change in sentiment.

At least for now, serious discussions

about a federal solution have taken a back

seat to a more reasonable state-by-state

solution. In December, the Department of

Justice’s clarification acted as the necessary

catalyst igniting state lotteries to begin

taking the reins to expand not only into

online lottery sales but also into poker and

possibly casino. The state of Nevada also

completed its regulations and began taking

applications for intra-state operators and

suppliers. All of this has led to a surge in

European interest with many companies

stepping up their efforts to better position

themselves for regulation.

On the darker side of regulation, the

past 12 months will also be known for the

shakeout of Black Friday which culminated

in Full Tilt Poker’s public demise,

compromising the reputation of the well-

respected Alderney Gaming Commission

along the way. Will PokerStars buy the assets

of its largest competitor? This remained a

mystery at the time of writing but if it is the

case, it could once again change the poker

landscape for European operators.

Away from the regulatory front, the

past 12 months will best be known for the

explosion of social gaming. Previously,

most operators scoffed at social gambling as

a means to acquire customers, dismissing

it as a significant independent business

sector. The Caesars acquisition of Playtika

($150 million effective price with earn-out)

and the IGT acquisition of Double Down

casino ($500 million with earn-out) sparked

the interests of investors and operators

alike. Mainly due to the recent explosion of

casino style games on Facebook, the frenzy

of social gaming has catapulted the subject

to the forefront of operators’ agendas. And

why shouldn’t it? Regardless of Europe or

the US, social gaming remains the only

legal touch point to the consumer for the

vast majority of jurisdictions.

The year ahead and the likely key performersLooking ahead over the next 12 months,

which companies do we see as the best

positioned and the best able to capitalise on

current trends? With increased regulations

and the escalating costs associated with

abiding by them, will the big keep getting

bigger? Are there opportunities for country-

specific companies such as Winamax?

Do the smaller operators have a chance

to effectively compete without becoming

a regulatory cesspool for bigger operators

to offload their unwanted business as they

seek to cleanse themselves? Certainly, if

I had the answers, I wouldn’t be writing

this article. At this point, we can only try to

point to the likely candidates who are in a

position to make significant strides forward

over the rest of this year and into 2013.

The IndusTry’s Key Performers

“ Illinois’ success both in online lottery ticket sales and iGaming expansion is critical to the development of the sector throughout the US.”


FEATURE

bwin.partyWhile the company is still digesting

the synergies from the merger of the

two largest companies in the sector

(bwin and PartyGaming), bwin.party

continues to fi re on all cylinders: US,

Germany, France, Italy, Spain, now

social gaming, not to mention the

fact that it is a leader in every vertical

(sports, casino, bingo, poker). Most

recently, it became the fi rst company to

announce its intention to pay the €33

million in back-tax payment to the Spanish

government. In the past 12 months, the

company was the fi rst to announce a

large-scale joint venture with two leading

US operators, MGM and Boyd and has

recently announced its imminent launch

into social. At the beginning of May, the

company continued the development of its

US presence by announcing a partnership

with California’s United Auburn Indian

Community to offer online poker in

the state, pending “suitable” intra-state

legislation. If bwin.party can keep executing

on all fronts and maintain its leading

position into regulated markets then

it could be one of the most prominent

iGaming brands of the coming year.

888The surge in 888’s share price is indicative

of the company’s prospects. Only a year

ago, the company was on the brink of

crisis with a decline in poker as well as

having questions raised as to its ability

to pay the earn-out out on its Wink

bingo acquisition. However, within a

year of its management change, the

company released Poker 6 which saw

its Poker Scout liquidity ranking shoot

from between 12th and 15th to fourth.

Most recently, 888 reported a 94 percent

increase in EBITDA and a 26 percent

growth in revenue. Rarely has any company

experienced such a change in fortune

outside the shockwaves of UIGEA and

Black Friday. In the US, 888 has been one

of the leading contenders for the supply

of poker into the US market, passing

‘suitability’ with the Nevada Gaming

Commission as a supplier for Caesars’

World Series of Poker. In addition, the

company was one of the fi rst applicants

for full licensing in Nevada as a software

vendor. Still hungry for more, 888 was

recently rumoured to be in late stage

discussions with Trump.

PlaytechPlaytech’s aggressive acquisition and joint

venture strategy has further propelled the

company as the leading online gaming

supplier for regulated markets. Not even

the negative public image stemming from

its recent battle with joint venture partner

William Hill has prevented operators from

buying the Playtech solution. The company

continues to offer a superior back-end

platform and turnkey product as well as

a willingness to acquire whenever the

company believes there is a weakness in its

product strategy.

While some believe the company will

have diffi culty getting licensed in the

US, these rumours remain speculative.

Playtech’s goal of achieving a premium

listing on the London stock exchange

“ The recent breakdown in discussions by Groupe Bernard Tapie to acquire Full Tilt has given PokerStars the opportunity to buy the assets of its former nemesis, which would further its position in both regulated and unregulated markets.”


feature

over the summer remains a priority and

is rumoured to be the motivation behind

the delay in acquiring the social gaming

assets currently owned by Playtech’s largest

shareholder, though those assets could

nicely round out Playtech’s product offering

for those potential clients who only operate

in regulated markets.

AmayaThere have been some bold predictions

coming from this little-known Canadian

company. Amaya has stated to City and

Wall Street analysts that it is expecting to

undergo rapid growth which is astonishing

considering the company only turned

profi table last year when it focused on

higher margin business from the purchase

of Chartwell. The company will now be a

combination of a couple of failed software

providers merged together: Chartwell

and Cryptologic.

Amaya burst on to the scene with its IPO

in 2010, the proceeds of which were used

to fund acquisitions such as the Cryptologic

stock, and Chartwell. The company’s bold

growth predictions and the aggressive

nature of its CEO have certainly helped

fuel its share price. Amaya has won

numerous government contracts around

the world and its CEO is predicting big

returns from its mobile SMS business in

Moldova, Kenya, Uganda and Armenia.

The Amaya IPO was named the best-

performing tech IPO in Canada in 2010.

If the company can meet its CEO’s own

expectations then he will have successfully

turned two non-performing companies

into something of value.

us land-based suppliersThe US land-based suppliers as a group

have fi nally woken up and are now

running at full speed. IGT, Bally, WMS

and Shuffl e Master, each have their own

unique strategy. IGT has taken an early

lead in social with the acquisition of Double

Down, but can the company parlay that

into a B2B strategy? Shuffl e Master hired

game developer guru Louis Castle, and

then acquired one of the leading European

poker suppliers, Ongame. WMS confused

the market with the aggressive launch of

its B2C site, Jackpotparty, with a suite of

excellent proprietary games, yet, limited

any success by marketing exclusively

into the crowded UK market. In a recent

about face, WMS acquired casino and

skill game supplier, Jadestone giving the

company a much needed B2B strategy.

Bally Technologies has taken a different

approach altogether, offering a content

agnostic approach with the purchase of

the Chiligaming back-end platform.

Which US supplier will land-based

operators want as their preferred partner?

Could it be a combination of the four?

ZyngaZynga is the ‘PokerStars’ of the social poker

market boasting over 30 million players

a month. No one has seriously tried to

challenge the behemoth’s position as the

leading operator of poker on Facebook.

Investors took notice of the company

during Facebook’s IPO which stated that

Zynga represents 12 percent of Facebook’s

total revenue. Pundits estimate that poker

represents 21 percent of Zynga’s revenue.

Going forward, Zynga’s role in real money

gambling remains unclear, but it’s likely

that with 30 million poker players, which

“ Playtech’s aggressive acquisition and joint venture strategy has further propelled the company as the leading online gaming supplier for regulated markets.”


feature

MelissA BlAu has been in the online gaming sector for 8 years as both an operator and advisor. In her current capacity, Melissa is an advisor focused on bridging US and European interests. Through her consulting company, iGaming Capital she has been advising mainly land based companies in developing their online gamingstrategy as well as advising cross border merger & acquisitions. Prior to the iGaming industry, Melissa co-managed a $450m media technology venture fund. Melissa has a B.A. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard University. [email protected]

accounts for 2.5 percent of Facebook’s

revenue, Zynga will likely be a major player,

at the very least as an affiliate in the US,

and/or as an operator in regulated markets.

The company’s recent shift to become a

B2B provider, leveraging its marketing

machine and access to players, represents

only one of a number of recent moves

to maintain cash flow. If social blurs

into real money gambling, as industry

insiders hope, Zynga will certainly be

one the key influencers.

Caesars interactive entertainment (Cie)Caesar’s Interactive Entertainment remains

the most well positioned casino operator in

the US in the eventuality of either federal

or state regulation. Caesars is the only

US land-based operator to launch in the

UK, albeit on a small scale, in an effort to

develop first-hand marketing experience.

This is despite its previous failure with its

Luckyme.com subscription bingo site. This

time around, Caesars has put its money

where its mouth is, and boldly acquired the

number one Facebook casino app, Playtika,

for an initial effective price of $90 million

(now estimated to be $150 million with the

earn-out). Caesars is well positioned should

Facebook enter real money gambling. The

company’s understanding of operating in

the tricky Facebook environment, coupled

with its management team’s gambling

experience could place CIE in prime

position if Facebook moves into real money

gambling post-IPO.

Jackpotjoy (Gamesys)Jackpotjoy has done wonders trying to keep

itself out of the spotlight. Despite being

one of the largest online bingo brands, the

company has chosen to remain private,

turning away coveted private equity money

that could have lined the founders’ pockets.

Its success in the UK bingo and scratch

card market has remained unrivalled, but

it hasn’t all been smooth sailing, with the

expansion into Spain being slower than

expected. Despite this, the company has

leveraged its lead in the UK bingo and

soft games market going ‘all-in’ on virtual

currency on Facebook. The company has

dedicated significant resources to create its

success on Facebook from scratch. Similar

to Caesars, Jackpotjoy remains incredibly

well positioned to take advantage of real

money gambling should Facebook change

its mind in regulated markets, both with

its world class gaming operations and

leadership position on Facebook.

PokerstarsBlack Friday was certainly a severe kick to

the teeth. Having taking out its two largest

competitors, everyone expected events of

April 15, 2011 to have set PokerStars back.

Not only has PokerStars remained in its

dominant position, but the removal of its

largest competitors has only strengthened

its position. Despite indictments issued

by the US government, and the escalating

war with its former payment provider

that was rumoured to have led to Black

Friday, PokerStars is still successfully

fighting in key regulated markets across

Europe. Best practices, operationally, have

led the company to maintain its licence

in Europe and retain number one spot

in selected markets. Full Tilt Poker, on

the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. With the

founders rumoured to have taken out

an unwarranted amount of cash, leaving

co-mingled player deposits unprotected,

Full Tilt lost its licenses and became the

scorn of the industry, most notably by

US authorities, calling the company a

‘Ponzi scheme’. The recent breakdown in

discussions by Groupe Bernard Tapie to

acquire Full Tilt has given PokerStars the

opportunity to buy the assets of its former

nemesis, which would further its position

in both regulated and unregulated

markets. If the four-year back-tax in Spain

doesn’t squelch this mastermind plan then

the next 12 months will be an interesting

period for PokerStars.

illinois lotteryIllinois, through its lottery, has been on the

forefront of Internet gaming in the United

States. After years of pushing federal

government and the US Department of

Justice (DoJ) for clarification on its ability

to sell lottery tickets online, the Illinois

Lottery finally got its answer on December

23, 2011, when the DoJ issued a statement

that the Wire Act only pertains to

sportsbetting and not to the lottery. This

paved the way for the Illinois Lottery to

begin selling tickets over the Internet for its

Mega Millions game. The timing couldn’t

have been better; tickets went on sale for

the first time the same week that Mega

Millions climbed to its all time record-

breaking jackpot of over $600 million.

More recently, Illinois Senate President,

John Cullerton, introduced amended

legislation in May to protect Illinois

from the ‘hostile federal legislation’. The

legislation proposed to set-up a division of

Internet gaming within the Department

of the Lottery, which would be authorised

to offer online gaming to players who are

physically present within the state as well

as to enter into multi-state agreements.

Illinois’ success both in online lottery ticket

sales and iGaming expansion is critical to

the development of the sector throughout

the US. If successful, it could easily pave

the way for other lotteries as the model case

study from which they base their plans.

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As we reach the midway point in 2012, we enter a period of both reflection and prospecting as we seek to analyse whether the lessons of 2011 have been addressed in the calendar year to date. Following on from Melissa Blau’s forecast of companies to watch over the next 12 months, we take a look at some of the key personalities interviewed by iGaming Business and iGB Affiliate over the last year and the insights that they each offered on the industry, US regulation and business.

US REGULATION Congressman John Campbell“I come from the

libertarian wing of the

Republican Party and

I believe that adults

should be able to engage in practices that

they enjoy if they don’t hurt other people.

Gambling is one of those practices. I

made it clear in the committee that I don’t

personally gamble. Not because I think

it’s evil but because it doesn’t hold a lot of

fascination for me. But a lot of people do

and I think that we should not be banning

them from doing that online.

“In America, what we say now is, ‘you

can gamble in all these different places but

you can’t do so online’. Well that’s not a

good policy for online. You can buy alcohol

or cigarettes online. We have a number of

regulated practices that are allowed online.

This is about the only one that we allow you

to do in a bricks and mortar facility that we

don’t allow you to do online and that just

doesn’t make sense.”

Senator Jeff Danielson, Iowa“There’s no doubt

that the Department

of Justice’s (DoJ)

opinion cleared the

way for states to be bold experimenters in

online gaming… we believe it opens up the

possibility of forming inter-state compacts

under the US Constitution.

“I want people in Iowa and America

to know that this is Ameri-CAN, not

Ameri-CAN’T. They need to understand

that this is an emerging market and

to do nothing, to put our head in the

sand, is not what we’re used to doing.

We need to have a thoughtful deliberate

policy here and understand that we can

accomplish this just like Europe and Asia

have already shown us.”

Senator Raymond Lesniak, New Jersey“New Jersey’s

leadership has

prompted more

attention to the issue of iGaming; whether

that prompts federal legislation, which I

do not believe will ever occur, or whether

it prompts other states to get involved, on

their own or through compacts.

“It’s not the ideal situation – I don’t

even believe it’s the ideal situation. I believe

the ideal situation is one regulator rather

than multiple states, but we’re not going

to get that because the mood in

Washington is to contract federal

government, not expand it. Internet

gaming being regulated out of Washington

would be seen as a huge expansion of

federal government. And that’s on top

of the morality objections about the

expansion of gaming. So I think there’s

been a recognition that the only way this

is going to happen is through the states.”

Michael Jones, Superintendant of the Illinois Lottery“The expansion of the

lottery is a legislative

question and I think that the DoJ letter

which, in essence, clarifies that the Wire

Act only prohibits sportsbetting, created a

great deal of momentum for the gaming

community at large, far beyond lotteries. I

certainly think most lotteries quite logically

will try to broaden their player base by

creating or emulating the e-commerce

channel used by millions of people who are

philosophically in favour of the lottery, but

who we are currently irrelevant to.

“I don’t think we set out to be pioneers,

we just set out to competently execute the

intent of the legislation passed two years

ago. This is certainly a work in progress

and I don’t think we’re there yet; but we

will be there soon.”

Mark Lipparelli, Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board “We’ve visited many of

the jurisdictions that

already regulate online gaming and we’ve

tried to glean as much education as we can

knowing full well that we may do things

differently. We have a great relationship

with our colleagues in other markets, but

we also respect that we may approach it

differently from them primarily because

that’s our history; we set a high bar for

licensing and we’re not going to change that

just because someone’s an online entity.”

A YeAr in Words

“ I want people in Iowa and America to know that this is Ameri-CAN, not Ameri-CAN’T. They need to understand that this is an emerging market and to do nothing, to put our head in the sand, is not what we’re used to doing. We need to have a thoughtful deliberate policy here and understand that we can accomplish this just like Europe and Asia have already shown us.”


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THE FULL TILT CRISIS

Peter Dean, author of the report into the Full Tilt saga commissioned by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission.“Alderney’s regulatory system for gambling

is comparable to those prevailing in other

well regarded jurisdictions, and AGCC is

respected round the world as a regulator

demanding high standards of probity from its

licensees. Deplorable as the episode covered

in this review has been, it is nevertheless an

example of regulation working as it should.

As soon as plausible evidence of irregularities

came to light the regulator acted promptly

and proportionately. An investigation was

instituted, findings made, a hearing held,

judgment delivered and sanctions imposed.

Due process was followed.”

Aideen Shortt, iGaming Consultant, in an articleon the Dean Report“Several times

in the report, Dean outlined that

Alderney is ‘comparable’ to other

jurisdictions and actually states that

the procedures followed by the AGCC

in this entire process is an example

of ‘regulation working as it should’.

Yet the very fact that the debacle

happened at all is surely, in some part,

due to less than appropriate licensing.

If more than $300 million of player

funds cannot be paid back, then despite

whatever process was followed to manage

the crisis, something is seriously lacking.

Although the scrutiny of the Dean

Report found that the AGCC behaved

appropriately, it could be argued that the

refusal of Full Tilt to disclose its owners’

details directly, its willingness to flout the

regulations in its move from Kahnawake

and its failings and slow response with

regard to the AGCC inspections were

collective red flags.”

Preet Bharara, US Attorney in Manhattan “Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker

company, but a global Ponzi scheme.

Full Tilt insiders lined their own pockets

with funds picked from the pockets of

their most loyal customers while blithely

lying to both players and the public

alike about the safety and security

of the money deposited.”

BUSINESS AND MARKETING Ed Birkin, Analyst at Barclays Capital “Ask any investor

or analyst involved

in online gaming

stocks what the key driver of share price

performance is and they’ll inevitably say

‘regulation’. 2011 was a year notable for

many reasons, and it is unsurprising that

the three key events to affect the listed

gaming operators could all come under the

‘regulatory’ heading.

“The first, and arguably most

significant in terms of share price reaction,

was the announcement that Germany

intended to impose highly restrictive

online gaming regulations, designed

to close the market to foreign online

operators. Secondly, shortly afterwards,

came the US indictments against

PokerStars, Full Tilt et al. This led to a

sharp rally in a number of poker stocks as

investors forecast a significant inflow of

players to European listed operators, and

a potentially imminent opening of the US;

however, neither of these occurred. Finally,

as the year was coming to a peaceful close,

the Department of Justice released its

opinion on the Wire Act, and the poker

stocks once again rallied sharply at the

expectation of a US opening.”

Josh Greenberg, co-Founder, Grooveshark“The thing that holds

most people back from

starting a company is

the lack of will to take that initial leap. One

of the things that has really helped me out

is that I used to look at starting a company

as such a daunting task – the paperwork,

the legal stuff, hiring people, making a

website – there’s so much stuff to do.

But if you boil it down, there’s always

a first step. Then, after that, there is

one more step, then another step and

all of a sudden if you take the sum

of all these little steps, you have a company.

Most people think that starting a company

is such a massive, grandiose process

that they never do it. The actuality is

that if you take it one step at a time,

you make it happen.”

Neil Patel, Serial Entrepreneur “You need to create

a good product or

service that solves

a problem. And not

just something everyone else is doing,

but something unique. If you can’t solve

problems you won’t be able to create

a big business. It doesn’t matter if we

are in a digital revolution or a bad economy,

solving problems is the best way to create

a thriving business.”

“ Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme. Full Tilt insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited.”

iGB Affiliate JUNE/JUly 201266

webmaster world

Michaela McNamara, Editor at CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com, offers the lowdown on the concept of ring fencing and how it can positively impact your affiliate business before examining the repurcussions of the Google Penguin update on the facing page.

MaNy affiliates have wondered, “What is ring fencing?” and more importantly, “how does it affect my business?”

A ring fence allows an operator to control the extent to which its players can affect an affiliate’s winnings. To break things down, ring fencing can be explained as isolating ‘whales’, or big time winning players, to mitigate the negative effect they have on your losing players. Basically, if an affiliate has a winner in one casino, it does not affect the income you have within that casino or other casinos in this program. If your affiliate program implements the concept of ring fencing, then your negative results from one casino do not impact your positive results from the others.

Most cases of ring fencing are not public, so affiliates don’t always know about it. That’s why many affiliate programs can boast that they do not carry over a negative balance when, in reality, they do – it can just be hidden at times. Ring fencing that is in the open and part of the Terms and Conditions from the outset are more tolerable to affiliates. If affiliates know right away if ‘Player A’ wins a large sum, such as

$20,000, they can agree to have that player quarantined until they play back this win. Once they have played that win back, they are then tagged to the affiliate once again.

Some rooms choose to ring fence their players together. Often, the players coming from these rooms are the biggest fish, or the ‘losers’. These rooms do this to protect their ‘fish’ from the network ‘whales’.

impact on affiliatesFor the programs that do not advertise that they carry forward the negatives, it is important to clarify the Terms and Conditions. For all the affiliate knows, you may be losing out in the long run if they have aggressive ‘fencing’, ‘quarantine’ or ‘adjustment’ policies.

The best programs are those who simply absorb the negative and don’t resort to any of the aforementioned policies. However, they take a hit when the winning player drops money in the next payment cycle or month. The best approach is to pick only the programs that openly mention that they support ring fencing. If they don’t mention any such thing, ask your affiliate manager (or go through the Terms and Conditions more thoroughly).

Ring fencing is a great practice to protect your players too. This is not uncommon for sportsbooks that are also on other poker networks, for obvious reasons. With that said, it may present a good opportunity to convert your poker players to ring-fenced rooms. It’s a great conversion opportunity for affiliates.

Note: many affiliates often mistake ring fencing with ‘bundling’, but the two are in fact, quite different. A program is said to ‘bundle’ when it throws all the casinos in one pot, and when an affiliate has a winner in one of them, his earnings with all of the casinos get wiped out. When a program bundles, it is financially wisest to only carry one casino from that group so to minimise losses.

What is Ring Fencing?

“ If your affiliate program implements the concept of ring fencing, then your negative results from one casino do not impact your positive results from the others.”

iGB Affiliate JUNE/JUly 2012 67

webmaster world

Now that the iGaming world is reeling from the Google Penguin update, we’ve been able to get a better grasp of its impact and how it has affected the iGaming community.

a few weeks have now passed since Google unleashed its Penguin update on April 24 and plenty of casino affiliates are feeling the impact. The question remains, “Are there some positive effects from the sweeping refresh?”

In mid-May, Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam Team, laid out the good, bad and ugly aspects of the Penguin, the Panda and negative SEO.

was Penguin a success?Shortly after Penguin’s launch, SEO forums lit up with posts from webmasters who felt they’d been unfairly penalised by the refresh. The best example was probably Viagra.com, the official site of the well-known drug. Thanks to Penguin, this site was no longer indexed, while legions of spammy, counterfeit Viagra sites kept high page rankings. (That particular problem has since been addressed.)

However, according to Cutts, many of these problems, including the Viagra problem, pre-dated the Penguin update. Cutts did concede the refresh did cause a few of what he called, “false positives”.

“We’ve seen a few cases where we might want to investigate more, but this change hasn’t had the same impact as Panda or Florida,” he explained.

Still, fighting a false positive caused by Penguin isn’t as simple as fighting one caused by Panda.

While Cutts acknowledges that, “no algorithm is perfect”, Google is not entertaining reconsideration requests from sites that may have been unfairly penalised. Cutts recommends these sites do whatever they can, and wait for the next refresh to roll out.

Negative seOWhile Google has been placing emphasis on link networks and low-quality inbound links, many site owners have worried about the impact of negative SEO. Cutts discounted the idea that a webmaster could point low quality links at a competitor to bring down their page rank.

While negative SEO may join keyword density in the SEO hall of legends, the impact of unnatural link networks is still very real.

link-up with troubleAfter Penguin, many web publishers got the idea that links were behind their page ranking drops, but Cutts seems to dismiss those concerns as mere coincidence. He pointed out that bad link warnings went out well ahead of Penguin. Link warnings, according to Cutts, are almost always followed by a big drop.

Penguin’s impact on affiliatesCutts is quick to point out that Google considers Penguin to be a big success. What’s more, he says that for every site that dropped, another one rose. In his mind, that’s a good thing. In the CAP forums, gaming affiliates didn’t necessarily share Cutts’ enthusiasm.

On a thread entitled, “So, How Much Traffic Did You Lose?” in the CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com forums,

CAP members shared the impact of Penguin on their sites:●● A member said that his sites that had ranked between one and five had dropped all the way down to 799.●● Another member reported that his traffic dropped from 170,000 impressions a day, down to just 22,000.●● On the other end of the spectrum, one member woke up on ‘Penguin Day’ to find his bingo site getting 50 percent to 70 percent more traffic.

Bounce backMany site masters impacted by Penguin have been frantically removing links in hopes of undoing the damage, but that may not be enough. Cutts and (Danny) Sullivan1 both say that, in some cases, bouncing back from Penguin may involve starting over from scratch.

google Penguin imPact examined

“ In some cases, bouncing back from Penguin may involve starting over from scratch.”

Michaela McNaMara is editor at casinoaffiliatePrograms.com (caP), the world’s largest online gaming affiliate marketing community. With more than 11,000 members, caP is the internet’s primary location for online gaming brands and affiliate marketers to come together and do business.

caP is owned by affiliate Media, inc., an independent online publishing company focused solely on affiliate marketing. Our experts gather, create, and publish information about affiliate marketing and share it with the larger worldwide community to help affiliates better promote leading internet brands world-wide (and profit by doing so).

1Danny Sullivan, Editor of Search Engine Land


WEBMASTER WORLD

68

DATA CENTRE

INTERNATIONAL MARKET SNAPSHOT

Rank ....................................................Name Domain1 Lottery Post ..................................... www.lotterypost.com 4.68%

2 FreeSlots ......................................... www.freeslots.com 4.00%

3 Florida Lottery .................................. www.fl alottery.com 3.97%

4 NY Lottery ........................................ nylottery.ny.gov 3.63%

5 PCHSlots.......................................... slots.pch.com 3.31%

6 Pennsylvania Lottery ......................... www.palottery.state.pa.us 3.26%

7 Texas Lottery Commission ................. www.txlottery.org 3.14%

8 WorldWinner .................................... www.worldwinner.com 2.87%

9 Massachusetts State Lottery Commission ..... www.masslottery.com 2.51%

10 California Lottery .............................. www.calottery.com 2.45%

Rank .............................................Name Domain1 The National Lottery ..................www.national-lottery.co.uk 25.42%

2 Betfair ......................................www.betfair.com 7.02%

3 bet365 .....................................www.bet365.com 6.60%

4 Sky Bet .....................................www.skybet.com 3.87%

5 William Hill Sports Betting ..........sports.williamhill.com 3.45%

6 Racingpost.com ........................www.racingpost.com 2.92%

7 Ladbrokes Sportsbook ...............sports.ladbrokes.com 2.89%

8 Paddy Power .............................www.paddypower.com 2.57%

9 Jackpotjoy ................................www.jackpotjoy.com 2.50%

10 At The Races .............................www.attheraces.com 1.90%

Rank .............................................Name Domain1 FDJ ..........................................www.fdj.fr 19.55%

2 PMU.fr ......................................www.pmu.fr 18.74%

3 PMU Progress ...........................www.parier.pmu.fr 10.10%

4 Les Secrets du Jeu ....................www.secretsdujeu.com 7.02%

5 turf.fr ........................................www.turf-fr.com 6.30%

6 BetClic France ...........................fr.betclic.com 6.19%

7 Ludokado ..................................www.ludokado.com 3.86%

8 Genybet ....................................www.genybet.fr 2.88%

9 Casino La Riviera .......................www.casinolariviera.com 1.91%

10 bwin France ..............................www.bwin.fr 1.69%

TOP TEN GAMBLING SITES IN THE US, APRIL 2012

EUROPEAN SEARCH ENGINE MARKET SHARE

TOP TEN GAMBLING SITES IN THE UK, APRIL 2012

TOP TEN GAMBLING SITES IN FRANCE, APRIL 2012TOP TEN GAMBLING SITES IN FRANCE, APRIL 2012

US DEMOGRAPHICS BY AGE UK DEMOGRAPHICS BY AGE

40%

32%

24%

16%

8%

0%

40%

32%

24%

16%

8%

0%

10.33

17.416.48 17.3217.01 19.7722.6618.84

33.52

26.66

18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+ 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+

FEMALE 48.27%

MALE 51.73%

FEMALE 49.25%

MALE 50.75%

The market data reports from Experian Hitwise provide us with a structured breakdown of the target audiences within some of the major international markets. Here, we look at the most visited gambling sites in the US, UK and France as well as comScore’s breakdown of the most used search engines in Europe for the month of April.

Source: comScore

Google sites (45,470MM/79.5%)

Yandex sites (3,840MM/6.7%)

eBay (1,942MM/3.4%)

Mail.ru Group (952MM/1.7%)

Microsoft Sites (652MM/1.1%)

Total Internet (57,181MM/100%)

iGaming Business

■ Issue 72 ■ January/February 2012

The DoJ ‘Christmas Present’The Fall and Rise of US iGaming Congressman John Campbell on Federal ProgressLobbying and US Legislation New Jersey’s Quest for Legal Sportsbetting

Wire Act clarifi cationbuoys industry

USWired

foriGaming

Plus:PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Gaming ReportInterviewå Walter Bugno, CEO, GTECH G2US Lotteries and the Private SectorKPMG on Mobile Gambling

Join 3,000 iGaming ProfessionalsDublin 22nd – 25th May 2012

iGaming Attendees FREE!www.iGamingSuperShow.com

Plus:

Sector Analysis from Ernst & Young

and Barclays Capital

Live Poker Tournaments

In-play Betting Supplement

Marketing at the London Olympics

iGaming Business

■ Issue 73 ■ M

arch/April 2012

iGaminG

Busin

ess

Info

rmatIo

n, InsIg

ht and analy

sIs for th

e busIn

ess of I

nteractIv

e gamIn

g

Issue 74 m

ay/Ju

ne 201

2

igamIng busIness | Issue 74 | may/June 2012

Plus:

Black F

riday

: One

Year

on

Senato

r Les

niak a

nd th

e Silic

on Stat

e

a Fair P

ress?

iGam

ing’s

Reputa

tion m

anag

emen

t

The a

Sa on Gam

bling

advert

ising S

tanda

rdsbr

IngIng down

the h

ouse

The D

ean Re

poRT

anD Th

e

Demise

of full

TilT p

okeR

Join the leaders in the igaming industry and subscribe today!

A subscription to iGAminG business offers you:l 6 copies of iGaming Business magazinel iGB Marketplace Directory worth £75l 6 copies of iGB Affiliate Magazinel The iGB Affiliate Directory worth £75l iGB Jurisdictions Directoryl iGaming Business Newslines delivered twice weekly l Access to all the latest news, events and jobs in

the industry on www.iGamingBusiness.coml An exclusive 10% subscribers discount

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thinking and debate.”

Simon Burridge, CEO of Virgin Games


webmaster world

70

data CeNtre

Search marketing agency, Greenlight, has released its latest report into search traffic trends within the gaming sector for the month of April. Here, we can see the latest from the UK market in relation to search queries for the traditional iGaming verticals: casino, poker, bingo and sportsbetting.

The mosT recenT monthly report from search marketing agency, Greenlight, shows a marginal increase in overall search volumes in comparison to February’s data. April’s figures show an increase in overall search volumes to 859,603 having fallen to 736,470 in February, which represented the second lowest figure since June 2011.

Perhaps not surprisingly, searches for sportsbetting-related content overtook bingo to claim 37 percent voice of share with 314,512 searches, establishing it as the most searched keyword, or at least, the term with the most cumulative searches with regards to variations (sportsbetting/bets/betting/etc). The numbers for bingo related keywords fell from 288,883 in February to 260,145 in April, with poker slipping back into third place having dropped from 193,411 in the last reporting period to 148,417. Casino keywords remain the least searched although they did see an increase this time around, jumping from 122,719 to 136,529.

The increase in searches is almost wholly driven by a spike in sportsbetting keywords, which we can attribute to a variety of seasonal sporting occasions that occur in April and May, such as the Grand National, the end of the Premier League season and Champions League final and this year, the likely influence of the UEFA Euro 2012 Football Championships in Ukraine and Poland. Yet, although this uptake does represent positive momentum, it is something of an anomaly in comparison to the downward trend since June 2011.

The uniform decrease in search volumes can be attributed to any number of factors, one of the likeliest being the changing search patterns of the UK betting demographic. As consumers become more aware of how they navigate between the sites they use to bet or play at, their reliance on search engines decreases for short-tail terms such as those detailed here, but may increase for more specific, longer-tail keywords for which is it almost impossible to monitor and chart successfully. Many of the searches recorded for these core keywords such as ‘bingo’, ‘casino’ and ‘poker’ are more likely to be the reserve of those new to betting online, or those seeking information rather than ‘action’, hence the constant presence of Wikipedia in the Greenlight results.

The results for sportsbetting are also slightly muddied by the presence of short-tail terms such as ‘bet’ and ‘betting’ which although are grouped into the sports results, don’t necessarily represent accurate sports betting traffic.

summary of data ●● Searches for gaming-related keywords in April 2012 totalled 859,603 up roughly 123,100 on the previous reporting period (736,470).●● Sportsbetting-related terms (314,512) accounted for the significant majority share of searches made. Bingo-related terms (260,145) although notably decreased, still accounted for the second highest search group. ●● Overall, in April, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power and Wikipedia.org were the three most visible websites in natural search achieving 35%, 28% and 19% share of voice, respectively.●● Cheeky Bingo maintained its lead as the most visible website for

bingo-related search terms, with Costa Bingo and Foxy Bingo making up the top three. ●● Casino770 was the most visible website for all casino-related keywords, surpassing Ladbrokes and Intercasino.co.uk who were second and third respectively.●● For poker-related queries, Wikipedia remained the most visible website, ahead of Poker Listings and PKR.●● Paddy Power is now the most visible website for sportsbetting related terms ahead of Ladbrokes and Oddschecker with two Grand National-specific sites also in the top six.

UK iGaminG Search TrendSNum# Domain Monthly

Reached

Volume

Monthly

Missed

Volume

Percentage

Reached

1 ladbrokes.com 299,153 560,450 35%

2 paddypower.com 239,662 619,941 28%

3 wikipedia.org 162,344 697,259 19%

4 oddschecker.com 156,464 703,139 18%

5 cheekybingo.com 155,883 703,720 18%

6 costabingo.com 126,265 733,338 15%

7 grand-national-guide.co.uk 119,960 739,643 14%

8 betfair.com 119,056 740,547 14%

9 foxybingo.com 109,482 750,121 13%

10 888.com 108,256 751,347 13%

11 galabingo.co.uk 95,797 763,806 11%

12 aintree-grand-national.net 91,072 768,531 11%

13 williamhill.com 88,449 771,154 10%

14 betfred.com 82,017 777,586 10%

15 tombola.co.uk 80,809 778,794 9%

16 bet365.com 79,621 779,982 9%

17 jackpotjoy.com 79,285 780,318 9%

18 pokerlistings.com 75,303 784,300 9%

19 partybingo.com 74,610 784,993 9%

20 casino770.com 74,358 785,245 9%

21 skybet.com 63,531 796,072 7%

22 coral.co.uk 63,469 796,134 7%

23 racingpost.com 61,955 797,648 7%

24 intercasino.co.uk 57,390 802,213 7%

25 comparebingosites.co.uk 56,775 802,828 7%

26 betting-directory.com 56,678 802,925 7%

27 pkr.com 56,664 802,939 7%

28 888sport.com 55,504 804,098 6%

29 pokerstars.com 55,224 804,379 6%

30 whichbingo.co.uk 53,016 806,587 6%

31 bingoport.co.uk 49,351 810,252 6%

32 skypoker.com 46,916 812,687 5%

33 betrescue.com 45,350 814,253 5%

34 freebingo.co.uk 45,239 814,364 5%

35 bet770.com 44,493 815,110 5%

36 onlinebingofinder.co.uk 43,345 816,258 5%

37 miniclip.com 42,782 816,821 5%

38 olbg.com 41,146 818,457 5%

39 partypoker.com 40,595 819,008 5%

40 madaboutbingo.com 39,062 820,542 5%

41 888ladies.com 37,859 821,744 4%

42 latestcasinobonuses.com 37,089 822,514 4%

43 32redbingo.com 37,078 822,525 4%

44 spinpalace.co.uk 37,062 822,540 4%

45 redbusbingo.com 36,018 823,585 4%

46 pacificpoker.com 35,139 824,464 4%

47 pokerstars.co.uk 34,660 824,943 4%

48 wtgbingo.com 34,600 825,004 4%

49 games.com 34,557 825,046 4%

50 32red.com 34,001 825,602 4%


webmaster world

71

data CeNtre

The most visible websites for bingo-related keywords in natural search (April 2012)Num# Domain Monthly

Reached

Volume

Monthly

Missed

Volume

Percentage

Reached

1 cheekybingo.com 155,883 104,262 60%

2 costabingo.com 126,265 133,880 49%

3 foxybingo.com 109,482 150,663 42%

4 galabingo.co.uk 95,797 164,348 37%

5 tombola.co.uk 80,809 179,336 31%

6 jackpotjoy.com 79,285 180,860 30%

7 partybingo.com 74,610 185,535 29%

8 ladbrokes.com 62,479 197,666 24%

9 comparebingosites.co.uk 56,775 203,370 22%

10 whichbingo.co.uk 53,016 207,129 20%

11 bingoport.co.uk 49,327 210,818 19%

12 freebingo.co.uk 45,239 214,906 17%

13 onlinebingofinder.co.uk 43,345 216,800 17%

14 madaboutbingo.com 39,062 221,084 15%

15 888ladies.com 37,859 222,286 15%

16 32redbingo.com 37,078 223,067 14%

17 888.com 36,720 223,425 14%

18 redbusbingo.com 36,018 224,127 14%

19 wtgbingo.com 34,600 225,546 13%

20 bingo770.com 29,515 230,630 11%

The most visible websites for online casino-related keywords in natural search (April 2012)Num# Domain Monthly

Reached

Volume

Monthly

Missed

Volume

Percentage

Reached

1 casino770.com 74,358 62,171 54%

2 ladbrokes.com 57,641 78,888 42%

3 intercasino.co.uk 57,325 79,204 42%

4 888.com 50,414 86,115 37%

5 wikipedia.org 43,191 93,338 32%

6 latestcasinobonuses.com 37,089 99,440 27%

7 spinpalace.co.uk 37,050 99,480 27%

8 32red.com 33,979 102,550 25%

9 mansioncasino.com 33,751 102,778 25%

10 imdb.com 27,490 109,039 20%

11 goldentigercasino.com 23,457 113,072 17%

12 casinoaction.com 23,222 113,307 17%

13 netbet.org 22,576 113,953 17%

14 luckyemperorcasino.com 22,380 114,149 16%

15 allfreechips.com 18,343 118,186 13%

16 onlinecasinobonus.co.uk 17,370 119,158 13%

17 gambling.com 15,385 121,144 11%

18 ukcasino-club.co.uk 15,137 121,392 11%

19 galacasino.com 13,071 123,458 10%

20 paddypower.com 12,723 123,806 9%

The most visible websites for online poker-related keywords in natural search (April 2012)Num# Domain Monthly

Reached

Volume

Monthly

Missed

Volume

Percentage

Reached

1 wikipedia.org 83,309 65,108 56%

2 pokerlistings.com 75,303 73,114 51%

3 pkr.com 56,647 91,770 38%

4 pokerstars.com 55,224 93,193 37%

5 skypoker.com 46,916 101,501 32%

6 miniclip.com 42,782 105,635 29%

7 partypoker.com 40,565 107,852 27%

8 pacificpoker.com 35,139 113,278 24%

9 pokerstars.co.uk 34,660 113,757 23%

10 wsop.com 31,701 116,716 21%

11 thepokerpractice.com 26,112 122,305 18%

12 fulltiltpoker.com 25,777 122,640 17%

13 games.com 25,173 123,244 17%

14 thefreepokerroom.com 17,314 131,103 12%

15 texasholdem-poker.com 16,517 131,900 11%

16 888.com 15,983 132,434 11%

17 ladbrokes.com 15,899 132,518 11%

18 247freepoker.com 14,139 134,278 10%

19 pagat.com 13,511 134,906 9%

20 freepoker.org 12,921 135,496 9%

The most visible websites for online sports betting-related keywords in natural search (April 2012)Num# Domain Monthly

Reached

Volume

Monthly

Missed

Volume

Percentage

Reached

1 paddypower.com 221,362 93,150 70%

2 ladbrokes.com 163,134 151,378 52%

3 oddschecker.com 156,389 158,123 50%

4 grand-national-

guide.co.uk

119,960 194,552 38%

5 betfair.com 110,065 204,447 35%

6 aintree-grand-national.net 91,072 223,440 29%

7 williamhill.com 83,606 230,906 27%

8 betfred.com 81,999 232,513 26%

9 bet365.com 78,217 236,295 25%

10 skybet.com 63,531 250,981 20%

11 coral.co.uk 63,469 251,043 20%

12 racingpost.com 61,955 252,557 20%

13 betting-directory.com 56,678 257,834 18%

14 888sport.com 55,504 259,008 18%

15 betrescue.com 45,286 269,226 14%

16 bet770.com 44,493 270,019 14%

17 olbg.com 41,036 273,476 13%

18 bluesq.com 32,639 281,873 10%

19 bet.com 27,100 287,412 9%

20 wikipedia.org 26,268 288,244 8%

Source: Greenlight


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GURU

www.gururevenue.com

iGame

www.igame.com

Intertops

www.intertops.eu

Live Partners


Logispin

www.logispin.com

Mr Green

www.mrgreen.com

MyBet

www.mybet.com/en/

Paddypower

www.paddypower.com

Referback

www.referback.com

Roxy

www.roxypalace.com

Slotland

www.slotland.com

Stan James

www.stanjames.com

Star Games

www.stargames.com

Victor Chandler

www.victorchandler.com

Welcome to the Market Place listings section of iGB Affiliate

magazine. All listings are taken from the 2012 version of

our iGB Affiliate Directory; a 150 page guide to the affiliate

programs and service providers who are currently active

within the iGaming sector.

To request a free copy of this publication or to have

your company listed please contact Richard W on

E: [email protected] or

T: +44 (0) 207 954 3437

bet365affiliates.com

www.gambleaware.co.uk

Officially sponsored by

7314 bet365 affiliates (148x52+3mm). 24/11/2011 15:38 Page 1






Virgin

www.virgingaming.com

Vuetec/Dublin

www.dublinbet.com

FinanCiaL sOLutiOns

Aff Europe

www.affeurope.com

Bet365

www.bet365.com

CAP


Easy Forex

www.easy-forex.com

LCG

www.londoncapitalgroup.com

Plus500

www.plus500.co.uk

24option

www.24option.com

Aff Europe

www.affeurope.com

PayMent sOLutiOns

Intercash

www.intercashuk.com

Wire Card

www.wirecard.com

Algocharge

www.algocharge.com

EMS

www.emspaymentsolutions.com

Netteller

www.neteller.com

POKer aFFiLiate PrOgraMs

Affiliates United

www.affutd.com

Asian Logic

www.asianlogic.com

Bet365

www.bet365.com

Betfair

www.betfair.com

Betsson

www.betsson.com

Commission Lounge

www.commissionlounge.com

Everest Poker

www.everestpoker.com/en

Guru

www.gururevenue.com

iGame

www.igamefamily.com

InterPartners

www.interpartners.com

Intertops

www.intertops.eu

Live Partners


MyBet

www.mybet.com/en

Paddypower

www.paddypower.com

PKR

www.pkr.com

Poker Tracker

www.pokertracker.com

Stan James

www.stanjames.com

Star Games

www.stargames.com

sKiLL gaMing aFFiLiatePrOgraMs

Affiliates United

www.affutd.com

Bet365

www.bet365.com

Betsson

www.betsson.com

Gala Coral

www.galacoral.co.uk

Live Partners


Paddypower

www.paddypower.com

Star Games

www.stargames.com

sPOrts Betting

Affiliates United

www.affutd.com

Asian Logic

www.asianlogic.com

Bet365

www.bet365.com

BetDaq

www.betdaq.com

Betfair

www.betfair.com

Betsson

www.betsson.com

Brightshare

www.brightshare.com

CAP


Gala Coral

www.galacoral.co.uk

iGame

www.igamefamily.com

International All Sports

www.iasbetaffiliates.com

Intertops

www.intertops.eu

Ladbrokes

www.ladbrokes.com

Live Partners


Logispin

www.logispin.com

Lux bet

www.luxbet.com

MyBet

www.mybet.com/en

Oddsfutures

www.oddsfutures.com

Paddypower

www.paddypower.com

Redbet

www.redbet.com

RGS Malta Ltd

www.starlottosport.com

SportingBet

www.sportingbet.com

Sportsbet.com.au

www.sportsbet.com.au

Stan James

www.stanjames.com

Vbet

www.vbet.com

Victor Chandler

www.victorchandler.com






WEBMASTER WORLD

HAS ANYONE REALLY ever bothered to defi ne or totally understand the function and purpose of ‘affi liate relationships’? In the simplest of fashions, it adds up to free advertising for the company availing themselves of same and the end result is a commission, payment, ‘kick-back’, some defi ned percentage of the monies earned by the organisation to whom said affi liate will send users with money to spend and, in turn, receive a pre-determined stipend for doing so. Lots of technology to keep track here and, likely, more trust than computerised tracking.

Affi liate alliances are so high on the priority list for gaming that there are conferences organised specifi cally for them; speakers, stands, bookmakers vying for their loyalty. A site, for example, that analyses and critiques or applauds various offshore operations can do, has done, extraordinarily well. Their audience is the audience being sought. Small mom and pop shops/sites consider this found money and free trips to conferences paid for by said bookmakers seeking to entice them into loyalties of some sort. The entire thing is an anomaly in the world of wagering and has achieved signifi cant status.

Affi liate relationships are not new to the world. Many companies use them and issue credits of some sort to the party providing the advertising space and, with suffi cient credits earned, they can then procure any one of a number of

the products of the vendor. Space for product, links that convert to sales and freebies to you in return.

In the world of gaming, however, cash speaks volumes.

And, with all the sports that permeate our lives, possess them, have us tuning out all else on a given weekend, we now have the eclipse upon us, that which can blot all else if embraced properly: the Summer Olympics. Is this the ‘one-off’, as it is being addressed, of every four years? Can the populace at large be convinced that they might know enough to venture a few bob on the eventual outcome of any of the events… and there are more than enough to go around.

Other than the US, where else can you fi nd more bookmakers than you will in the UK? How about nowhere.

Known over the ages as the best of amateur sports, that has long since changed. Rest assured that the odds are already being posted on every event and site, or will be in the days ahead. What the heck, wagering always adds a new twist to the event, the sport, a touch of enhanced enthusiasm. Besides, you can walk in and place a wager, go to a site, download the app allowing same on your mobile or tablet or just doing it in a friendly fashion with your cousins in Sydney or Chicago.

I would not count on, nor venture into the world of in-play wagering if that should be offered. Rather, who will win is good

enough to attract multitudes and extend the rooting interest… the real bottom line of placing a wager, suffering for anywhere from minutes to hours, or, conversely, rejoicing when that winning goal is scored in the 89th minute.The Olympics are upon us, and the gathering in London in just a few weeks will see thousands of athletes, an untold number of events and competitions, tens of millions watching and great numbers attending. But, can a good number of those in attendance and an even greater number traversing all those affi liate sites be enticed to click hither and thither, to place a wager? I am not sure, but they can certainly be told to “just do it!” by those affi liates who are salivating at the thought of some serious cheques coming to them.

Welcome to the worlds of the Internet and affi liate marketing where anything at all is possible and the proof of the pudding being in the results that, apparently, justify it all. Who can argue with that? Certainly not I.

NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT...

MICKEY CHARLES is President and CEO of The Sports Network, an international real-time sports wire service with customers throughout North America and Europe. www.sportsnetwork.com


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iGB Affiliate 33 Jun/Jul 2012

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